Lizella couple was wary but kind to neighbor. Then, he attacked.

Neighbors said Bobby and Vivian Hughes were kind to the 27-year-old man who’d moved in next door to their home in Lizella a little more than a year ago.

But the couple, in their 70s, also was wary of Gavin Williams.

“They didn’t ever let him inside the house,” neighbor Charles Dewberry told The Telegraph outside his house on Moncrief Road. “I think Bobby realized (Williams) had a little something going on with him, you know. I detected that also, but I don’t ever think Bobby knew that it was to this extent.”

About 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, a woman who lives nearby called 911 to report the couple was lying in the front yard, wounded and bleeding after an apparent attack. A knife and a barbecue fork were later found nearby.

A Bibb County sheriff’s deputy arrived to find Williams, 6-feet-4 and 340-pounds, standing over 72-year-old Bobby Hughes, who sat on his front porch, bleeding from his head around his right eye.

Vivian Hughes, 70, was lying inside the house. She’d been beaten in the face and stabbed in the stomach.

Several hours later, Vivian Hughes died in a hospital operating room. Bobby Hughes was in serious condition Wednesday at Medical Center, Navicent Health.

Williams also was killed Tuesday after being shot by the SWAT team in a standoff at his house that lasted nearly three hours.

“I really want to know exactly what happened, you know,” Dewberry said of the Hughes couple. “It just puzzled me, you know, what triggered all this off.”

‘The lovingest couple’

Vivian Hughes retired from the Bibb County school system in 2003 after teaching at Southwest High School and Weaver and Bloomfield middle schools. She continued to substitute until 2014.

Bobby Hughes retired from a kaolin mining company, Dewberry said.

“They were about the lovingest couple I have ever seen,” he said. “They did so much together. ... I just couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt either one of them.”

Dewberry said the couple would always bring him ripe peaches and cantaloupe during the summertime. They enjoyed visiting small towns around Macon for lunch or dinner and just cruising around together, Dewberry said.

Cede Hughes, a former Macon resident who is a cousin of the victims, said she believes the Hugheses must have been trying to help Williams.

“They were that kind of people,” Hughes said in a phone interview from Florida. “Their marriage was like happily ever after.”

Trouble next door

After Bessie Williams died in 2015, her grandson Gavin Williams moved into her house, which is beside the Hughes home, records show.

Dewberry said he’d only spoken to Williams a couple of times since then.

“He stopped by here one day when I was in the yard,” Dewberry recalled. “I asked him at the time, I said, ‘Do you know Mr. Bobby Hughes?’ He said, ‘Yeah, he all right. He’s my road dog.’ I don’t know what that meant.”

Williams was living with a relative, who moved out about six months ago because “they just couldn’t get along,” Dewberry said.

According to incident reports from the sheriff’s office, Williams assaulted the 61-year-old relative, causing a cut and a head wound. Later in August, Williams was again charged with family violence after he hurt a 33-year-old relative, leaving scratches and causing the relative’s eye to swell.

Investigators have not said what motivated the attack on his elderly neighbors.

According to the sheriff’s office, Williams swung a liquor bottle toward a deputy who was first to arrive at the Hughes residence.

Though the deputy used a stun gun and pepper spray, Williams was undeterred as he ran back to his house and barricaded himself inside.

During a three-hour standoff, the SWAT team tried talking to Williams through a megaphone, but he didn’t respond. He also didn’t react to the tear gas for “what seemed a lengthy period of time,” the news release said.

Finally, Williams walked out the back door toward deputies, who repeatedly shouted for him to stop. Williams kept coming toward them, wielding a shiny, pointed metal object.

Miniature bean bags were fired at Williams, then Deputy Alex Rozier fired the fatal shots. Rozier is on administrative leave, as is typical when police shoot someone.

The GBI is investigating whether proper procedures were followed in the use of lethal force.

This story was originally published April 26, 2017 at 8:42 PM with the headline "Lizella couple was wary but kind to neighbor. Then, he attacked.."