Georgia man killed in police standoff was part of Tinder date robbery in Macon, cops say
A dating-app ruse involving a sexual rendezvous at a Macon motel last month later led cops to a pair of suspects near Byron, one of whom was shot and killed by police after an hourslong standoff.
The man shot to death, Kevin Mark Soles Jr., was described as having been the armed muscle in a Nov. 2 Tinder-meetup ploy, a Bibb County sheriff’s deputy said Wednesday at a hearing for a young woman accused of orchestrating the sex-turned-stickup scam.
Soles, 37, was killed two weeks later on the night of Nov. 17 in neighboring Crawford County, not far from Byron, after the police there went to a home on Jordan Road to arrest him after they received a tip that he and the young woman in the alleged Tinder sham were holed up there.
Testimony at a probable cause hearing on Wednesday in Bibb County Magistrate Court for Soles’ alleged accomplice — 20-year-old Hayle Nicole Kennedy, of Dublin — revealed details not yet made public about what led investigators to suspect Soles.
Bibb sheriff’s deputy Peggy Newman testified at the hearing that on Nov. 2 she answered a call about an armed robbery at the Discovery Inn on Chambers Road. The motel is near the Interstate 475 interchange at Eisenhower Parkway in a corridor that is home to several discount lodgings that have long been plagued by drug-dealing and prostitution.
‘Fearing for his life’
The supposed victim of the robbery said he met Kennedy on the Tinder app, where she was known by the screen name “Phoenix.” The man had then gone to Room 204 at the motel to meet Kennedy, Newman said.
“They were conversing and about to get into a sexual act,” Newman testified, when Kennedy sent someone a text message and, seconds later, after a “loud knock” on the door, Kennedy opened the door and two gunmen burst inside.
The deputy said the men — one of whom was later identified as Soles and a second who has not been found — forced the unsuspecting victim to send $500 to Kennedy via Cash App. The gunmen, along with Kennedy, were said to have then stolen the key to the victim’s truck and taken off in the truck.
The bandits, Newman testified, left the victim in the room, “in the bathtub fearing for his life.”
The deputy said the victim later identified Kennedy from a Crimestoppers photograph.
Newman said the victim mentioned Kennedy having a tattoo on her face — which she does, a half-dollar-size inking on her forehead that is centered between her eyebrows.
After a lookout was posted for the truck, cops near Byron spotted it and gave chase, but whoever was inside got away.
Fifteen days later, a tipster informed the authorities that Kennedy and Soles were at staying at a house on Jordan Road, not far from where the victim’s truck was ditched.
When the police went to arrest the pair, Kennedy was taken into custody but Soles bolted and was later shot to death after a standoff.
Fatal shooting in the woods
Upon hearing Newman’s testimony in court Wednesday about Soles’ demise, Kennedy broke down sobbing.
Soles, who according to his obituary was from Jones County, went by the nicknames “Solo” and “Bubba.”
“He was a construction worker by trade and a very talented tattoo artist,” the obituary noted.
In court on Wednesday, Newman mentioned that Kennedy had “orchestrated this whole thing by her admission” in recorded conversations both from jail and with the police as she spoke to a hostage negotiator around the time Soles was fatally shot.
In the wake of Soles’ death, the Telegraph reported that the GBI had said in a statement that on Nov. 17 when deputies went to arrest Soles and Kennedy at 455 Jordan Road — about five miles west of Interstate 75 — that Soles darted into some woods and for a while eluded the cops.
At some point, Soles was “located in the woods and officers saw he had a gun in his hand,” the statement added.
The officers were then said to have spent “the next several hours” trying to “negotiate with Soles to surrender.”
The GBI’s account of what followed said that “officers exhausted several means to take Soles into custody,” efforts that included firing less-lethal “rounds at him to gain control and place him under arrest.”
The statement went on to say that “during the time officers were attempting to arrest Soles” that he “pointed his gun at officers” and “that resulted in officers shooting Soles.”
It remains unclear how many officers fired as does which law enforcement agencies those officers worked for.
Information from Telegraph archives was used in this report.