Charles Ogletree, a 64-year-old Black/African American man from Barnesville, Georgia, was fatally shot at his family's Johnstonville Road home on January 30, 2024. Shortly after 8:00 that morning, the Lamar County Sheriff's Office received a report of a shooting in the 700 block of Johnstonville Road. Deputies responding to the residence found Charles suffering from a gunshot wound, and he died at the scene. A later local retrospective reported that a LifeFlight helicopter had been summoned in an effort to get him emergency care, but the flight was canceled after he succumbed to his injuries. That account also said investigators found a handgun in the yard of the residence.
The shooting immediately became a family homicide investigation rather than a case involving an unidentified assailant. When deputies arrived, they took Charles's son, Charkinta Ogletree, into custody. The Lamar County Sheriff's Office called in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to handle the investigation, and the GBI said its preliminary findings indicated that Charkinta allegedly shot his father during a dispute. Authorities did not publicly describe in the initial announcement what the argument concerned, what happened immediately before the gunfire, or what evidence beyond the scene investigation led them to that conclusion. The GBI formally charged Charkinta with felony murder and aggravated assault, and he was booked into the Lamar County Jail. The agency emphasized at the time that the investigation was active and that the completed case file would be forwarded to the Lamar County District Attorney's Office for prosecution.
The public accounts consistently identified Charkinta as the person arrested and charged in connection with Charles's death, and no additional suspect was named in the GBI announcement or the subsequent reporting reviewed for this synopsis. WSB-TV likewise reported that investigators believed the shooting took place during a dispute between father and son and that Charkinta was arrested and transported to the county jail. The evidence and charging decisions described in those reports amounted to allegations and preliminary investigative findings; they did not constitute a finding of guilt.
The arrest also brought attention to Charkinta's earlier encounters with law enforcement. WGXA, citing Lamar County Sheriff's Office records, reported that he had been arrested on multiple charges during the preceding 18 months, including aggravated assault, possession of a firearm or knife during the commission or attempted commission of a felony, pointing or aiming a firearm at another person, and theft by taking. A separate Barnesville police report from May 2022 listed an arrest involving allegations of pointing firearms at another person, possession of firearms during a crime, aggravated assault, reckless conduct, entering an automobile with intent to commit theft, and several other offenses. Those earlier entries were reported as arrests and charges and should not be treated as convictions or as proof that he committed the later homicide.
By June 2024, the case had moved into Lamar County Superior Court proceedings. A court calendar published by the local Herald-Gazette listed Charkinta on murder and aggravated-assault charges and showed that he was seeking bond. After proceedings before Judge Tommy Wilson on June 6, the newspaper reported that the motion for bond was continued until June 27 rather than finally decided at that hearing. Another Herald-Gazette report published June 25 described the killing as one of the county's pending murder cases and again identified Charkinta as the person charged in the shooting death of his father at the family's Johnstonville Road residence. The terminology in the later local court reporting referred to "murder" and aggravated assault, while the GBI's original announcement specifically described the initial charges as felony murder and aggravated assault.
The latest case-specific court reporting located in the online searches for this synopsis was from that June 2024 period, when the homicide prosecution was still described as pending and the bond issue remained before the court. Those located reports do not document a completed trial, a guilty plea, an acquittal, or a conviction for Charles's killing, so no final criminal judgment can be established from the available reporting reviewed here.
Charles's death also resonated beyond the criminal investigation because he had deep roots in Barnesville. His obituary described a life that included attending Lamar County schools, graduating from Lamar County Comprehensive High School, serving in the United States Army, working with his hands through carpentry, and developing a strong connection to music. He performed with groups including 4UTC and Lady Creech & Mainstreet Band, and local reporting remembered him as a community figure and bass guitarist. His obituary also said that he and his wife, Gloria Smith Ogletree, opened their home to children in foster care. A December 2024 retrospective characterized the shooting as a devastating loss for a prominent local family, leaving the image of Charles not simply as the victim at the center of a homicide case, but as a longtime Barnesville resident whose music, family connections, and community involvement had made him well known before the violence at his home brought his life to an abrupt end.
