A ‘surreal’ and ‘perfect’ setting as memorial for slain Macon teen unfolds in city park
The teenage boy’s casket stood alone in the summer sun.
It was Monday morning, not yet 10 o’clock.
A few dozen or so mourners, the boy’s mother among them, were in a funeral procession on their way to the boy’s memorial service.
For now, his soft-blue-and-gray casket beamed in the daylight. It sat beside a reflecting pool at the bottom of a hillside in Macon’s Washington Park.
Devaun Idris Patton, who had been shot to death in what police have described only as “an altercation” outside a Family Dollar store 10 days earlier, was 16 years old.
“A loving person,” a cousin would call him.
Patton’s death came a little over two months shy of what would have been his 17th birthday.
The shooting happened after 8 p.m. on a Friday, in the curve at the western terminus of Rocky Creek Road. A 17-year-old boy has since been charged with murder, but details in a preliminary sheriff’s report are minimal — just that when a cop arrived the evening of July 17 he saw a man “applying pressure to the abdomen” of the dying Patton.
The ages of three witnesses were also listed: 13, 14 and 15.
Ordinarily the memorial service would have been graveside, but Patton will be buried later in Oklahoma where his family has connections. The outdoor venue in the park allowed space for social distancing amid the coronavirus pandemic, and it also lent a reverence to the occasion.
Even as traffic droned past on College Street, and as landscapers could be heard trimming grass in the distance, the park enveloped a calm.
The shade of twin magnolia trees didn’t quite reach the blue funeral tents on the park lawn as 10 a.m. tolled on a distant church bell.
Patton’s casket was opened.
Relatives and loved ones, in small groups, paid their respects.
Then a man at a podium spoke of Patton’s death — “this tragic event” — and how it “leaves us scratching our heads.”
One of the main speakers at the 20-minute service was the Rev. Christopher E. Cabiness.
Cabiness is a Macon preacher who has joined forces with a host of others to help police find ways to curtail violence.
He invoked a theatrical analogy to help make sense of Patton’s death. Cabiness mentioned Netflix and genres of drama and violence and how those in the nonfiction world, where “God is the executive producer,” are not always treated to happy endings.
But in time, he said, we can be at peace with heartbreaking ones.
“The same God that was there when Devaun took his last breath,” Cabiness said, “is the same God that is here with us today.”
Cabiness would later say privately that the outdoor ceremony was a “surreal” sign of our times in days affected by a worldwide contagion and, more locally, an epidemic of violence.
Patton’s slaying a week and a half ago was Macon’s 32nd homicide of the year as the city draws closer to its modern all-time homicide count of 43 recorded in 1992.
“This setting, literally, was perfect,” Cabiness said of the scene, which is more commonly used for weddings or musical events. “I think the tranquil sound of the waters allowed it to be more peaceful and calming. This was a perfect location.”