Homicide strikes twice in the same family, some with criminal pasts
A Macon family is mourning the second homicide in their family in less than two weeks.
Bibb County sheriff’s investigators are exploring any possible links in the deaths of 18-year-old Leonard Kendrick Spivey Jr. and his 57-year-old grandmother Ellen Sandifer.
Monday afternoon, Spivey was gunned down inside the Chick-fil-A on Bloomfield Road as he fled a fight involving several people outside the drive-thru restaurant across from Macon Mall, according to Bibb County sheriff’s deputies.
The man now accused of killing Spivey, 18-year-old Julian Charles Kongquee, was shot last October at Westminster Apartments on North Atwood Drive along with another man.
It is not immediately known whether last fall’s shooting has anything to do with this case. The Telegraph has sent an inquiry to the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office about possible links.
Kongquee, who also goes by “Ju Ju,” initially was picked up for questioning after calling for an ambulance to treat a cut on his elbow that was reportedly suffered while fighting with Spivey in the restaurant parking lot.
An arrest warrant alleges that Kongquee followed Spivey into the eatery after a fight and shot him several times. Spivey died at the scene.
Early Tuesday afternoon, Kongquee went before Bibb County Magistrate Judge Valencia Jones and requested a commitment hearing that is set to take place in two weeks.
Friends and relatives who gathered at a house a few miles west of the Chick-fil-A on Tuesday evening told a reporter they did not want to talk about Spivey.
Spivey graduated from Westside High School in May.
The principal there, Julia Daniely, was unable to respond to an email from The Telegraph. However, she posted on Facebook that her “heart is heavy.”
“No words,” Daniely wrote of Spivey in a public post Monday. “He was determined to graduate no matter what. ... Students, let God handle what has happened. Vengeance is mine saith the Lord.”
Hours before he was shot to death about 3 p.m., Spivey posted on Facebook a picture of himself video chatting with Jeremy Jerome Kendrick, who was clad in an orange jumpsuit inside the Bibb County Jail.
Kendrick, 17, and 16-year-old Arie Calloway were arrested last week. Both are charged with two murders and two armed robberies in the fatal stickups that left two store clerks dead last month.
Spivey had a 2016 smash and grab burglary case pending in Bibb Superior Court after pleading not guilty on Aug. 7 of this year.
On Aug. 22, almost two weeks before Spivey was slain, his grandmother was beaten to death inside her home at 1082 Triple Hill Drive.
At the same house in 2007, Sandifer and her son, Leonard Kendrick Spivey Sr., were arrested on drug charges.
Officers confiscated $2,000 in crack cocaine, ecstasy, prescription pain pills, two semi-automatic pistols, a sawed off shotgun and an AK-47 rifle, according to court records.
In October of 2008, Spivey Sr. pleaded guilty to cocaine possession, and a charge of possession with intent to distribute was dropped under the agreement. He was sentenced to 12 years concurrent with a probation revocation on other charges of possession with intent to distribute cocaine from 2000, according to court and prison records.
Spivey Sr. was released from prison in October 2010, but was arrested again in March 2014 for cocaine with the intent to distribute. He pleaded not guilty in February 2016 before failing to appear for the trial in June of that year.
In October 2008, Sandifer pleaded guilty to possession of methamphetamine and was sentenced to three years probation, according to Bibb Superior Court records.