Southside Posse linked to May triple killing

Macon men in bulletproof vests who dubbed themselves the Southside Posse were the bandits in a late-May shootout that left three dead, a Bibb County sheriff’s investigator testified Friday.

At a commitment hearing for one of the men, Vincent “White Boy” Lewis, the investigator told how the alleged gunmen conspired to rob a man and woman in a car on Fairburn Avenue May 29.

But the robbery spiraled into a 3:30 a.m. hail of bullets. The man and woman in the car were killed, as was one of the robbers, who was shot when the woman in the car opened fire with a 9mm pistol, authorities have said.

Lewis, 36, who at the end of Friday’s hearing was bound over to Bibb Superior Court, is charged with three counts of felony murder and one count of aggravated assault.

He and two other men in the case are in the Bibb jail, all on similar charges. A fourth suspect in the slayings, Lewis “Bear” Cheney, 30, remained at large Friday.

Investigators have said Cheney planned the caper but didn’t ride along on the failed stickup.

The alleged holdup man who was fatally wounded, Terrance “Heavy D” Dent, 25, was driven across town afterward by his posse mates and dropped off at 688 Grenada Terrace, at Lewis’ mother’s house, authorities have said.

At Friday’s hearing, where Lewis was formally told of the allegations against him, Bibb investigator Antonio Harris testified that Lewis and the other men picked out their targets at a Bloomfield Drive sports lounge.

The victims, Arika Jarrell, 23, and Ralph Heard, 32, left the lounge, Wings Cafe, and drove to her house on Fairburn, just south of Napier Avenue near Log Cabin Drive.

Investigator Harris said Cheney knew where Jarrell lived and “that she always carried a large sum of money.”

Harris added that “Lewis and his posse” were “known throughout the southside community (for) robbing people.”

The investigator said the alleged stickup crew had been driving around Macon in Lewis’ mother’s silver Dodge Durango, “frequenting different nightclubs” the night of the attack.

Harris said the posse gathered outside some Bloomfield Drive apartments near the sports lounge about 3:15 a.m.

A surveillance camera at the Sandy Springs apartment complex apparently captured video of the bandits getting out of the Durango there.

They “lifted the trunk of the vehicle, changed clothes, grabbed bulletproof vests, guns and in the process, one of those guns in particular was an assault rifle,” Harris said.

Spent shell casings from such a rifle were later found at the Fairburn Avenue scene, and the same kind of ammunition also turned up in Lewis’ mother’s Durango, Harris said.

Contact writer Joe Kovac Jr. at 744-4397.

This story was originally published June 27, 2014 at 6:44 PM with the headline "Southside Posse linked to May triple killing ."