Man shot in leg at midstate Waffle House no help to cops; tells them, ‘Do your job’

Minutes after a shooting at a south Macon Waffle House the other morning, a sheriff’s deputy found two men who had apparently sought refuge in the restaurant’s bathroom. It was just after 3 a.m.

The men had been shot but were not critically wounded.

One, shot in the left arm, was helping the other guy, who had been shot in the right leg, to his feet.

A Kel-Tec .380 pistol was on the floor.

The deputy asked the men, both in their early 30s, whose gun it was.

The man shot in the arm said it belonged to the shooter. The man did not elaborate.

The deputy asked the other victim, “Who shot you?”

“This place has cameras,” the victim replied. “Do your job.”

That account, from the moments after Wednesday’s gunfire at the 4094 Pio Nono Ave. eatery, comes from a preliminary sheriff’s report. It illustrates the investigative roadblocks that sometimes hinder police.

For whatever reason, crime victims and eyewitnesses don’t want to get involved. Even those with fresh bullet wounds.

“We’ve had them at or near death and not tell us who the suspect is,” Bibb County Sheriff David Davis said.

Officials have said the recent gunshot victims at Waffle House were part of a brawl that broke out inside the diner. That alone could explain their reluctance to help the cops.

“Some of it could be that they’re going to go back and exact some sort of street justice,” Davis said. “It’s the creed of the street, and I guess even in rivalry they don’t want to snitch on each other.”

In the wake of Wednesday’s fusillade, fear of reprisal could also be a factor.

But on Friday, a man was arrested in connection with the shooting.

“We did our job,” Davis said, referring to the gunshot victim’s terse instruction to the sheriff’s deputy in the Waffle House bathroom.

The suspect, Johntellis Montez Mathis, has in the past been linked to a havoc-wreaking street gang known as the Blacc Team.

Some of the gang’s associates launched a guns-blazing assault in December 2014 that killed three people at Wings Cafe in southwest Macon.

Mathis, 30, has an arrest record that spans more than a decade. He has faced charges that include indecent exposure, selling marijuana, aggravated assault, battery, gun theft, family violence and participating in celebratory gunfire to ring in 2012.

He was sentenced to probation for 10 years as a first offender in March 2016 for an assault that involved choking a woman the previous year.

His arrest Friday marked the 10th time he has been locked up here.

“You could say he’s been a thorn in the side of the Macon-Bibb County community,” the sheriff said.

This story was originally published September 1, 2017 at 5:01 PM with the headline "Man shot in leg at midstate Waffle House no help to cops; tells them, ‘Do your job’."