Barrage of 40-plus bullets cuts deadly path, piercing heart of downtown Macon
For one full city block and half of another, a deadly trail of midnight gunfire — more than 40 shots in all — blasted its way up Macon’s renowned Cherry Street and then down Third Street and its famed yoshino-lined park.
Where the two streets intersect, across from a historic iron fountain, a shaded resting place for downtown residents and visitors alike, at least 19 shots were fired early Friday in what the authorities said was a fight that began at or outside a nightclub.
Beginning shortly before 2:45 a.m., the bullets — possibly fired from a moving automobile — followed a path that stretched from the sidewalk in front of the Thirsty Turtle bar near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, up Cherry and then northerly on Third for half a block toward Mulberry Street.
What precipitated the barrage, which wounded six people and killed a young woman, was not immediately clear.
Even so, the pall cast by the middle-of-the-night bloodshed was palpable even at midday Friday.
Some nine hours after the gunplay, a pair of sheriff’s evidence technicians, one toting a metal detector, continued to scour sidewalks and storefronts for bullet holes, bullets, shell casings and anything that might have been in the line of fire.
Hot-orange spray-paint markings speckled the streetscape where shell casings had been found, a grim dot-to-dot map of the night’s mayhem.
A bullet pierced a window at the former Blair’s Furniture, once the venerable Joseph N. Neel’s clothier, on Cherry.
Up the way at Third Street, the brick sidewalk that angles northerly toward Mulberry, was rife with telltale-orange, shell-marking paint blotches.
For anyone who knew what had transpired in the darkness, the setting was a touch surreal. But to anyone unaware, it likely seemed an ordinary, if not balmy, fall afternoon.
It wasn’t immediately clear where the woman who died was shot. The path that the shooter or shooters took spanned nearly 600 feet. Cars were shot, buildings struck.
A couple of hours after daybreak, a pair of firefighters lugging a water hose sprayed away blood stains on the streets and sidewalks.
The gunplay’s course also passed what was until fairly recently the headquarters of NewTown Macon, whose mission in part is to transform downtown into a haven for upstart businesses.
News of the Friday’s violent episode left NewTown’s president and CEO Josh Rogers concerned.
“It’s absolutely heartbreaking and unimaginable, and it seems like an incident from a different era, you now, 25 years ago,” he said.
“It’s mind-boggling that it would happen right now.”
Rogers said nightlife was one of the first things that signaled a comeback for downtown, where more than two dozen bars and music venues have made a go of it.
Though there were not throngs of people out on Thanksgiving night, upwards of 7,000 people have been known to flock to the area’s club and bar scene on busy evenings.
“For the most part, I’ve been incredibly proud and impressed with the quality of our operators who have made sure that their patrons stay safe,” Rogers said. “I think we’ve got to hold a really, really high expectation (of safety) and deal with significant consequences when those high expectations aren’t met.”
The last similar club-related shooting, at least one on such a large scale, happened along Poplar Street below Macon City Hall in March 1993. More than 100 patrons at the now-defunct Fastrack Lounge scrambled for cover in a hail of 50 or so gunshots, one of which killed a 19-year-old man.
Rogers called Friday’s episode “so unusual and unnecessary and intolerable.”
He added, “This shouldn’t happen. ... We’ll do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t happen (again.)“