Macon Mall Gang Initiation

Claim:   Gang initiates in Macon, Georgia, must shoot a white female at the Macon Mall.

FALSE

Example:   [Collected via e-mail, September 2008]

Origins:   This alert began appearing in inboxes in mid-September 2008. Like many other "initiates into a street gang must shoot a random person" scares (victims selected from those found in Wal-Mart parking lots or who provide directions when asked for them), the group being targeted is

women.

Supposedly the rumor was started by a Macon, Georgia, police officer warning his mother about the gang initiation plot for that weekend, with that woman then telling a fellow churchgoer, who in turn told someone else, who then sent out the e-mail. The e-mailed warning was signed by an employee at Johnson County Middle/High School, a woman who told WMAZ-TV that she could not identify the Macon police employee whose information the heads-up was based on but asserted that she wouldn't have passed on the rumor if she hadn't believed it to be true.

Yet there appears to be nothing to the warning: The Macon Police Department has tried to trace this rumor but has been unable to locate its origin, and though the department received a number of phone calls and e-mails about the warning, as yet no one has been able to tell police anything concrete about it except that it was forwarded to them.

Lt. Eric Walker of the Macon Police Department said: "At the cost of numerous manpower hours, no one can be located to bring forth any information other than it was just an e-mail forwarded to them. The Macon Police Department Gang Unit continues to monitor the gang activity, but has come across no information to show that this is anything other than a hoax."

Barbara "macon a big fuss over nothing" Mikkelson

Last updated:   14 July 2011

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