‘We’ve turned this city into a bloodbath,’ judge tells killer in ‘pointless’ slaying
With Bibb County’s homicide rate on pace to approach or eclipse the modern-day record, a Macon judge on Friday lectured a just-convicted killer with a message that was perhaps aimed more at prospective violent criminals than at the young man he was sentencing to life.
Moments earlier, jurors in Bibb Superior Court had found Hymetheus Malik Johnson guilty of murder in the July 15, 2016, shooting death of Javontae Passard.
Johnson, now 23, was depressed and possibly suicidal after his girlfriend — the mother of one of his children — broke up with him. Prosecutors said Johnson had argued with and terrorized his own mother the evening of the shooting at her house off Williamson Road in southwest Macon.
Passard, a childhood friend of Johnson’s, was outside. When Passard heard the commotion, Passard told Johnson, “Don’t talk to your mother like that.”
The two young men clashed. Johnson pulled a gun and shot Passard twice in the midsection, killing him.
On Friday, Johnson was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Judge Howard Z. Simms peered down from the bench at Johnson and mentioned Macon’s record pace for slayings this year. There have already been 21 homicides. There were 43 countywide in 1992, the most in at least half a century here.
Then the judge delivered a speech that summed up his frustration.
“This is just another in … it seems like a never-ending string of senseless, useless, pointless, idiotic killings,” Simms said. “I mean, this town is covered up with them. You pick up a newspaper, it seems like every other day somebody else has gotten shot around here. For nothing.”
Simms told Johnson that “whether you like it or not, you’re a part of that,” that Passard didn’t have to die.
“And you don’t need to be going to the penitentiary for life,” the judge added, “but you are.”
Simms wasn’t finished.
“It happens over and over and over and over,” he said. “Funeral homes in this town buy caskets by the truckload. It doesn’t seem like any of them get very old before we need them to bury another kid. The ones doing the shooting are kids. The ones getting shot are kids. I don’t know how to stop it. I can stop you. But tomorrow there’ll be another guy standing [here]. We’ve turned this city into a bloodbath. For no reason. It gets really depressing, the view from this side of this bench. Because what I see every day is dead kids and kids that are going to prison for a long, long, long time. And you’re another one.”
Johnson told the judge that he hadn’t set out to kill Passard.
“I want to apologize,” Johnson said, “for that whole situation. ... It was never my intention to harm him.”
“Well,” Simms replied, “you brought the gun. You didn’t need to.”
This story was originally published June 22, 2018 at 4:26 PM with the headline "‘We’ve turned this city into a bloodbath,’ judge tells killer in ‘pointless’ slaying."