Was it self defense? Video shows man firing fatal shot from Macon motel’s 2nd floor
A lawyer for a man on trial accused of murder in a 2018 shooting at a Macon motel told jurors on Wednesday that the man was being bullied and was defending himself when he fired a fatal shot down from a second-floor breezeway as the victim walked away in the motel’s parking lot.
The deadly episode unfolded on a Sunday afternoon in early May of 2018 at the Econo Lodge at the intersection of Riverside Drive and Ingleside Avenue.
The alleged killer, Rashad Marquez Mays, was staying at the motel with his girlfriend. His best friend, Tavares Lester, had been at the motel for several hours when the two men began arguing. What they were fussing about was not clear.
However, surveillance footage from the motel, which was played for jurors Wednesday morning on the first day of testimony in Mays’ trial, showed the men squaring off in a breezeway for several minutes.
Mays, who is now 29, can be seen retreating to his room for several minutes while Lester, 38, paces outside Mays’ second-floor motel room.
Mays can then be seen emerging with what prosecutors say was a .25-caliber pistol, confronting Lester as the two continue jawing. Lester, possibly deterred by the armed Mays, eventually makes his way toward a stairway and down into the parking lot in front of the motel.
In the surveillance video, Mays’ girlfriend can be seen pulling and tugging at Mays in the breezeway above, apparently trying to stop Mays as Mays fires at least one shot into the parking lot below.
Prosecutors say a single bullet struck Lester in the upper back and lodged in his heart, killing him. Lester looked to be more than 60 feet away from Mays when he was shot.
Assistant Bibb County district attorney Eric Z. Edwards said in his opening statement that the May 6, 2018, shooting was another in a spate of “senseless gun violence” that plagues Macon.
Lester’s death was the county’s 15th homicide of 2018. There have been more than 120 violent deaths here since.
For updates on this developing story, return to macon.com
This story was originally published May 26, 2021 at 1:43 PM.