Macon – A Macon woman was sentenced to 20 years, 15 of them in prison, Wednesday, a little more than a week after she pleaded guilty to shooting a teenage boy in January 2017 on Bloomfield Drive.
Elisabeth Faye Cannon, 48, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault on March 26.
During Wednesday’s sentencing hearing, prosecutor John Regan presented evidence that would have been included in Cannon’s trial had she not pleaded guilty:
Schools were closed Jan. 16, 2017, for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Then-15-year-old Vernon Marcus Jr. and a friend had walked to a store to buy snacks, running an errand for the friend’s mother. They walked on the sidewalk in the 4000 block of Bloomfield Drive on their way home.
After responding to a 911 call at about 7:30 p.m., Bibb County deputies found Marcus on the sidewalk 56 feet down the road from Cannon’s property. He’d been shot in the back of the head with a .38-caliber pistol.
Despite Cannon’s contention that the boys had been throwing rocks and threatening her, deputies found no evidence to support her claims. Her daughter testified in a pre-trial hearing that the home wasn’t damaged by rocks and that she didn’t hear anything before the shooting.
Marcus wasn’t known to police as being someone who’d deputies had trouble with in the past.
Marcus’s mother testified Wednesday, saying her son underwent surgery and remained in the hospital until May 2017. He’s still unable to speak and suffers other effects from the shooting.
In her pre-trial testimony, Cannon’s daughter said her mother used a pellet rifle to shoot a man about six months before the January 2017 incident without having any provocation. The man had been standing near a ravine near the Cannon home.
Cannon called the police numerous times in the months before the shooting to complain about young black males, but deputies weren’t able to substantiate her complaints.
During Wednesday’s hearing, prosecutors played a body camera video recorded a few hours before the shooting in which Cannon talked about having a gun for protection. As she talked about how she’d use it, deputies warned Cannon not to threaten anyone with a gun or shoot into the ground.
Phone messages Cannon left on the mayor’s office customer service line also were played. She complained about gangs, Section 8 housing and black males loitering on the sidewalk. She asked that more deputies patrol near her house, saying she felt threatened.
Speaking after the sentencing, Macon Judicial Circuit District Attorney David Cooke said, “No parent should have to worry about the safety of their child when they’re walking home from the corner store. Any person who endangers the life of a child in their own neighborhood should expect to go to prison.”
For more news from the District Attorney’s Office, follow on Twitter @DA_DavidCooke, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/DADavidCooke and on Instagram at da_davidcooke.
Contact: Amy Leigh Womack
478-621-6179 (office)
478-319-2529 (cell)
