Man accused of killing Macon woman in scooter crash had two DUIs, suspended license
While at the wheel of a car in mid-September, Rajah Akeem Smith allegedly struck a woman on a motor scooter in southeast Macon and kept on going.
For the better part of four months, investigators appear to have been unsure who had been driving the vehicle that hit the woman. It was a mystery, and it remains unclear how the alleged culprit was found.
But on Jan. 14, Bibb County sheriff’s deputies arrested Smith.
The 33-year-old was jailed on a first-degree vehicular homicide charge in the death of Pamela Irene Gunnels.
Gunnels, 59, died in early November of injuries the authorities say she sustained Sept. 14 when she was struck by a hit-and-run vehicle they described as “a red Toyota product.”
Driving with a suspended license
The fatal episode on Lynmore Avenue, not far from Broadway in southeast Macon, happened seven months to the February day in 2020 that Jones pleaded guilty in Bibb State Court to drunken-driving.
He also at the time pleaded guilty to driving with a suspended license.
That conviction came on the heels of an April 2019 conviction for drunken driving.
Just past midnight on the morning of March 3, 2019, a state trooper was on patrol along Arkwright Road in north Macon. The trooper heard a car horn honking, “blowing constantly,” according to a report the trooper wrote.
The noise was coming from a gold 2004 Honda Accord stopped at the entrance to a closed Sunoco at the intersection of Sheraton Drive. The trooper spoke to the driver, who identified himself as Smith. The trooper smelled alcohol on Smith’s breath.
“He said he let a female out and came back to look for her,” the trooper’s report went on. “He said that he had a couple of beers earlier.”
After Smith swayed and stumbled during a sobriety test, he took a breath test, which registered .203, more than twice the legal limit to drive.
Smith was charged with DUI and in late April pleaded guilty. He was sentenced in accordance with similar convictions: a day in jail, an $800 fine, a year on probation and 50 hours of community service.
Charged with DUI again
Nine months later, shortly before midnight on Jan. 24, 2020, Smith was at the wheel of the same Honda when a state trooper pulled him over for crossing the center line of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard at Mulberry Street in downtown Macon.
Smith’s breath smelled of “a very strong odor” of alcohol, his eyes were bloodshot and his speech was slurred, according to a report. The trooper noticed an open, half-empty container of Seagram’s extra-dry gin on the car’s passenger seat.
After a series of sobriety tests and a breath test, which registered .147, Smith was jailed on charges that included DUI, driving with a suspended license, no proof of insurance, failure to maintain lane and open container.
A few weeks later, on Feb. 14, Smith pleaded guilty to two of the charges, DUI and driving with a suspended license. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail, fined $1,500, ordered not to drive or drink alcohol and placed on probation for a year.
Seven months later — 213 days — Gunnels was fatally injured.