Downtown killings last weekend have Macon on pace with 2020’s record murder toll
Two shooting deaths in downtown Macon last weekend furthered a troubling trend of violent-crime-related bloodshed here, part of a worrisome toll that has seen homicide rates steadily rise in the past decade.
As of Friday, figures compiled by The Telegraph comparing slayings in 2020 and 2021 — homicides that have already or are likely to result in murder charges — put Macon at 29 such deaths for 2021.
It was not until July 29 in 2020 — in a year that would end with a modern-day high for homicides with 51 — that the county recorded its 29th murder death.
The pair of shooting deaths over the weekend, which happened early last Saturday in an episode that left two other people wounded near the intersection of Cherry Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, came as local officials and others have made much-publicized efforts to curtail violence.
While so far this year there have, by The Telegraph’s count, been 37 homicides countywide, two of the deaths have been classified as involuntary manslaughter cases.
Two other cases have been categorized as vehicular homicides. Another was declared a case of self-defense, while yet another death involved a struggle over a gun. A seventh crime-related homicide involved the apparent suicide of a man believed to have shot his wife and then killed himself. An eighth slaying involved an as-yet-uncategorized stabbing death at Central State Prison on Wednesday.
So far this year in Macon there have been 30 homicide-related gun deaths and seven killings in which a gun was not used.
The countywide homicide toll has gradually increased — with occasional annual dips — since 2011 when there were 13 slayings. There were 23 in 2012; 17 in 2013; 16 in 2014; 28 in 2015; 20 in 2016; 30 in 2017; 41 in 2018; 26 in 2019 and 51 last year. In decades past, the early 1990s saw spikes in 1991 (35 homicides) and 1992 (43 homicides, the previous modern-day record).