Stormy weather forced Eatonton’s Memorial Day ceremony to be canceled. Instead of honoring the fallen service members at Putnam County’s Veterans Wall of Honor Park, everyone met Monday for fellowship at the VFW Post 6686.
However, the bad weather did not keep the lawbreakers away. Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said law enforcement officers were busy throughout the holiday weekend.
“My deputies wrote a lot of tickets, and the State Patrol was actually here working, too,” Sills said, noting that jail reports also revealed Eatonton police officers were busy.
In addition to 10 total traffic arrests May 24-27, two adolescents were taken to the hospital for falling off a moving vehicle and, in a separate incident, a teen’s finger was shot off, according to Sills and Putnam County jail reports.
Around 5:30 p.m. Sunday, May 26, an unlicensed teenager drove a 2002 Lexus from one campsite to another at Putnam Beach on Lake Sinclair.
Sills said two 13-year-old boys were riding on the trunk of the car. The driver, later identified as Wendy Ramirez Perez, heard them fall out of the car, and she immediately stopped the car to check on them.
Sills said he did not know the extent of the injuries, but “one of them was flown to Egleston, and the other was taken to Putnam General Hospital.”
Perez, 17, of Macon, was arrested on charges of reckless driving and serious injury by vehicle.
Around 2:30 a.m. that same day, someone with Greene County Sheriff’s Office called Putnam’s Sheriff’s Office and said there was a gunshot victim at St. Mary’s Good Samaritan Hospital in Greensboro, but the shooting happened in Putnam County.
The victim, Jacameron Travon Fulton, 17, of Greensboro, told authorities he was at a graduation party "in a large metal building somewhere past Ingles" in Eatonton, according to Sills.
“He didn’t know the exact location, but it was somewhere near Monticello Road,” the sheriff explained. “There was a crowd, and he heard gunshots,, and everybody started running out of the building. He looked down and realized he’d been shot in the finger.”
Sills said Fulton was unable to tell them who drove him to the hospital or who was shooting.
“But he insisted it was the Ingles here (Putnam) instead of in Greensboro,” Sills said. “We didn’t have any reports of gunshots here in Putnam County.”