In the late hours of a Friday night in Lakeland, Georgia, a gathering of family and friends at a cookout took a tragic turn, ending in the death of 32-year-old Willis Lamar Flintroyal. On September 9, 2016, at approximately 11:30 PM, officers from the Lakeland Police Department were called to a residence on East Peeler Avenue after reports of a shooting. Upon their arrival, they discovered that Flintroyal had sustained a gunshot wound.
His family, in a desperate attempt to save him, transported him to the SGMC Hospital in Lakeland, but he was ultimately pronounced dead. Another individual, Schalonda Beatrice Johnson, also 32, was taken to the same hospital by her family with a non-life-threatening gunshot wound.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation was requested to lead the homicide investigation. The ensuing investigation led to the identification of a suspect, Lewis Shukung Geddie. In a bizarre twist, while officers were still at the scene of the initial shooting, they heard more gunshots nearby. Responding to the area of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and 8th Street, they found Geddie, then 20 years old, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. It was later revealed that another man, Fredrick Tyrone Calhoun, was charged with aggravated assault and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon in connection with Geddie's shooting. The mother of Fredrick Calhoun, who was also the former foster parent of Lewis Geddie, described the killing of Flintroyal as senseless and revealed that all three men had grown up together.
On September 10, 2016, the day after the fatal shooting, GBI agents secured arrest warrants for Lewis Shukung Geddie, charging him with one count of felony murder and one count of aggravated assault in the death of Willis Lamar Flintroyal and the shooting of Schalonda Johnson. The investigation continued, and in June 2021, a Lanier County jury found Lewis Shukung Geddie, then 24, guilty of the murder of Willis Lamar Flintroyal. His convictions included felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, and armed robbery.
