After string of Bibb County slayings, coroner asks, ‘Where’s the outcry?”

Twenty people have died at the hands of others in Macon-Bibb County this year with three and a half months remaining in 2015.

Although rising murder rates have been reported in cities across the country, Bibb County’s coroner said motives here have varied.

“I don’t see a common thread,” Leon Jones said Tuesday after investigating five killings in eight days.

Two of the most recent cases are believed to have stemmed from family violence.

“It’s hard to put your hands on domestic violence,” Jones said.

Veteran homicide investigator Jimmy Barbee, who oversees the community’s “cold case” homicides, said police are limited in what they can do to stop people from killing each other.

“If I could tell if somebody’s finger was going to squeeze a trigger, I wouldn’t be behind this desk,” he said during a recent telephone interview.

Barbee remembered back to 1993 when detectives solved all 37 homicides that year.

In recent years, the murder rate has been on the decline, from 23 in 2012 to 17 in 2013 to 16 last year.

Statistics can vacillate, but what concerns Bibb County Sheriff David Davis the most is the brazen nature of some killers who fire in front of multiple witnesses.

Two off-duty deputies were in the parking lot during last week’s shooting outside Club Status.

“The fact that they’d considering doing that with deputies close by tells you something,” Davis said. “That’s what’s so tragic about this. These individuals are impulsive. ... They have no respect for authority.”

Davis is confident that investigators will catch the culprit who fatally shot 29-year-old Aquallo Davis Jr. Deputies secured an arrest warrant for 24-year-old Gregory Bernard Staten Jr.

“These mid- to late-20s individuals across the county. It’s almost like a lost generation,” Davis said.

Turning impulsively violent people around takes more than law enforcement, but a societal shift, he said.

“Typically somebody of that age at 3 a.m. would be at a job or in bed getting ready for work, not at a club creating mischief and violence,” Davis said. “This goes to a larger conversation about jobs, opportunity and all these kinds of things.”

About the only common denominator for this year’s victims is that 18 of the 20 were black.

Two white children are among this year’s homicides.

Victor Robert Carroll, a 17-month-old, was shot in the face as Ronnie William Howard allegedly was cleaning a gun. He is charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Carlene Rigby, 4, was found strangled by a cord from window blinds in her bed, but no one has been charged in her death.

Of the 18 black victims, 15 were men.

‘PRIORITY IN THE WRONG PLACE’

“Nobody’s talking about it but the coroner,” Jones said. “People seem to have their priority in the wrong place. ... Where’s the outcry?”

Jones is awaiting autopsy results on the last three victims.

Ricky Smith was shot in the chest in a domestic dispute on Macon Avenue early Saturday. His girlfriend, 45-year-old Donna Jackson, is charged with murder, although she told investigators she fired a .40-caliber handgun in self-defense.

When deputies arrived at the scene, they found Smith prostrate on the floor, with a knife under each arm, according to an incident report. Jackson told deputies that Smith had chased her into the home’s laundry room, and that she had shot him there while she was on the phone to the 911 center. She said Smith had gotten angry at her while they were out Friday night and he had threatened to “beat her up” when they got home, the report said. He had come at her with the knives, she told deputies.

Crystal Walker Roberts, 35, apparently died of blunt force trauma at a Gray Highway apartment, and investigators identified her husband, Willis Deterra Roberts, as a person of interest in the case.

Deputies found the wife face down on the floor, with her feet and hands bound, according to an incident report in the case. There were signs of a struggle inside. A relative told authorities that Roberts had been “harassing” the woman for money in recent days.

In the third homicide of the weekend, a man found the badly decomposed body of 58-year-old Sammie Williams, of Baxter Avenue, in a house on Roy Street Saturday.

Sunday, 38-year-old Russell Rogers, of Macon, was arrested driving Williams' car in Florida. After Rogers was caught with other items belong to the victim, Bibb sheriff's investigators charged Rogers with murder. They plan to bring him back to Macon, according to a Bibb County Sheriff's Office news release sent Tuesday.

In addition to looking for those responsible for this year’s unsolved homicides, there is a stack of cold cases from decades ago.

The files followed Barbee from the old Macon Police Detective Bureau to his office in the Willie C. Hill Annex Building.

“That’s my passion,” said Barbee, who now is working in property crimes before he retires at the end of the month.

“If people think because I’m leaving they’re going to be thrown in the corner, they’re wrong,” he said.

With the sheriff’s office pending move to the old Sears building still under renovation, Barbee anticipates homicide investigations -- old and new -- will have many more eyes on them.

“They’re going to have the luxury of having every investigator under the same roof,” he said.

But he believes the battle against violent behavior belongs to parents, not teachers.

“They get their learning from the house,” he said. “If momma and daddy aren’t going to do right, don’t gripe if your kids don’t do right.”

This story was originally published September 8, 2015 at 7:34 PM with the headline "After string of Bibb County slayings, coroner asks, ‘Where’s the outcry?” ."