Bibb County’s homicide toll hits all-time high as Macon man is found shot dead in car

A Macon shooting death early Saturday on Napier Avenue east of Pio Nono Avenue left a man dead inside a car, marking Bibb County’s 52nd violence-related death of the year.

The violent-death toll for the year surpasses the county’s modern-day record total of 51 such deaths was set last year.

Saturday’s killing was discovered just before 7 a.m. outside a house at 2412 Napier Ave., a block west of Central High School, the authorities said.

The victim, Roderick Reddick, 31, was pronounced dead at the scene at the intersection of Napier and Birch Street, where he was shot. Circumstances that led to the shooting were not immediately known.

Statistics compiled by The Telegraph indicate that Reddick’s slaying was the county’s 45th of the year that either has or was likely to result in murder charges. In essence, cases that fit the common perception of a foul-play killing.

The broader “homicide” total of 52 includes 48 shooting deaths.

Two of the 52 deaths resulted in involuntary manslaughter charges and two others were believed to have been deemed self-defense shootings.

Another death came as a result of a child playing with a gun, a child whose grandmother was later charged with tampering with evidence; and another case involved a man said to have shot and killed his wife before then killing himself.

The 52 deaths in The Telegraph’s countywide total also include a pair of killings that happened inside jails or prisons: the stabbing death of Bibb sheriff’s deputy Christopher Wilson Knight in April, and, in July, the stabbing death of an inmate at Central State Prison on Fulton Mill Road.

The Telegraph’s homicide figures do not include vehicular homicides or incidents in which pedestrians were struck by cars.