Teens slain at Houston Avenue store were Macon’s 9th, 10th homicide victims in 32 days
A surge in deadly gun violence in Macon during the past month has thrust the city’s homicide rate onto a record pace for the third straight year.
The latest slayings, on Monday night, saw two young men, both 19, shot and killed at a corner store on Houston Avenue.
The victims, Roderick A. Felton and Braxton Cole, were inside the Friends Food Mart at the corner of Heard Avenue near Pendleton Homes when they were fatally wounded, officials said. Another victim injured in the shootings, Deroderick Collins, 23, was being treated at a local hospital.
It was not immediately clear what prompted the gunfire, but Bibb County sheriff’s officials said in a statement on Tuesday that Felton and Cole were involved in a confrontation with one another.
The statement noted that investigators had examined footage from the store’s security cameras and seen that Cole had “approached” Felton in the parking lot and followed him inside the store.
“Cole exchanged words with Felton before displayed a firearm,” the statement said. “After Cole pulled his firearm and (fired) at Felton ... Felton pulled his own firearm and fired back at Cole. Both Cole and Felton exchanged gunfire, striking each other and Deroderick Collins, who was a bystander in the store.”
Another shooting in the store’s parking lot on May 9 claimed the life of a 16-year-old boy, an incident that led to an involuntary manslaughter charge.
The deaths of Felton and Cole were Macon’s 28th and 29th homicides of the year. Their slayings came amid a roughly 48-hour span here that saw eight people shot, three of them fatally, in three separate episodes.
In 2021, a year when Macon recorded a modern-day high 54 homicides, the 29th killing did not happen until July 11.
In 2020, there were 51 homicides countywide, the most tallied here since there were 43 in 1992.
Monday night’s shooting deaths were the ninth and tenth such deaths in Bibb County since May 5.
This story was originally published June 7, 2022 at 11:48 AM.