Georgia shooting leaves 1 dead, 6 injured at ‘shot house’ selling bootleg alcohol

MACON, Ga (AP) — A shooting that killed one man and wounded six other people took place at a “shot house” where alcohol was being sold illegally, officials in middle Georgia’s largest city said.

The shooting happened at around 1 a.m. Thursday in the same house on Macon’s south side where a person was fatally shot in January.

Bibb County sheriff’s deputies said Jawasiki Deuventa Guyton, 34, died at a hospital. Another man was critically injured, while five others are expected to recover.

In a news conference Thursday, Sheriff David Davis said an argument broke out among people gathered at the house and that one person “took a gun out and started just seemingly indiscriminately shooting.”

Davis said investigators are seeking to question someone in the shooting but didn’t name a suspect. He said there are many witnesses, but that some were hospitalized, others didn’t want to talk because they were doing something illegal, and others were drunk. Davis said investigators have a blurry photograph of a dark vehicle but are seeking more pictures or video to help identify it.

He said deputies may also seek charges against the property owner for allowing the bootlegging to take place.

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“When you have people that mix alcohol, guns and then some type of argument, that’s when it can be dangerous, and in this case, deadly,” Davis said.

Davis said sheriff’s deputies have been trying to shut down shot houses in the neighborhood for more than a year. He said multiple arrests were made at the house where the shooting happened and another house in November 2023. He said deputies succeeded in shutting down the site of Thursday’s shooting for much of this year, and there had only been four police calls to the location this year, with bootlegging activity shifting to another house on the street. But Davis said illegal alcohol sales appear to have resumed at the first house in recent weeks.

“It’s kind of like playing Whac-A-Mole, you know,” Davis said. “We’ll catch them one place, and then they’ll move to another.”

Although Davis said deputies, including some that are undercover, have been present in the neighborhood, nearby residents and business owners called for more visible police patrols.

“The more you see patrols, the less crime there is,” Jake Fincher, who owns nearby Fincher’s Barbecue, told WMAZ-TV. “Out of sight, out of mind doesn’t work.”