MACON — Three people were shot to death and six others were wounded in gunfire outside a bar on this city’s west side early Sunday, according to officials, who said the incident did not appear to be a random attack.
As of midday Sunday, it was not clear how many shooters there were or what prompted the midnight barrage, which happened in a parking lot and along a sidewalk outside the Midtown Daiquiri Bar and Grill.
Bibb County sheriff’s officials have not said whether they have identified a suspect or suspects. But Sheriff David Davis said on Sunday afternoon that the shooting might have been gang-related.
“One of the stories we’re hearing does have some gang nexus to it or some gang involvement,” Davis said. “But as far as (a shooter or shooters) specifically targeting individuals, we don’t have anything to confirm that.”
Investigators were believed to be viewing security-camera footage from the scene and, possibly, from law enforcement cameras at intersections in the area to identify a suspect or automobiles those involved were riding in.
“It’s a winnowing-out process right now,” the sheriff said. “These things are tragic and this seems to be an isolated incident involving people who had been together at that club. I don’t think it’s a situation where somebody came by and just randomly started shooting.”
No fewer than 50 spent shell casings littered the scene, which stretched into the lot of a dental office next door in a business district along Log Cabin Drive, a main north-south thoroughfare about a mile east of I-475.
Bibb Coroner Leon Jones said the three people killed were men, all from Macon: Javonta Faulks, 32; Jedarrius Meadows Jr., 28; and Javarsia Meadows, 21.
Jones said the six surviving victims were taken to a city hospital. As of about 2:30 a.m., one of those victims was in surgery and the other five were being treated in the hospital’s emergency room, the coroner said.
Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.
Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.
In an update on the survivors’ conditions shortly before 3 p.m. Sunday, Jones noted that two of the wounded, both of them men, were in critical condition. One of them was a 26-year-old with gunshot wounds to the chest and arm. The other, a 32-year-old, suffered bullet wounds in both legs.
Four other victims, who ranged in age from 23 to 28, were said to be in stable condition, Jones said. Of those, one was shot in his neck and cheek, and another was wounded in the side and abdomen. One more was shot in the side and arm, and another, a woman, was shot in the arm.
Credit: Joe Kovac
Credit: Joe Kovac
A 27-year-old woman who was inside the bar when the gunfire began told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she heard there was arguing outside “and then shooting started and people (who had been shot) started coming in.”
The woman, who declined to give her name, said, “Everybody had to rush to the kitchen.”
She still had blood on her hands two hours after the shooting from trying to stanch the bleeding of one victim who’d been shot in his neck.
“I tended to him, and then shots started ringing out again,” she said, adding that people were “running and ducking.”
It was about 3 a.m., nearly three hours after the bloodshed, when Sheriff Davis walked up to the sister of a deceased victim. She had shown up to see what was the matter.
The sister, soon wailing in grief, collapsed on a sidewalk. Some women with her broke down crying.
“When we first got here, it was quite crowded and quite confusing,” the sheriff told the AJC shortly after 3 a.m. “We‘re still trying to piece it all together. … We don’t know what the catalyst was that sparked this.”
Early Sunday afternoon outside a storefront church next to the bar, one parishioner leaving the morning’s service said she was aware of the shooting some 12 hours prior but still showed up to worship.
“It’s very difficult to believe that this kind of thing keeps happening in our area,” said Rashida Whitby, 48. “It’s disappointing and it’s heartbreaking.”
Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.
Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.
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