3 dead, 2 critically wounded in rash of weekend shootings as Macon’s homicide toll swells
Three people were shot to death and four others were wounded — two critically — in four separate shootings in Macon during a 54-hour span that began Friday night and stretched into late Sunday, officials said.
The three slayings are but the third, fourth and fifth killings that appear to be murders to have happened here since late July.
As of midday Monday, Bibb County’s violent-homicide toll stood at 43. Of those 43 deaths, 36 appear to be victims in incidents that have resulted in or are likely to lead to murder charges.
The weekend’s first shooting death happened at about 6 p.m. Friday when 31-year-old Joshua Griffin was found shot dead in the roadway in the 4000 block of Emory Drive. The street runs west of Houston Avenue in a southside neighborhood just east of Interstate 75 and north of Rocky Creek Road.
About five hours later, two other men died after what sheriff’s officials described as “a fatal shooting incident” on Grier Street, which lies a block east of Rogers Avenue between Ingleside and Vineville avenues.
One of the victims in that shooting, Aquanis Keshawn Howard, 21, was taken to a nearby hospital but died there. Meanwhile at the scene, sheriff’s deputies found a second victim, Jeremy Beebee, 26, dead at the wheel of a Volvo SUV that had struck a utility pole.
“Beebee was also fatally wounded” by gunfire, sheriff’s officials said in a statement. What may have prompted the shooting was not immediately clear.
On Sunday, shortly before 10 p.m., three men were shot in a backyard on Cherry Avenue, which runs north of Montpelier Avenue and Columbus Road on the north side of Macon’s Unionville neighborhood, east of Pio Nono Avenue.
One of the men shot, Percy Welch Jr., 46, was on life support Monday at the Medical Center of Central Georgia, Coroner Leon Jones said.
About two hours later, just after 11:30 p.m., another gunshot victim was found about half a mile to the northeast near the intersection of Pio Nono and Napier avenues.
That shooting left 37-year-old Kevin Jantae Watson seriously wounded.
Deputies found Watson “beside his vehicle with a gunshot wound,” sheriff’s officials said.
Watson was said to be in critical condition on Monday at the Medical Center.