Two dead in pair of Friday shootings as Macon records its 50th violent homicide of year
Two men were shot to death in Macon on Friday night in separate incidents, Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones said.
The slayings were the county’s third and fourth of November, and the ninth and tenth violent homicides in the past 42 days.
The county’s death toll for the year now stands at 50 violent homicides, of which 42 have or are likely to be categorized as murders.
Friday night’s first killing happened just after 7 p.m. in the 1200 block of Rice Place, which runs south of Napier Avenue about three-quarters of a mile west of Pio Nono Avenue, Jones said. The victim in that shooting, 44-year-old Christopher James Smith, of Macon, was pronounced dead about half an hour later at a city hospital, the coroner said.
Bibb County sheriff’s officials later said in a statement that the man was in an automobile when he was shot in his upper body.
The second shooting victim, Montaveous Raines Jr., 18, of Macon, was fatally wounded about an hour later near a church in the 700 block of Greentree Parkway, just west of Interstate 475 on the eastern edge of the Lake Wildwood subdivision, Jones said.
The coroner said Raines suffered multiple gunshot wounds.
According to a statement late Friday from sheriff’s officials, Raines was shot and killed shortly after 8 p.m.
“There is no information on the suspect” or what prompted the incident, the statement noted.
Friday’s bloodshed leaves the county one violent death shy of its modern-day-high for a single year of 51 homicide victims countywide, a figure set in 2020.
This story was originally published November 19, 2021 at 10:00 PM.