Baldwin County recently recorded two shooting deaths and a traffic fatality within a span of 70 hours, and that’s not including a separate traffic fatality around Lake Oconee, one that claimed the life of a Georgia Military College Prep senior.
Funeral services for Katherine Abernathy are set for 3 p.m. Sunday at Williams Funeral Home. Visitation will begin one hour before the service. The accident occurred shortly before 5 o’clock on Friday afternoon, according to Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills. Abernathy was driving a 2013 Honda CR-V and pulled out of the Loch Haven subdivision and onto Ga. 44/ Greensboro Road. She turned into the path of a 2016 Ford F-150, which was traveling south, and the front of his F-150 crashed into the driver’s side door of the Honda.
“We have gone back there several days and have determined that the sun was blinding in that location at that time of day,” Sills said.
Right around midnight Saturday, meanwhile, first responders converged on the 1120 block of Dunlap Road, where a 3-year-old girl had sustained a gunshot wound to the head. Two Milledgeville Police Department officers arrived on the scene first, and they rushed the girl to Atrium Health Navicent Baldwin in a patrol car. She was pronounced deceased shortly after. The child’s father, Joseph Robert Vazquez, was driven to the MPD headquarters for questioning. He then was transported to the Baldwin County jail, where he was charged with second-degree murder and cruelty to children.
In the moments leading up to the incident, three small children were playing in the living room, and one picked up a loaded handgun from the table, according to investigators. While “playing,” the 5-year-old pulled the trigger, according to investigators.
Then, on Saturday afternoon, a man driving a motorcycle was pronounced deceased at the scene after a GMC Terrain pulled into his lane of travel and caused a crash. James Vander Murphy, 42, and listed with a Gordon address, was travelling north along Ga. 243 when the GMC Terrain was attempting to make a left turn out of Gordon Avenue and onto the highway. Vander Murphy attempted to flatten his motorcycle and slide away from the vehicle, according to the Georgia State Patrol accident report. Charges against the other driver are pending.
On Tuesday afternoon, meanwhile, a Milledgeville man was taken off life support after being shot twice the previous night in a store parking lot. Quantez Bolston was 19. The incident occurred at the CC Food Mart across from the Boddie projects/Graham Homes. The CC Food Mart is also a “food store” that features multiple video gaming machines.
The incident was captured on store security video, which led investigators to the Plantation Chase subdivision near Kroger, where 20-year-old Daquavious Omarion Napier was arrested without incident. Napier, who lost both of his parents in a murder-suicide when he was a toddler, lived with his grandparents in the subdivision. He is being charged with malice murder, participation in street gang activity, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, terroristic threats, as well as five counts of aggravated assault, one for every person who was present when the shooting occurred. An argument between the two men began inside the store before spilling out into the parking lot, according to investigators.
- Lynn Hobbs contributed to this article