Guns in shootings that wounded 12 may have been rigged to fire automatically
MACON — Four people have been charged thus far in connection with a barrage of midnight gunfire that wounded a dozen teenagers early Sunday at an impromptu birthday gathering at a local park.
Some of the guns may have been rigged to fire automatically, potentially contributing to the number of people injured, Bibb County Sheriff David Davis told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday.
One of the suspects had been set to stand trial next month for a 2023 shooting here.
The first arrests came less than 48 hours after the shootings in Carolyn Crayton Park where dozens of people, many of them high school students, had convened sometime around midnight Saturday.
Those wounded ranged in age from 17 to 19. Two of the victims were critically injured and three of the wounded were Northeast High School football players, officials have said.
On Monday two men were jailed, David Vincent Pitts, 24, and Jaquez Antonio Bailey, 20, who were being held without bond Tuesday at the Bibb jail. Bailey was charged with 12 counts of aggravated assault and Pitts faces a dozen counts of aggravated assault as a party to a crime.
According to court records, Pitts was scheduled to go on trial next month in Bibb Superior Court in connection with a July 2023 shooting that wounded a 62-year-old woman at a Macon motel. Pitts had been free on $30,000 bond in that case for more than three years.
On Tuesday, a pair of teenagers were arrested in the park shooting. Lantonio R. Hill Jr., 17, and Justin Amarion Green, 19, were also charged with 12 counts of aggravated assault.
The shooting early Sunday was recorded by a security camera mounted on a nearby building overlooking the parking lot of Luther Williams Field, a historic minor league baseball park that is now home to the collegiate-summer-league Macon Bacon. Black-and-white footage of the fusillade also includes audio that sounds like a military firefight.
“There is some indication that some of these weapons may have been manipulated or altered to shoot fully auto,” Davis, Bibb’s sheriff, told the AJC.
He said it was yet to be determined what kinds of guns were involved, but it was clear from the video footage that multiple weapons were fired. The sheriff said Sunday that gunfire erupted shortly after a group of people wheeled up and apparently crashed the impromptu party.
Davis said the sound of the recorded gunfire and “some evidence that we have indicates that some of the weapons may have been converted” to shoot like machine guns. He declined to elaborate.