Keshon Tamario Knolton, a 26-year-old man from the Macon area, was killed in a shooting that unfolded in the early morning hours of December 8, 2024, at Green Meadows apartments on Log Cabin Drive in Macon. Deputies were called to the scene at about 1:51 a.m. and found Knolton unresponsive with a gunshot wound. A 17-year-old boy was also found wounded in the same burst of violence and was taken to a hospital, where he was later reported in stable condition. Knolton did not survive, and the suddenness of it gave the case the feel of one of those nights that tears straight through a community before dawn has even settled in. His obituary later identified him as Keshon Tamario Knolton, born August 31, 1998, with funeral services held in Fort Valley on December 14, 2024.
In the days after the shooting, investigators began naming suspects. The first arrest came on December 13, 2024, when the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office, working with the Gang Unit and U.S. Marshals, arrested James Louis Chappell, 24, of Byron in Warner Robins near Arizona Avenue. Authorities said Chappell was charged with murder in Knolton’s death and taken to the Bibb County Law Enforcement Center. The reporting around that arrest painted the picture of a case moving quickly from an open death investigation into a homicide prosecution, with deputies focusing their attention on who had been present and what had happened in those moments on Log Cabin Drive.
Then the case took another turn. The wounded teenager from the scene was later no longer described only as a victim. On December 20, 2024, authorities arrested 17-year-old Donathan Latrell Hill of Fort Valley after executing search and arrest warrants at a residence in Columbus. Reports said Hill had also been injured during the December 8 shooting, but after further investigation he was charged with felony murder in connection with Knolton’s death and held without bond. With Hill’s arrest, the narrative of the case shifted into something more tangled and troubling, a shooting that had left one man dead, another teen wounded, and investigators concluding that more than one person bore criminal responsibility for what happened.
The online reports located about the case consistently identified Chappell and Hill as the two arrested suspects and described the investigation as ongoing at the time those stories were published. Those reports detailed a murder charge for Chappell and a felony murder charge for Hill, but the sources located did not provide later public updates about trial outcomes or convictions. What remains most clear in the reporting is the arc of those December days: a deadly call before 2 a.m., a young man’s life ending at the hospital, and investigators steadily building a case that led first to one arrest and then to another, as Knolton’s death at Green Meadows became not just a fatal shooting but a homicide investigation with multiple accused.
