Accused bandit shot during botched holdup at Macon restaurant has a criminal past
Late one night in the spring of 2015, a customer at Flores Seafood market on the southeast side of Fort Valley stepped outside to smoke.
The customer, Tony Ray Wainwright, who had once painted houses for a living, struck up a conversation with another guy, a stranger who had bummed a cigarette.
Wainwright and the stranger eased down to the end of the storefront, which overlooks U.S. 341.
It was there — according to details in a Fort Valley police report of the midnight episode on May 25, 2015 — that the 47-year-old Wainwright was, out of the blue, pistol-whipped and robbed by the stranger.
Wainwright later told the cops that earlier he had bought a soft drink for the stranger after the stranger argued with a store clerk about the cost of the drink.
And not long after that, police records note, while they were outside smoking, the stranger, in a flash, told Wainwright, “Give me your money, cracker.”
“Come on, dude,” Wainwright had said, “what the hell?”
“I am not (expletive) playing with you,” the stranger said.
Wainwright forked over $25 but the stranger, having seen Wainwright with cash in the store earlier, knew he had more.
“Give me all of your money or I will blow your (expletive) brains out on that wall,” the stranger told Wainwright.
Then after striking Wainwright in the left side of his head with a semiautomatic pistol and knocking him down, the stranger stole the rest of Wainwright’s money, some $120 in all, from his back pocket and ran away.
The stranger was later identified as David Deangelo Vasquez of Fort Valley.
He was charged with battery and armed robbery.
Prosecutors did not pursue the battery case and agreed to a negotiated plea for Vasquez, which resulted in his conviction the following January as a first offender on a charge of robbery by intimidation.
However, Vasquez later violated the terms of his probation when he was arrested for possession of drugs with intent to distribute. His probation was revoked and he was sent to prison in fall 2017.
He was released Oct. 7 of last year.
Eighty-two days later, on the night of Dec. 28, Vasquez allegedly went into the China Inn restaurant at 3268 Vineville Ave. in Macon and pulled a gun.
The largely takeout eatery sits near the corner of Brookdale Avenue, which crosses some railroad tracks near the Payne City neighborhood in midtown Macon.
The small but popular restaurant has been robbed in the past and on that Saturday night in late December when the police say Vasquez pulled a gun and demanded money, the restaurant’s owner drew a gun of his own.
“As Vasquez was fleeing the store,” Bibb County sheriff’s officials said in a statement, “He fired at the clerks and the clerk shot back, striking Vazquez in the right leg.”
Less than half an hour later, investigators say Vasquez, who was said to have run off before police arrived, showed up at a Macon hospital seeking treatment for a gunshot wound. He was later arrested there and taken to jail, where he has since been held without bond.
Bibb Sheriff David Davis described repeat offenders as a continual burden for law enforcement agencies.
Davis said Tuesday, as an example, that of the 917 inmates in the county jail, 82% had been there before.
Though many have yet to have their cases heard, Davis said, “It’s almost like ... some people become doctors, lawyers, bus drivers, store clerks, and others become robbers and thieves.”
He said it can be hard to fathom “how somebody can be out of jail only a month or two and essentially go back for the same thing they went in for before. ... It’s a vexing problem we see all too often.”
Bibb District Attorney David Cooke said programs like the local school-justice partnership and other reforms can help stop the cycle of recidivism. Halting criminal behavior early on, he said, is far easier than trying to mend “broken adults.”
“Once somebody goes down the wrong road,” Cooke said, “it’s hard to turn it around.”
This story was originally published January 7, 2020 at 4:33 PM.