‘It don’t make sense to kill somebody’: Macon’s homicides decline, but pain remains

Days after three people were slain in a barrage of bullets on Oct. 18, a caravan of jet-black SUVs wheeled into an East Macon neighborhood.

About a half-dozen plain-clothed investigators hopped out to comb Williams Street East.

The officers, in unmarked cars with license plates from counties across the state, were in search of potential witnesses or more evidence that might help shed light on what led to the violent deaths of 16-year-old Markell Bonner Jr., 27-year-old Quantayrias Townsend and 21-year-old Brandon Devonta Thomas.

At one end of the street, behind the Gray Highway Dairy Queen, a new Crimestoppers advertisement clings to a pole beneath a neighborhood watch warning sign. At the other end, near Green Place, another Crimestoppers sign is bound to a tree.

One of the signs was put up sometime last month after the body of a 42-year-old woman was found in a trash can outside an apartment on Sanford Avenue. The cause of Teasha Colbert’s death has not been publicly disclosed, but her alleged killer is reportedly her ex-boyfriend, who was captured weeks later in Atlanta, according to the sheriff’s office.

In May, on the west side of town, three men were killed and at least a half-dozen others were wounded in a spray of bullets fired from a car into the parking lot at Midtown Daiquiri Bar & Grill on Log Cabin Drive.

All told, 25 people have been killed by others in Bibb County so far this year.

The county is on track to mark the lowest number of homicides per year since 2020, when there were 48 killings amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year’s death toll is a far cry from 2022, when 70 people were killed by others in what marked the highest number of homicides in Bibb County for any year so far this century.

“I hope it don’t get up to 70 again,” Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones said, adding the volume of killings took a toll on everyone working in public safety. 

Bibb County Sheriff’s Maj. Jason Batchelor said in an email that the presence of youth gun violence in Bibb County is “deeply concerning.”

“Too many young people in our community are turning to firearms to settle disputes, and the results are tragic for everyone involved,” he said. “The Bibb County Sheriff’s Office remains committed to holding offenders accountable, but we can’t arrest our way out of this problem. Real change will take all of us — parents, educators, mentors, and community leaders — working together to reach our youth before violence becomes their answer.”

Jones said he suspects the lion’s share of deaths can be attributed to “domestic, drug and gang” issues.

“You’re no less of a man or woman to walk away from an altercation,” Jones said. “It don’t make sense to kill somebody.”

Jones said he credits the decline in part to the Macon Violence Prevention program Mayor Lester Miller launched in June 2021. County commissioners have approved several million in federal American Rescue Plan Act money specifically for the initiative, which makes grants to nonprofit organizations that aim to decrease violence.

The county used input from community surveys and meetings to inform its strategic plan. 

Earlier this month, the Macon Violence Prevention touted on its Facebook page that homicides have dropped by 45% since its inception. However, some of the programs initially funded are no longer being funded, such as the Cure Violence program. 

The program hinged on placing community members with similar life experiences in neighborhoods with individuals who are at the highest risk of committing acts of violence. It aims to change the thinking and behaviors of those individuals through building trust, coaching, and detecting and interrupting violence. The program does not partner with or involve law enforcement.

“We did a lot of conflict resolution,” said Sherman Kind, who was a trained violence interruptor for the now-defunct program based in Pleasant Hill. “I know we stopped over 20 murders just being boots on the ground.”

Kind said the program had a two-generation approach, meaning it focused on at-risk youth and their parents. He said the work felt like a mission to him.

“We would cut murders down, gun violence down, probably 70% if we would have just stayed,” Kind said, adding the funding for Cure Violence apparently dried up. “We were so engaged with them kids.”

L.J. Malone, a trained violence interrupter who worked with Cure Violence, said the nonprofit “never really got a good answer” from the county on why its funding was cut.

“We did a lot of work. We’re still doing work in the neighborhood without the money,” Malone said. “We don’t understand why there aren’t any more violence intervention models in the MVP program.”

Malone said Cure Violence was the only violence interrupter program funded in MVP, and the rest are violence prevention programs, which target a different population.

“Interruption is intervention — hands-on, working with high-risk individuals, doing mediation, and participating and working with people actively engaging in violent activities,” he said. “Violence prevention is programming that you hope curtails people who may engage in violence.” 

County spokesperson Chris Floore said the county has spent more than $21 million on MVP program grants, initiatives, equipment, personnel and more. 

“We’ve funded after school programs, camps, mentor programs, family development sessions, literacy outreach, and more,” Floore said in an email to The Melody, adding that $8 million was spent on pay raises for public safety employees, $4.5 million for high-tech cameras, $1.7 million for free mental health services and $1.65 million on violence interruption organizations. 

Floore did not answer a question about why Cure Violence is no longer funded.

A broader look

The statistics for homicides in Macon are somewhat in line with national trends in recent years.

FBI crime data shows the number of killings across the country spiked in 2020 as the pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities and forced people to stay home. Now, the number of homicides seems to be on the decline.

There have been 424 people killed in homicides in Bibb County since 2015 — and 113,175 across the country during the same timeframe.

Of the 424 in Bibb County, 71 were youths ages 19 and younger. Nationwide, the FBI reports 13,532 people ages 19 and younger were slain over the past decade.  

About 370 of the 424 killed in Bibb County between 2015-25 were Black, and 45 were white. Of the 424 victims, 65 were women. FBI stats show 60,472 of the 113,175 people killed over the past decade were Black, and 46,996 were white.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story included an incorrect age range for the 71 youth deaths over the past decade in Bibb County.