Two people shot to death at a McDonald’s in a rural southwest Georgia town was enough to call in state investigators. But police then found a third shooting victim, followed by a fourth.
The four victims were found Thursday at three scenes in Moultrie, a farming community and the county seat of Colquitt County just outside of metro Valdosta. The GBI is investigating the killings as a triple murder-suicide at the request of the Moultrie Police Department.
“Shootings involving multiple fatalities are pretty rare within our city,” Moultrie police Chief Sean Ladson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday.
Ladson first called for the GBI’s help shortly before 6 a.m. when a man and a woman were killed at the town’s only McDonald’s restaurant on 1st Avenue. Agents with the Thomasville field office were on their way when Ladson called back again, according to special agent Jamy Steinberg.
The chief said another woman was found shot and clinging to life at a home on 6th Street, where modest single-family homes are shaded by mature pines. She later died at a hospital. He updated agents a final time when another woman was found dead in a neighboring home.
According to Colquitt County Coroner C. Verlyn Brock, the 26-year-old shooting suspect, Kentavious White, lived with his 50-year-old mother, Susie Mae Arnold, at a home on 6th Street. He is accused of shooting her, then shooting his grandmother, Hilda Marshall, 74, who lived next door.
White then made his way to the McDonald’s about a mile away, Steinberg said.
“After reviewing the surveillance footage, agents saw that White arrived at the restaurant, got his manager, Amia Smith, to come to the door,” Steinberg said. “White shot Smith, killing her. White is then seen entering the restaurant, where he takes his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot.”
Smith, 41, was the assistant manager of the McDonald’s and White’s boss, Brock said. A motive in the shootings remains under investigation.
“My prayers and condolences go out to all the families that have been affected by this horrific act, and while this is still an ongoing investigation, we are not pursuing any other suspects at this time,” Ladson added.
Brock said no crime in Moultrie has compared to an incident like this in almost a decade.
”We haven’t seen this kind of thing in years, maybe 2015,” the coroner said. “We’re just in a state of turmoil trying to figure out what in the world happened.”
Melanie Limbach, 60, the owner of the Barber-Tucker House bed and breakfast in Moultrie, said she moved from metro Atlanta in 2018 to get away from the violence and struggles of the big city. She couldn’t believe something like this could happen just blocks from her home in this “sleepy little town.”
”It’s like living in a bubble,” she said. “So this is very shocking.”
Georgia Pines, the state-contracted mental health provider for the region, and Moultrie police’s counselor response team are offering support services to the town’s 14,000 residents.
“Due to the situations that have happened recently as well as concerns of overall mental health, we want to remind community members that Georgia Pines is available to provide services for them,” Julio Ginel, a Georgia Pines clinical co-responder, told the Moultrie Observer by phone.
The Mission Moultrie Pastors Fellowship is holding a prayer meeting Saturday to seek comfort and healing for everyone involved, according to John Eubanks, the pastor of Community Outreach at the Friendship Alliance Church. The “Healing Night of Prayer” will be held at 7 p.m. at the Courthouse Square amphitheater.
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