On a dirt road in a rural stretch of South Georgia, the life of John Timothy Thompson, a 56-year-old male from East Liverpool, Ohio, came to a violent end. He was in the Quitman area on October 21, 2020, having traveled from Ohio with a group of men to visit family. What began as a trip to connect with relatives descended into a double homicide that left Thompson and another man, 36-year-old Deshaun Lamar Scott of Cleveland, Ohio, dead from gunshot wounds.
The group of men, including the victims and the alleged perpetrator, had arrived in Quitman, a small city just north of the Florida state line, a few days prior on October 18, 2020. The visit took a dark turn on that Wednesday afternoon when the bodies of Thompson and Scott were discovered on Emerson Road, about five miles southwest of Quitman. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation was called in to lead the inquiry into their deaths.
The investigation quickly pointed to a fellow traveler from their Ohio contingent, 36-year-old Kenny Pruitt of Cleveland. In a bizarre turn of events, a local farmer reported encountering Pruitt emerging from the woods with blood on his shirt. Pruitt allegedly confessed to the farmer that he had shot his friends, claiming they had intended to shoot him first. He then fled towards a railroad track. Law enforcement located and apprehended Pruitt in a peanut field over two miles away.
Following his arrest, Kenny Pruitt was charged with two counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, and multiple firearms offenses, including possession of a gun during the commission of a crime and possession by a convicted felon. He was taken into custody without incident and booked into the Brooks County Jail, where he was held without bail. While an arrest has been made, the investigation into the specific events and motive that led to the fatal shootings is ongoing. Autopsies were scheduled to be performed by the GBI Medical Examiner's Office to formally determine the cause of death for both John Timothy Thompson and Deshaun Lamar Scott.
