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Tifton feud ends with one dead

• The victim had filed a report with police but recanted his statement, detectives say.

J.D. Sumner

TIFTON — An ongoing feud in Tift County ended in a gun battle Wednesday night, killing one and injuring another, investigators say.

Police found Barry Elijah Bullard, 20, of Tifton lying along the 100 block of 13th Street around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, according to a report filed by the Tifton Police Department.

The victim of an apparent gunshot wound, Bullard was later pronounced dead, Tifton Police Detective Bryan Cavenaugh said.

Three people — Allen “Al” Williams, 23, Neddrick Green, 23, and Jeremy Reynolds Jr., 30 — were taken into custody and questioned in connection with the shooting. All three have been charged with murder, Cavenaugh said.

Cavanaugh said Thursday that preliminary indications were that Bullard and the others exchanged gunfire on 13th Street near Dees Apartments around 9:30 p.m. During the exchange, Bullard was fatally injured and one of the other three suffered minor injuries. It wasn’t immediately clear who was injured, but Cavenaugh said in an e-mail late Thursday that the injured person had been shot while trying to flee and was arrested by police officers and sheriff’s deputies at a neighboring county’s hospital.

The other two were arrested without incident, although one was apparently hiding under a couch, Cavenaugh said.

The incident comes as the latest chapter in an ongoing feud over what Cavanaugh said started out as a dispute over a small piece of property.

“I wouldn’t say it was a longstanding feud, but there was a feud between them over some property,” Cavanaugh said. “Barry had come in and filed a report and then recanted his statement before the shooting, so there really was no way for us to get involved before it turned violent.”

Describing the scene as “chaotic,” officers responding to the scene had to call for backup units to assist in crowd control after the shooting, police reports show.

Cavenaugh said he believes the three drove down the area where Bullard was shot knowing that it was an area he frequented and that they had intentions to gun him down.

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