Macon man who plunged nine stories to death was alive when cops arrived

A Macon man who was allegedly shoved from a high-rise apartment window, plunging nine floors to his death on the city's west side last Thursday night, was still breathing when police arrived.

An incident report made public Tuesday said that when a Bibb County sheriff's deputy pulled up at the 11-story Kenilworth Manor Apartments about 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 17, a young man flagged down the deputy.

The man, 21, pointed to an older man who was sitting on a nearby bench.

"That's him," the younger man said. "That's the one who pushed him."

"Pushed who?" the deputy asked.

The deputy then noticed the man who'd fallen.

The deputy handcuffed 60-year-old Willie Frank Stanley who was on the bench, grabbed a first-aid kit from his patrol car and ran to the victim who was on the ground, the report said.

"When I got to him," the deputy's write-up added, "he was laying face down on the ground, surrounded by a lot of glass. I noted that he was still breathing, and I was trying to get him to respond to me. About 20 seconds later, I noticed that he had stopped breathing."

The deputy wrote that he rolled the victim, Robert Paulson, 36, onto his back and began chest compressions, trying to save Paulson's life.

But Paulson died on the ground behind the apartments there on Crystal Lake Circle, below Eisenhower Parkway off Chambers Road, just east of Interstate 475.

The incident report doesn't mention anything that led to Paulson's fatal fall, just that the emergency was sent out by dispatchers as "an unarmed robbery of a person."

Stanley, later charged with murder, and Paulson both lived at the apartments.

To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397.

This story was originally published December 22, 2015 at 5:23 PM with the headline "Macon man who plunged nine stories to death was alive when cops arrived ."