Did woman accused of shooting Macon boy in rock-hurling stir shoot someone months before?

On the eve of Elisabeth Faye Cannon’s trial in the January 2017 shooting and critical wounding of a Macon teenager during a supposed rock-throwing confrontation outside her Bloomfield home, new allegations against Cannon have surfaced in another shooting.

In a court filing last week, Bibb County prosecutors said six months to a year before Cannon used a handgun to shoot 15-year-old Vernon Marcus Jr. in the head outside her house, Cannon, “without provocation” and with a pellet rifle, shot another person — an “unknown male.”

In the filing, a notice of prosecutors’ intent to introduce evidence of past crimes that Cannon may have committed, Assistant District Attorney John Regan noted that Cannon’s daughter, Leslie, “will testify that … her mother allegedly shot (the) unknown male who was standing near the ravine next to their house.”

There was a hearing on the matter earlier this week, but as of Friday afternoon the judge in the case had yet to rule on the new allegation's admissibility.

Cannon, 48, is expected to go on trial next week. She faces charges of aggravated assault and aggravated battery in connection with a racially charged episode at her Bloomfield Drive home on the evening of Jan. 16, 2017.

Investigators said Cannon has told them she fired shots to scare people away and didn’t mean to hurt anyone. The police said Cannon had called 911 earlier that day to report that people had been throwing rocks at her house and that if they came back she would shoot them. A few hours later, Marcus was shot along a ravine in the same area where the unknown man was supposedly shot.

A teenager who was with Marcus, who is black, told the cops that Cannon, who is white, had harassed them in the past and used racial slurs toward them.

On Friday, Cannon’s lawyer, Floyd Buford, told The Telegraph, “We’ll be prepared and ready to present our case to the jury.”

That case could center on a self-defense argument akin to other states’ Stand Your Ground law, known in Georgia as “no duty to retreat,” which more or less says that someone facing a threat can, if justified, defend themselves instead of running away.

This story was originally published March 23, 2018 at 4:43 PM with the headline "Did woman accused of shooting Macon boy in rock-hurling stir shoot someone months before?."