MACON — Officials in middle Georgia have dropped murder charges against one man and arrested a second man.
Bibb County sheriff’s deputies arrested 22-year-old Jamal DeShawn Roundtree of Macon on Thursday and charged him with murder in the Nov. 22 shooting death of 49-year-old Romero Gonzalez.
The Telegraph reports Roundtree lived at the west Macon apartment complex where Gonzalez was robbed and shot on the Sunday before Thanksgiving.
Deputies originally charged Guadalupe Hernandez Perez with murder, saying he shot Gonzalez. Now charges against Perez have been dropped, although he remains jailed on an “immigration offense,” jail records show.
Roundtree ended up in jail as “new evidence evolved,” the sheriff’s statement said.
The statement says investigators learned that before the shooting several men gathered near Gonzalez’s vehicle.
One man is thought to have robbed and shot Gonzalez and then run away with the others.
Deputies said Perez was sitting inside the vehicle during the shooting and left after Gonzalez was shot. Deputies say they arrested Perez because he lied to investigators about the shooting and also falsely claimed he wasn’t in the vehicle.
The statement says “new information and evidence” led to the murder charge against Perez being dropped.
Roundtree, said by authorities to have been one of the people near Gonzalez’s automobile, was said to be a “party to a crime.”
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