Teens from Burke held at gunpoint
By Anne Marie Kyzer annemariek@thetruecitizen.com

Four college students from Waynesboro were held at gunpoint on a rural dirt road in Bulloch County last Tuesday night.

Ben Blackburn, 18, who was driving friends Daniel Mobley, Chad Smith and Casey Cox in his pick-up truck, said he took a wrong turn on a public, dead-end road just before 11 p.m. when the group encountered the offender, William Robert Barber Jr.

After turning his truck around, Blackburn said he saw Barber standing in the road and pointing a gun at the truck.

Blackburn said Barber began shouting and told them they shouldn't be there. He then ordered Blackburn and Mobley, who were in the front seat, from the truck and made them lie face down in the road.

"He told me to stop talking or he'd shoot me," Blackburn said. "He said he would put a cap in my head. I thought he was going to kill us."

Cox said she dialed 911 on her cell phone but before a dispatcher answered, Barber told her and Smith to get out and sit in the road. She was forced to leave her phone in the vehicle.

Blackburn said a woman came from Barber's house several minutes later and said she had called the police.

After deputies arrived and interviewed the teens and Barber, they arrested him on four counts each of false imprisonment and pointing a firearm at another and one count each of reckless conduct and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.

Deputies confiscated a 9mm Beretta handgun along with 16 9mm live rounds from Barber.

He was released on a $10,000 bond last Thursday, according to Bulloch County Jail records.

He is prohibited from having contact with the four victims.

Since his release, Barber, a certified corrections officer, has resigned from his job with the Bulloch County Public Works, according to Bob Smith, Bulloch County Public Facilities Director.

He had worked with the public works inmate labor program supervising an inmate detail.

According to an article published in Monday's Statesboro Herald, Barber told deputies that threats had been made to his family and the offenders drove a vehicle that may have been similar to Blackburn's truck.

All four teens are 2007 graduates of Edmund Burke Academy, and all but Smith live in Statesboro where they attend college. Smith resides in Savannah, where he attends school.