In the fading afternoon light of a Tuesday in Moultrie, Georgia, the life of 23-year-old Ryshaun Montay Bigelow was abruptly ended by gunfire. On February 16, 2016, at approximately 3:10 p.m., police responded to reports of a shooting in the 100 block of 7th Street S.W. and discovered Bigelow's body in the roadway, bearing multiple gunshot wounds. One witness at the scene recalled hearing a chilling sequence of four shots, a pause, and then three more, a violent disruption to an otherwise ordinary day. Bigelow's death marked the first homicide in the county for that year.
The investigation into the shooting of the male victim quickly led to a suspect. The following day, Donterrius Williams, then 23, was arrested by the Moultrie Police Department and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and charged with the murder of Bigelow. The motive for the shooting was not immediately clear, but the violence did not end with Bigelow's death. Less than an hour after his body was found, as law enforcement was securing the initial crime scene, another series of gunshots rang out nearby. This second shooting, occurring in the 100 block of 4th Street S.W., targeted Darian Williams, the 25-year-old brother of the man just arrested for Bigelow's murder. Darian Williams was struck by multiple bullets and was airlifted to a hospital in Macon for treatment.
The subsequent investigation revealed that the second shooting was an act of retaliation for Bigelow's death. Authorities identified Darryl Dana Thomas Jr. as the individual responsible for the assault on Darian Williams, which left him with life-altering injuries. In May 2017, Thomas pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for the retaliatory shooting and was sentenced to serve ten years in prison. The legal proceedings for Ryshaun Bigelow's death concluded in May 2018, when Donterrius Williams, just an hour before his murder trial was set to commence, pleaded guilty to the lesser charges of voluntary manslaughter and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. A Colquitt County Superior Court judge sentenced him to 16 years, with eight to be served in prison and the remainder on probation, with credit for time already served since his arrest.
