Second teen arrested and charged with murder in Macon’s latest homicide

Two 17-year-olds dressed in orange jumpsuits sat together in court Wednesday listening to the murder charges against them.

Less than 24 hours after Macon’s latest homicide, Tajah Deshun Coleman and Ja’Reyse Detrez Pollard were handcuffed and in custody in connection to the death of 17-year-old Pedro Garcia, who was fatally shot Monday night at 696 Villa Crest Ave.

At about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, members of the Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force and Bibb County sheriff’s deputies arrested Coleman, who witnesses say shot Garcia in the chest, according to his arrest warrant.

Coleman’s arrest came about six hours after Pollard was arrested at about 11 a.m. Tuesday at Pendleton Homes, which is a few blocks away from where Garcia was killed.

Pollard, who lives at Cherry Tree Hill Apartments on Old Clinton Road, according to jail records, is accused of giving the gun to Coleman and willfully participating in the crime, according to his arrest warrant.

In a Tuesday afternoon press conference addressing this summer’s violence, Bibb County Sheriff David Davis said Garcia may have been shot during a robbery on the residential street across Houston Avenue from the entrance to the public housing neighborhood.

Davis said the “troubling trend” of violence among local youth is not gang-on-gang, but more of “violent score-settling.”

The sheriff pleaded with the community to “reach out into some of these families, and make a difference in their lives and do something so that these 17-year-olds are not walking up and down the street carrying firearms and settling some petty score with violence.”

Investigators have been “connecting the dots” and finding links in some of the recent homicides.

Facebook profiles that appear to have been created by Pollard and Coleman have tributes to Leonard Spivey Jr., who was gunned down in the Chick-fil-A at 3745 Bloomfield Road on Labor Day.

Spivey allegedly shot his accused killer, Julian Kongquee, last October, sheriff’s deputies say.

The two young men reportedly with Spivey at the time of last fall’s shooting, Jeremy Jerome Kendrick, 17, and Arie Calloway, 16, are accused of shooting and killing two store clerks in apparent armed robberies: Alpeshkumar Prajapati, 36, on Aug. 14 at the Gulf Food Mart at 2893 Napier Ave. and 21-year-old Waqar Ali at Market Place No. 5 at the corner of Vineville and Holt avenues on Aug. 21.

While appearing before Bibb Magistrate Judge Barbara Harris, Pollard and Coleman requested commitment hearings on the charges in Garcia’s death.

The hearings are expected to take place in the next couple of weeks.

Anyone with information about recent crimes is urged to call for a sheriff’s investigator at 478-751-7500 or anonymous tips can be called to Macon Regional Crimestoppers at 877-68-CRIME.

This story was originally published September 19, 2018 at 7:25 AM.