Macon teen who held Bibb commissioner at gunpoint in home invasion is sent to prison
A young man who in June 2019 broke into the home of a Macon-Bibb County commissioner, woke the commissioner and held him at gunpoint while demanding money was sentenced this week in connection with a stickup at a food truck.
Xavier Matthew Lewis, who was 18 at the time of the crimes, was sentenced Monday in Bibb Superior Court after pleading guilty to aggravated assault charges in a May 2019 shooting incident at Lou’s Grub Shack, a food truck parked in a vacant lot near the old Chuck E. Cheese pizza emporium.
In July, Lewis, now 21, pleaded guilty to burglary and other charges in connection with the June 12, 2019, home invasion on Canterbury Road in which Commissioner Virgil Watkins Jr. was awakened by an intruder.
Watkins fought off the attacker, who ran away after a struggle over the intruder’s pistol. Lewis at the time had a two-toned hairdo — half blond, half black — and when he was caught nearby, the distinctive hairstyle later helped link him to the food-truck holdup, which was recorded by a surveillance camera.
In court Monday, Lewis was sentenced to serve 15 years in prison for his role in the stickup try at Lou’s Grub Shack, an incident in which shots were fired but no one was wounded. His sentence will run concurrently with his conviction in the break-in at the commissioner’s home.
Lewis told Judge Howard Z. Simms that he had been on probation for simple battery at the time of the crimes and that he couldn’t get a job. Lewis said the mother of his child was pregnant and that he “had to do something” to make ends meet.
“I apologize for everything I did,” Lewis said, adding, “I already talked to God, and when I come home (from prison) this time ... I promise [I’m not going to] do it again. You’ve got my word.”