Community Center Party Turns Deadly | News

Only signs of caution are left at the C. Ethel Community Center off Highway 26 West in Macon County.

Remnants of a birthday party turned deadly.

Linda Slappy said before the shots were fired into the crowd her nephew called his parents to let them know he was leaving the party it would be the last time his parents would ever hear from Lance Harris, Jr.

"They shot in the crowd, and he fell right next to his car with the door open when he was attempting to come home to his parents. A very few minutes later, they called his parents and said he'd been shot," says Slappy.

Agent Trebor Randle with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation says officers were called to the community center around 2 a.m., Sunday.

When they arrived they found 24-year-old Lance Harris Jr., shot to death. Slappy says she doesn't think her nephew was involved in the trouble that initiated the shooting.

"Not with him not at all, not at all. He doesn't have any type of criminal record," says Slappy, "No, I know that for a fact."

She says he'd do anything for his fiance and his one-year-old daughter London, and he planned to get his license to drive trucks with his father's business.

She says the loss has hit her sister hard.

"She keeps asking us, 'Linda, how am I going to bury my son? How am I going to take him up there and bury him and leave him?'"

GBI agents say they have several people in custody, but so far no one has been charged in the shooting.   

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you contribute to a college fund that will be set up for Harris' daughter, London.