Armand Peck, an 82-year-old White man, died on May 15, 2017, at his residence in Augusta, Georgia, in a killing that stunned the community around Richmond Hill Road West. Online obituary records portray him as “Arnie,” a retired U.S. Army veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars and a longtime minister of music at his church, a man whose final chapter should have been one of peace, family, and faith.
Instead, deputies checking on a burning vehicle in the 3900 block of Lake Erie Drive were led back to Peck’s home, where they found him dead from an apparent gunshot wound. Public reporting tied his death to a violent chain of events that unfolded across Augusta that same day, turning what began as a series of shootings into a homicide case centered on Peck’s home.
The online accounts that are publicly available point to one suspect: Rodney Donquail Ivey, identified by the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office as armed and dangerous while authorities searched for him on May 15. Reports say the day’s violence began with a shooting around 9 a.m. at Cedar Grove Apartments, where a 16-year-old boy was wounded but survived, and then continued with another shooting on Peters Road in the Allen Homes area, where a second person was injured. By the afternoon, investigators had connected Ivey not only to those aggravated assaults but also to the deadly shooting of Peck, and authorities announced that he had been taken into custody within hours. Publicly available summaries say he was arrested and charged in connection with Peck’s death, with reported charges including murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault, and arson.
What gives the case its grim shape in the online record is the sense of momentum behind it: a roaming burst of violence, a vehicle set on fire, schools placed on soft lockdown out of caution, and an elderly man with deep roots in church and military service left dead at home. The arrest information is clear in the sources I found, and Ivey is the only suspect publicly identified in those accounts. What is far less clear from the same accessible online material is the final courtroom outcome specific to Peck’s case. I was able to confirm the arrest and the contemporaneous allegations, but I did not locate reliable public online reporting in the sources reviewed that clearly documented a later trial, conviction, or final sentencing for Peck’s killing itself.
