The body of Albert Knight Jr., a homeless man who was bludgeoned to death with a concrete block as he slept, went unnoticed in a downtown alley for nearly two days.
Knight, 59, was killed Friday evening, May 24, about 8 p.m., according to a report from the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office. Emergency responders found Knight’s body, stiff, cold and half covered by a blanket, just before noon Sunday, May 26.
Two weeks before he was violently killed, Albert Knight Jr.’s son took him out for a burger.
The son was passing through downtown when he spotted his dad.
“I just happened to see him,” Albert Knight III said of his late father. “I went up to him and said, ‘Hey, I’m your son. I just wanted to let you know, you have a granddaughter.’”
The father was reluctant to believe Knight III was his son, but accepted an offer for a hot meal anyway. Albert Knight Jr. had a yearslong drug addiction and, for decades, was chronically homeless, his son said.
Knight III took his dad to Burger King, bought him a cup of coffee, a Whopper and a pack of cigarettes. It was the last time Knight III would ever see his father alive.
“He was trying to get himself together,” Knight III said of his dad. “He was apparently trying to find the Lord, from what I heard. … At least knowing he was still out there and still alive, it kind of gave me hope he would clean up.”
The Bibb County Sheriff’s Office is still looking for a man it identified as a suspect in the killing.
Two weeks after the killing, bloodstains on the concrete stoop were visible but fading. There are several surveillance cameras in the alley and at least one is trained directly at the stoop. The sheriff’s office has not said whether the killing was captured on video, but the time of the attack is noted in the incident report.
The man in surveillance footage is white, wearing glasses and a shirt that possibly says, “Hilton Head Island Bike Shop” in white letters. He was wearing denim jeans and black shoes.
Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones said autopsy are still pending.
Knight III said the sheriff’s office is keeping him updated as it runs down leads.
“My dad had a lot of vices but he did not deserve what he got,” Knight III told The Macon Newsroom in a recent interview. “I do hope they find the person who did it and he rots 6 feet below the jail. … Especially if what they’re saying it’s true, that he was asleep and it was unprovoked.”
Knight III, 23, said his father had been homeless for “all his life pretty much.”
Knight Jr. was living in the streets in his early 20s. The family briefly had a plumbing business. After Albert Knight Sr. died in 2013, “he really hit the streets hard,” Knight III said. Knight Jr. also had another son, 20-year-old James Franklin Bunn Holcombe.
Though Knight III was not very close with his father, “I’m hurting because it’s my dad,” he said.
“He doesn’t have that opportunity to meet his granddaughter,” Knight III said. “From all I’ve heard, he was trying to get back on the right track and trying to get better.”
A memorial service for Knight was held recently at Depaul USA’s Daybreak downtown on Walnut Street. The center is open during the day for unhoused people to take showers, wash clothes or get a snack.
Rhonda Williams, assistant director Daybreak, said safety is stressed to the unhoused people served there and they are encouraged to pair up and sleep in visible areas.
“They will sleep some place they know there are cameras because that makes them feel safer,” Williams said.
It appears Knight was violently attacked despite heeding safety advice. In the weeks since his death, unhoused people have been spotted sleeping nearby in more visible places including the parks dividing traffic on Poplar Street.
Anyone with information about the whereabouts or identity of the suspect is urged to call the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office at 478-751-7500 or call Macon Regional Crimestoppers at 1-877-68CRIME.
To contact Civic Journalism Fellow Laura Corley, call 478-301-5777 or email Corley_le@mercer.edu. This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with The Macon Newsroom.
