Booking photo released of man charged with Tignall triple murder

TIGNALL, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - The man charged with the triple murder in Tignall has been booked in the Wilkes County jail, we learned Monday.

Authorities on Friday identified the people found dead at a home outside Tignall in a triple-murder case that left the community shocked.

Authorities said Friday they’d arrested Shannon Box, 56, in the murders of Chauncey Box, 55; Brenda Lipscomb, 67; and Michael Schmidt, 55. The coroner said all three of the Tignall residents died “by assault.”

On Monday, authorities released his booking photo:

After the killings, shock and grief gripped the Wilkes County town that has fewer than 500 people and only one red light.

“It just shocked me. It really shocked me. It really did,” said Keta Martin, who works at a local business.

“It was just like someone that was really close to me that had ed, and I just had to go home and take a moment,” she said.

She knew the man who was arrested.

“I said, ‘Huh?’ And I’m like – he just came through here,” she said.

“When he used to come in, he would be like, ‘Hey, y’all, how y’all doing?’ We’d be like, ‘Hey, how you doing?’ And so that brought me on to getting to know him,” she said.

“I have a lot of customers like that. I don’t even know them, don’t even know their name, but they feel like they can talk to me. So, I just sit there and listen to them,” said Martin.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said the case unfolded after Wilkes County deputies responded around 8:30 a.m. Thursday to the 900 block of Mallorysville Road regarding an injured woman.

Deputies learned she’d been injured at another home on the same road.

That’s where they found the murder victims’ bodies.

The GBI said preliminary information revealed Box attacked the woman, causing several injuries. Officials said she was taken to a hospital, and they aren’t releasing her name.

The suspect wasn’t caught until after 8 a.m. Friday, when the Wilkes County Sheriff’s Office learned he’d been seen near Danburg Road. Deputies found him at a church on Jones Chapel Road, where he was taken into custody without incident.

He’s been charged with aggravated assault, three counts of murder and three counts of possession of a knife during the commission of a crime, according to the GBI.

While it’ll be years before local residents forget what happened, one thing that’ll never change is the sense of community in the town that’s barely a dot on the map – a place where everyone knows you and you know everyone.

“I really like coming to work here because I get to meet different people and have different conversations,” Martin said.

The murders are the latest in a rash of slayings in the past few days across the CSRA:

• On Tuesday in Augusta, 73-year-old James West was gunned down and left dead in the 1500 block of Picquet Avenue. Harold Leverett Jr., 27, was arrested, authorities said Thursday.
• On Sunday, 43-year-old Greg Baughman was shot to death in the 1000 block of Prides Crossing in Aiken County. His separated wife was arrested.
• Last Friday night, 20-year-old Ruben Johnson died after a shooting in the 1000 block on Amli Way in Augusta. Earnest Parkman, 68, was arrested.
• And last Wednesday, a shooting left William Horne, 49, and Carol Horne, 52, dead in the 3000 block of Mystic Lane in Augusta. William Horne’s brother, Tony Brooks Horne, 46, was arrested on the scene.
• Another shooting the week before left multiple people dead in Augusta. It happened Nov. 21 in the 2100 blocks of B and C streets, claiming the lives of Jeremy Dontavious McGahee, 34, and Zyquan Jamarcus Franklin, 32, both of Augusta.

All of the slayings come amid a two-year outbreak of violent crime that’s claimed more than 180 lives across the CSRA.

Cities large and small have been affected on both sides of the Savannah River.

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