Man shot in face at neighborhood reunion brings 'stain' on community

A night supposed to be full of fun and reminiscing ended with one man being shot in the head.

Jerlioundus Frederick Armstrong, 38, of Macon, was leaving the Fort Hill neighborhood's third annual family day reunion when he was wounded in the left side of his face just before 9:30 p.m. Sunday, according to a Bibb County sheriff's news release.

Witnesses told sheriff's deputies they heard a gunshot and saw Armstrong fall to the ground at the Rosa Jackson Recreation Center at 1211 Maynard St. in east Macon.

No one else was hurt.

Early Monday morning, about a dozen people were out cleaning up the parking lot that was littered with broken glass, beer cans and trash in the wake of the shooting.

One woman in a wide-brimmed, straw hat was talking about the gun violence as she swept up shards of broken bottles.

"It wasn't the east side," she said. "There were all sides over here. So this is what we do to clean up after ourselves."

Across the empty lot that was packed with people 12 hours earlier, Elaine Brown also was pushing a broom across the asphalt.

"We don't want no stain to be on us like this and we want to do all we can to kinda bring us back together," Brown said.

As a third-generation resident of Fort Hill, she wanted to see it cleaned up.

"I wasn't even here yesterday, but I just feel for this place," she said, after the morning sun had risen over the trees.

The ladies and a few gentleman volunteers were already hard at work before the center opened.

Tonja Green Strong was about to embark on her morning walk when she decided to get her workout cleaning up instead. She enlisted a few friends.

"We've never had this much violence before," Strong said. "We fight, we argue, but all this gun violence and they're not our people. We don't know them."

Strong said she has lived on the east side for more than 54 years.

"We felt like none of the senior citizens deserved to wake up this morning and see whatever activities we had last night," Strong said. "We're out to make sure the community looks back to where we care about it."

This is the second violent incident in the neighborhood in three days.

Friday morning, about six blocks away from the recreation center, Al'juwon Moss, 23, formerly of Paterson, New Jersey, was shot and killed just after 5:30 a.m. during a fight with Terral Gray, 34, at their place on Woolfolk Street.

Gray was arrested and charged with murder in what investigators said stemmed from a "domestic dispute."

Armstrong, Sunday night's victim, was in stable condition at a local hospital, according to the news release.

Anyone with information is urged to call for a sheriff's investigator at 478-751-7500 or phone anonymous tips to Macon Regional Crimestoppers at 877-68-CRIME.

Brown said the neighborhood, too, will heal.

"I have a love for our area and we don't want nobody to stain it up like what happened last night. We don't," she said. We're showing everybody we're going to still come together and be OK."

This story was originally published June 25, 2018 at 5:05 AM with the headline "Man shot in face at neighborhood reunion brings 'stain' on community."