Macon’s latest homicide victim was key witness in jailhouse shank attack on inmate
A Macon man who was shot to death last week witnessed an attack on an inmate in the Bibb County jail last spring.
Deuntay Lashavi Hicks, 21, died at the scene of Friday’s shooting after suffering multiple gunshot wounds in a doorway at The Woods apartments at 4017 Napier Ave.
No known arrests have been made and investigators, if they know of further developments, have not divulged what may have prompted the 11:30 a.m. shooting. Nor have they commented publicly on whether Hicks’ slaying may somehow be related to the March 29 jail assault.
Hicks, at the time of the stabbing incident, had been in jail on drug and gun charges.
A Bibb sheriff’s spokesperson told The Telegraph by email on Monday that Hicks’ slaying on Friday remained an “active investigation and investigators are following up on all leads. Investigators stated they are aware of the incident from March 29th.”
The jailhouse stabbing involved an alleged attack on an inmate named William Guy Johnson, an armed robbery suspect who was not seriously wounded when he was confronted by half a dozen or so other inmates.
Their weapons, makeshift cutting implements or shanks, appeared to have been crafted from a crutch, according to a jailer’s report. One of the men accused in the attack accidentally stabbed one of his cohorts in the fray, but Johnson, 27, suffered what were described in the report as “superficial injuries.”
Four months later on July 23, Hicks, who according to court documents had been among the inmates around Johnson at the time of the alleged attack, pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana with intent to distribute and to a firearm-possession charge.
The accusations stemmed from an Aug. 31, 2020, traffic stop along Forest Avenue, which runs between Riverside Drive and Vineville Avenue.
A transcript from Hicks’ plea hearing noted that police who pulled him over found a 9mm pistol, a “large amount of cash” and “several large baggies” of marijuana in a backpack in the back seat of a Hyundai Elantra that Hicks was driving. The car bore no license plate.
Hicks had no prior criminal record and he was sentenced as a first-offender to five years on probation, a sentence that required strict adherence to certain guidelines, including a stipulations that he undergo drug-use evaluation.
Hicks apparently violated the rules of his sentencing because on Jan. 20, eight days before his death, a warrant was issued for his arrest.
The warrant described him as having had “excessive absences” from a court-ordered drug-rehabilitation program.
Speaking of Hicks’ death, Macon attorney Melvin Raines II, a lawyer who had represented Hicks in the marijuana and gun case, said, “It’s really sad.”
Including Hicks, four of Raines’ clients have been shot to death since early October.
Considering the fates of those clients have met on the streets, Raines on Monday seemed at a loss when talking to a Telegraph reporter by phone.
Raines could only wonder whether, as he put it, they might have been “better off staying in jail.”
This story was originally published February 1, 2022 at 12:00 AM.