Macon man told years ago to ‘stay away’ from guns pleads guilty to manslaughter
A Bibb County man was recently sentenced to prison in a shooting death case from September 2022.
Turquell Cone, 40, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter on Feb. 27, according to court records. He was indicted in connection to the Sept. 10, 2022, shooting death of Lester Summers .
As a result of the guilty plea, Cone’s other charges — one count of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault and one count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony — were dismissed.
Summers was shot multiple times, according to previous Telegraph reporting. He was found “between two houses in the 300 block of Grier,” Deputy Bibb County Coroner Luann Stone said at the time.
Cone will serve 15 years in prison, followed by five years of probation, according to his sentencing sheet.
However, he will receive credit for the nearly four years he was incarcerated at the Bibb County Jail. Records show he was incarcerated from Sept. 14, 2022, through Feb. 16, 2026.
Judge previously warned Cone to stay away from guns
Cone had been in and out of jail since 2011, according to previous Telegraph reporting.
He racked up multiple charges over the years, almost all being drug possession charges, court records showed. By April 2021, he was released and serving the remainder of his sentence on probation.
However, he was caught with a gun on April 25, 2021, which he wasn’t allowed to have while on probation.
Deputies found Cone at a local motel and believed he was “unresponsive,” according to court records. He was asleep and unaware that law enforcement had barged into the room.
He was found lying on a bed with a handgun beside . After deputies woke him up , Cone said he didn’t know who the gun belonged to, but acknowledged he was a convicted felon, court records showed.
“I believe Mr. Cone was at the Best Western with other individuals who had since left and had partaken in some things and fell asleep,” his defense attorney, Chloe Napier, said at a sentencing hearing for a gun possession charge on Jan. 25, 2022. “I believe he left himself in a situation where others had items and left those items, and he got himself caught with them.”
Judge Jeffery Monroe of the Macon Judicial Circuit, who sentenced him, told him to stay away from firearms, court records showed.
“If somebody is (making) a ham sandwich and serving it to you on a revolver, you run away from it,” Monroe said in the hearing. “It doesn’t matter that it belonged to Joe. Doesn’t matter that you didn’t bring it there. And doesn’t matter that it was under the seat under somebody else and you just happened to be in the car.
“You need to stay away from firearms … Mr. Cone.”
