Approximately ten rounds were fired at three fisherman on lake Tobesofkee in Macon, Georgia and to date no one has been charged or arrested. The shots, according to reports, were fired from 124 Lotus Pointe Drive, the home of Dr. Jalal Ghali, a cardiologist and Mercer University School of Medicine faculty physician.
The fisherman who happen to be black do not think their race has anything to do with why no arrests have been made, but they do feel politics and the wealth of the doctor is a prime reason the wheels of justice are spinning so slowly.
Georgia Watchdog interviewed one of the fisherman and has the entire audio posted at their site.
Two men and a teenage boy were looking for a good place to do some fishing one Saturday night. The three men were fishing legally at a public lake at night. They had every right to be there and were very quiet so not to disturb the neighbors in houses or to alert the fish. They saw a red laser sight pointed at them from a nearby house then heard approximately 10 shots fired. The she shots hit the water near the boat narrowly missing them.
The men immediately called a Lake Tobesofkee ranger who met them at the boat dock. They showed the ranger the house where the shots were coming from, 124 Lotus Pointe Drive, according to a Bibb County Sheriff's Office incident report. Deputies assured them someone would be going to jail that night. Deputies arrived and knocked on the door of the house the fishermen identified.
Bibb County sheriff's deputies responded to the scene and went to Dr. Ghali's home. While at the home, an "older male" spoke to the deputies through a glass door. The older male that came to the door was believed to be Dr. Ghali.
When they asked him to step outside so they could speak to him, the male declined and told the deputies to come back in the morning after he talks with his lawyer, the incident report states.
"He also stated that this could wait until the morning because he was on call" "At this time the older male turned off all the lights to the residence and walked away from the door," according to the incident report.
The Sheriff of Bibb County issued a statement to local CBS affiliate WMAZ a week after nothing had been done.
“The fishermen were not able to give us a complete description to whether they could say ‘yes, that was the person that I saw shooting at me.’ Because all they were able to see is the gunshots and see a silhouette figure up on the second floor of the house. So it’s a little bit difficult for us even if we were able to identify a suspect at this point for them to be able to pick them out concretely,” said Davis.
Two weeks after these fishermen were nearly killed the Sheriff is still hemming and hawing with nothing to show for all the elapsed time. Plenty of excuses but no real investigation or arrest. He claims Dr. Ghali and his attorney have been cooperating but still has no full accounting of who was even inside the home that evening.
It is clear the shots were fired from the home and in the audio interview the fisherman stated that the neighbors also corroborated that shots had been fired from Dr. Ghali's home.
I wonder how many other instances where deputies needed the cooperation of a homeowner to investigate shots being fired in an aggravated assault. I am going to take a wild guess that had this happened in a poorer part of town the man that opened the door would not have been as successful at sending deputies on their way.
I am also willing to bet they would have found a reason to justify kicking the door down and searching the house had the occupant refused. But it seems residents of a lakeside mansion seems to get treated very differently than people in less affluent neighborhoods in Macon,GA.
Sheriff Davis excuse that he cannot identify the shooter simply doesn’t hold water. It is hard to identify a shooter when you completely flubbed the investigation and won’t even confirm who was at the house that evening. The shooter was in or near the house that night and the deputies allowed all the evidence to be removed.
Two weeks after these fisherman were nearly killed they are still fishing for justice. They might be waiting a long time because it seems the fish aren't biting.
