Last week’s murder-suicide on Richmond Street marked Milledgeville/Baldwin County’s first homicide since last September, an incident that was also a murder-suicide.
In that September 2025 case, the Milledgeville Police Department concluded that Tavious Antwon Spencer shot his girlfriend, Lashonda Lawrence, before turning the gun on himself. It was the lone local homicide of 2025.
Homicides surged in Baldwin County beginning in 2020, a year marked by the COVID pandemic and social justice protests.
According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s database, there were seven homicides in 2020, six in 2021, five in 2022 and four more in 2023.
That added up to 22 local homicides between 2020-23. Compare that number to 2010-13, when there were seven combined homicides in Milledgeville/Baldwin County.
Then began the decline. In 2024, there was one homicide in Baldwin County, excluding a fatal stabbing at Baldwin State Prison, as well as only one in 2025, according to the data.
Not included in the data is a fatal shootout in the Milledgeville Mall parking lot in August 2025. In that case, the District Attorney declined to pursue criminal charges, essentially ruling it “self-defense.”
The trend is not exclusive to Baldwin County.
The nationwide murder rate in 2025 was 30 percent lower than it was in 2023.
Also of note, the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit, which includes Baldwin and seven other counties, has recorded only two homicides during the first six months of 2026.