Two strangers were driving along the road. Then one shot the other

Will Hollingsworth lives west of Macon. Randy Epps lived east of the city.

Hollingsworth is 22. Epps was 58.

Both were armed. One was killed.

It was lunchtime. The two men were driving east along U.S. 80, one of Macon’s busiest thoroughfares, near Interstate 475, on Oct. 11.

Hollingsworth, of Lizella, was at the wheel of a white Dodge Challenger. Epps, of Jeffersonville, was driving a black Honda Accord.

A deputy’s report said Epps stopped on the side of the road to get a gun out of his trunk, pulled up on the passenger side of Hollingsworth’s Dodge and pointed a handgun at him.

At a stoplight before Bloomfield Road, near S&S Cafeteria and Taco Bell, police say Hollingsworth opened fire on Epps.

When deputies arrived, Epps was lying in the driver’s seat, still clutching his gun. He died soon afterward from multiple gunshot wounds.

Road rage is the suspected cause. Weeks after the killing, the Bibb County District Attorney’s Office is still deciding whether Hollingsworth will face charges.

Hollingsworth claimed self-defense, and so far there’s not enough evidence proving otherwise, Bibb County Sheriff David Davis said.

“Our folks have checked to see if these two individuals might have known each other or had some previous beef,” Davis said. “But there doesn’t seem to be any kind of indication of that. Just two strangers that happened to meet with catastrophic results.”

A history with police

A day after the shooting, a Telegraph reporter stopped by Hollingsworth’s house. A man on the porch told her to leave. A woman poked her head outside only to say Hollingsworth didn’t “want no interviews.”

On Oct. 13, Hollingsworth’s girlfriend posted pictures on her Facebook page of the two of them riding a giant spinning swing set together at the Georgia National Fair.

Hollingsworth had another issue with a gun earlier this year.

On March 29, Hollingsworth went to the Cherry Blossom Festival with his mom and a friend. All of them were packing heat.

A vendor there reported that Hollingsworth and his friend were passing a gun back and forth, and a sheriff’s deputy detained them for questioning, according to an incident report from the Sheriff’s Office. His mother, Tammy Hollingsworth, told authorities she also had a gun in her purse. She was also detained.

A deputy checked to make sure they had concealed carry permits. Though they were licensed, the deputy asked Hollingsworth and his friend to leave “due to their behavior.”

Deputies have been called out to the family’s Lizella home at least 10 times this year since March 10, according to call records from Macon-Bibb County 911.

Four of the calls were from neighbors bothered by loud music at the house. The other six calls came from the Hollingsworth residence.

Someone at the house called July 11 to report missing property but canceled the call before a deputy arrived. On Aug. 20, someone there called about a stolen gun but later discovered it hadn’t been stolen.

Sheriff’s deputies were called to Hollingsworth’s house twice Aug. 23.

The first call was about “a domestic dispute between mother and son,” and the second was about “the son wants to retrieve personal items from the house.”

The Aug. 23 calls happened almost a year after Hollingsworth’s father died.

On August 14, 2015, Hollingsworth was on a motorcycle with his father, 57-year-old William Thomas “Big Willy” Hollingsworth Sr., when a 2011 Chevrolet Silverado turned in front of them in the 300 block of Broadway, according to Telegraph archives.

Will Hollingsworth was hurt in the crash. His father died four days later at a Macon hospital.

‘They got to live with it just like we got to live with it’

Barbara Price, Epps’ former mother-in-law, called The Telegraph after reading about the killing.

“I just feel like there was something more to that story,” Price said. Epps “was more talk than he was actions. I can’t help to think there must have been something to provoke all that.”

Since he was a teenager at Tattnall Square Academy, Epps had an anxiety disorder, his uncle Tommy Epps said. It kept him from working as an adult.

“He just hated crowds, couldn’t stand crowds,” he said.

“That’s what surprised me was the road rage, because it’s so untypical of him. He would have gived (Hollingsworth) anything if they just stopped and talked.”

Epps said he hopes Hollingsworth and his family will learn that “you just don’t play with (guns).”

NASCAR, racing, painting, cars, hunting and fishing were among Randy Epps’ hobbies. When his body was cremated, his ashes were stored in an urn painted in camoflage.

“Once you pull that trigger — I just feel sorry for them,” Tommy Epps said of the Hollingsworth family. “They got to live with it just like we got to live with it.”

On the weekend of his funeral, Randy Epps had planned to drive to Daytona Beach, Florida, to check on his mother after Hurricane Matthew. He had lived with her there for a few years before he and his future wife, Cheryl, started getting serious. They married 16 months before his death.

The week he was killed, Randy Epps had planned to help his 28-year-old son, Rusty Epps, rescue a four-wheeler that got stuck in the woods.

“It’s still back there,” Rusty Epps said after his dad’s funeral Oct. 15.

Though his dad was shy, Epps said he “was also a talker.”

“We could go in a gas station to get him a Coke, and he’d be in there five minutes talking to the cashier,” he said. “He was just a real talkative person. … Complete strangers, he’d sit there and talk to them for 30 minutes.”

A shared hobby

Randy Epps and Will Hollingsworth had at least one thing in common: Both of them had an affinity for guns.

Both men had bought guns from Howard’s Pawn & Jewelry, about a mile and a half from the site of the shooting.

Store owner Howard Reed said his dad used to play ball with Epps’ dad. Epps’ children also do business at the store.

“I felt like I knew him to a degree, as well as you could get to know a customer from over the years,” Reed said. “He’d come home (from Florida) for the holidays. He bought a metal detector and liked to comb the beaches looking for stuff. Me and him would talk when he came in, but I never knew a side of him like ‘hothead’ or any of this crazy stuff, but there must have been that side of him.”

Hollingsworth also bought a gun at the store.

“We all could remember seeing him roaming around in here, looking at guns and stuff in the last month or so,” Reed said. “He’s kind of a spooky looking joker.”

This story was originally published November 2, 2016 at 6:37 PM with the headline "Two strangers were driving along the road. Then one shot the other."