Apparent murder-suicide in east Macon puts Bibb’s 2020 homicide toll at record high
The shooting deaths of a man and woman discovered Friday morning in a patch of woods in east Macon — victims, officials said, of an apparent murder-suicide — put Bibb County’s homicide toll at 44 for the year.
The grim tally eclipses the record 43 homicides here countywide in 1992 and marks 2020 as Bibb’s deadliest in modern times.
Details were not immediately known, but Friday’s homicide victim was found shot dead along with the body of her apparent assailant about 10 a.m. at the southeastern edge of east Macon’s King’s Park subdivision.
The area lies just north of the intersection of Irwinton and Jeffersonville roads, a few miles east of the Indian Mounds.
The dead pair, identified as Sidney Bishop, 31, and Diamond Purvis, 19, were boyfriend and girlfriend, Bibb Coroner Leon Jones said.
Sheriff’s officials said in a statement that a man walking found the bodies on a trail between King’s Park and nearby Hitchcock Road.
“It appears at this time that the male victim had shot the female once and then shot himself,” the sheriff’s statement said.
Jones, the coroner, said the two may have recently moved to a house at 3522 Kings Court, adding that neighbors said they “stayed to themselves.”
A triple-slaying over the weekend happened less than two miles from Friday’s apparent crime scene, an episode that raised the county’s annual death toll to 43.
This story was originally published November 13, 2020 at 1:26 PM.