Mason Lynn Mayes, 17, male, was found on the morning of March 26, 2022, gravely wounded on the balcony of a Roswell apartment. Officers had been called around 7 a.m. to the Spring River Luxury Apartment Homes on North Sycamore Avenue, where they discovered Mayes with a gunshot wound to the head. He was rushed to a local hospital but did not survive.
The scene suggested sudden violence inside the shared unit that spilled onto the balcony, a quiet complex becoming the backdrop to a fatal burst of confusion and fear.
Investigators quickly focused on Mayes's roommate, 19-year-old Darin Penn. Police said Penn himself had called 911, yet when officers arrived he was found hiding in a bedroom closet. A rifle believed to be the weapon was recovered at the apartment. Early reports noted that Penn might have been under the influence of drugs and “possibly delusional” when he fired, details that framed the first hours of the investigation into why a teenager lay dying just outside the sliding door of his own home.
Penn was arrested that day on a first-degree murder charge. As the case moved through court, prosecutors later reduced the charge, and in August 2023 he entered a no-contest plea to voluntary manslaughter. A judge sentenced him to nine years in prison—six years for voluntary manslaughter plus a three-year firearm enhancement—with credit for time already served in jail. The sentencing closed the criminal case that began in that apartment at sunrise, leaving behind a record that traced the arc from the initial arrest to the final prison term for the only suspect in Mayes's death.
