Macon mechanic shot when car was riddled with bullets in May dies, coroner says

A Macon mechanic who was shot while driving through a Unionville neighborhood late one night in May died of his wound over the weekend at a local hospital, officials said.

The victim, Phillip E. Wynes, 67, died Saturday evening, four months after the shooting from which he never recovered.

He was wounded May 19 in an apparent barrage of gunfire along Bailey Avenue, which runs between Napier Avenue and Columbus Road about half a mile west of Pio Nono Avenue.

Investigators later found 45 spent shell casings in the street there.

Minutes after the 11 p.m. shooting, Wynes, 67, jumped out of his 2005 Acura TSX sedan and ran for help at the Neighborhood Grocery mart, about 300 yards away on Napier.

A woman buying cigarettes offered him a ride to a hospital in her truck, and on the way a Bibb County sheriff’s deputy spotted them, called an ambulance and spoke to Wynes.

“He stated his vehicle was shot at and he discovered he was shot in the left buttock,” the deputy’s May write-up noted.

Details of what, if anything, prompted the gunfire were not mentioned.

Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones said Wynes, who ran an automobile repair shop on Montpelier Avenue, had been driving home when he was shot.

“He was a mechanic — and a very good one,” Jones said. “He was a great guy. ... A professional.”

In the wake of the shooting, sheriff’s deputies found Wynes’ bullet-riddled Acura in some bushes along Bailey Avenue.

There were four bullet holes in its driver’s door and one in the driver’s-side window. Other bullets pierced the car’s hood and back window.

An incident report said there was a 2008 Chevy Impala parked on the street nearby with an AK-47 inside it.

Wynes’ death is the county’s 53rd homicide of 2022 — one shy of the modern-day high for slayings in Macon, a mark set last year.