Macon's latest homicides spur community gathering

In the glow of a festive green light bulb Thursday night, Bibb County sheriff's investigators discussed evidence in a fatal shooting at Pine Ridge Apartments.

A Christmas tree stood in the center of a picture window in the upper floor of Unit F at 1960 Clinton Road, where 23-year-old Jarvis West was shot to death just before 6 p.m.

Bibb County sheriff's Lt. Randy Gonzalez said there was nothing new to release in the case Friday, and no one had been arrested.

Unlike Sunday night's killing of Ta'Shuntis Roberts that officers linked to gang violence, Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones said it was his understanding that West was killed in a domestic dispute.

Someone near the apartments where West was killed reported hearing three gunshots. A sheriff's report released Friday afternoon said West had been shot three times, once in his chest and twice in his abdomen.

A deputy at the scene reported that when he arrived, a 29-year-old woman said to be the mother of West's child was sitting there crying as rescuers tried to revive West using CPR.

The sheriff's report doesn't mention what might have prompted the shooting.

In Sunday night's slaying on Macon's southwest side, Ta'Shuntis Roberts was said to be an innocent shooting victim.

Killed in her Bloomfield home on Lindwood Drive, her death may have sparked another shooting four hours later on Alfred Drive, about two miles away from Roberts' home. No one was injured in that episode.

But it was too close for the pastor of Grace Corner Church, Antonie Walker.

"Because of the murder last Sunday, the drive-by, by Monday night I started to revise my plans for Sunday" worship, Walker said.

Instead of a traditional Sunday-before-Christmas sermon, Walker will be preaching on violence and hosting a community fish fry at the church at 5511 Bloomfield Road, not far from Rocky Creek Road.

Free food will be served during the call-to-action Sunday from 2-4 p.m.

What started with a phone call from the superintendent of the United Methodist Church to the Bibb County Sheriff's Office has become a communitywide gathering to take a stand.

"At the end of the day, the goal of the rally is to bring the neighborhood together and to say enough is enough," Walker said. "There has to be a correction to this course."

Roberts, who was 14 years old, was a freshman at Southwest High School.

"It's depressing for someone to have a life end that hadn't even begun," Walker said.

Walker said the event will be just the beginning of an effort to stop the killing.

"We had two more killings Thursday night. I'm certain this is the right hill to plant my flag on," Walker said.

For success, the community must be engaged all year, not just when killings are in the headlines, he said.

Two and a half hours after Thursday night's shooting, Bibb deputies were called to Crystal Lake Circle, where 36-year-old Robert Paulson plunged out a window to his death in the county's 26th homicide of the year.

"And we still have two weeks to go," Jones, the county's coroner, said Friday.

Jones speculated that the weather was playing a small role in the latest violence.

"The problem is, it's too hot for the month of December," he said of temperatures reaching into the upper 70s some days. "We don't have a lot of deaths in December because it's cold and people stay in. The weather's really nice and that's the problem. People are out. That's my opinion."

Gonzalez could not confirm whether investigators suspect a domestic argument might have led to West's killing.

No motive was released, either, in the death of Paulson, who has no relatives living in Macon, Jones said.

Anyone with information in any of the cases is urged to call Macon Regional Crimestoppers at 877-68-CRIME.

To contact writer Liz Fabian, call 744-4303 and follow her on Twitter @liz_lines.

This story was originally published December 18, 2015 at 9:03 PM with the headline "Macon's latest homicides spur community gathering ."