Dear Editor,
Earlier this month, the calm and quiet city of Eatonton experienced a night of criminal activity more like nearby big cities have on a regular basis. Gunfire erupted not once, but twice in the same night, and one person was tragically murdered.
In the wee hours of the morning Sunday, June 4, rival gang members from Milledgeville opened gunfire into the crowded parking lot of a gas station near downtown, firing 30 to 40 bullets from different caliber handguns. Miraculously, no one was injured, even though the bullets strayed into a business and a residence neighboring the gas station.
Then, another shooting took place at the same gas station 16 hours later, this time tragically claiming the life of an Eatonton man. Literally overnight, our small city became a community of mourning, tragedy and devastation, shock and alarm, bewilderment, fear, and anger.
But while Eatonton and Putnam County’s population may rank in the middle when compared with all the counties in Georgia (it’s No. 81 of the state’s 159 counties listed from the highest population to lowest), our law enforcement agencies proved themselves to be top notch.
Both Eatonton Police Department and Putnam County Sheriff’s Office may be short-staffed, but that didn’t stop them from having the perpetrators in both shootings in custody and safely held behind jail bars in only two days.
Eatonton Police Chief Howell Cardwell and his officers, Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills and Detective Lt. Harry Luke worked nonstop to solve both shootings.
At one point, Cardwell told The Messenger reporters that they were “exhausted, out beating the bushes all night,” but was “not going to stop until we have them.”
It’s no wonder they were tired – the annual Dairy Festival had just taken place that same weekend with a myriad of vendors set up around the courthouse Friday night that needed to be patrolled all night, followed by a parade and road closures Saturday morning and a day filled with thousands of visitors and pedestrians enjoying activities in town. The first shooting took place later that night.
Eatonton and Putnam are fortunate that both of their veteran lawmen are involved in the community and their departments’ investigations.
They aren’t sitting at desks behind closed doors all day, nor are they out of town pursuing other opportunities and only available via telephone like many police chiefs and sheriffs are known to do. When Police Chief Cardwell saw the surveillance video of the gang shooting, he didn’t recognize any of the people involved. Cardwell knows the people of his city and he knew these were from elsewhere.
So, he tapped into his resources in neighboring Milledgeville, had the gang members identified quickly, and joined forces with Milledgeville authorities for a raid and arrests Tuesday morning.
Likewise, when the person accused of pulling the trigger later that afternoon in the shooting murder was identified, Sills knew a family member of the shooter and was able to negotiate a peaceful surrender Monday.
Eatonton and Putnam County residents, officials, business owners, and visitors should be proud and grateful for their engaged and relentless lawmen and women.