Cedric James Mayes Jr., a 17-year-old Black male from Forsyth, Georgia, was killed on January 2, 2022, after what began as an argument inside the Walmart on North Lee Street turned into a deadly shooting. Investigators said the dispute started in the produce section and kept moving through the store until it reached the frozen food aisle. There, in the middle of an ordinary Sunday evening, the confrontation broke open into gunfire. A 911 call came in at about 6:12 p.m. reporting shots fired inside the store, and deputies with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and officers from the Forsyth Police Department rushed in to a scene witnesses described as chaotic, with frightened shoppers trying to get out while Cedric lay wounded in the frozen food section. He was pronounced dead at the scene, and the GBI was called in to handle the death investigation.
Authorities quickly identified Tarmaine Jontavion Bowden, also 17 at the time, as the suspect. According to investigators and local law enforcement, Bowden and Cedric had been arguing before the shooting, and officers said Bowden pulled out a pistol and shot Cedric multiple times. Sheriff Brad Freeman later indicated the violence did not appear random, saying the two teenagers already had ongoing problems with each other. Bowden was taken into custody the same night, and officials said there were no other suspects at large. In the first days after the killing, the case settled into the grim rhythm that often follows public violence: the store became a crime scene, Cedric’s body was sent for autopsy at the GBI crime lab, and the town was left reckoning with how a teenage dispute had ended in death in one of the most familiar places in the community.
The case then moved from shock to prosecution. Bowden was arrested in connection with Cedric’s killing, and in August 2022 a Monroe County grand jury indicted him on malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Reporting on the later court proceedings showed the case was still active in 2024, with Bowden, then 19, scheduled to go on trial in late June of that year. That same reporting said prosecutors had offered him a sentence of life with the possibility of parole before trial, but he rejected the offer. Based on the reporting available from the sources reviewed, Bowden is the only publicly identified suspect tied to Cedric’s death.
