MACON, Ga. — The Bibb County Sheriff's Office is investigating after they found a loaded gun hidden inside the jail Wednesday afternoon.
The sheriff's office says an anonymous tip around 2 p.m. led to a jail-wide search for the weapon. The find came just days after the conclusion of a month-long manhunt for four escapees that prompted questions about jail security.
"We did find a firearm," Sheriff David Davis confirmed Wednesday. "It had two rounds in it."
Tucked behind a wall-mounted phone in a dayroom in the C wing, they found it.
"It's a dayroom area that's sort of adjacent. You have the cellblock area, and then you have a dayroom that's just off from that that's sort of attached to that particular block of 20 cells," Davis explained.
It's on the other side of the jail from where the October escape happened, Davis said. He says a search started immediately after the tip came in Wednesday.
"Jail staff immediately took action. The corrections CERT team, as well as the Sheriff's Office SRT, the Special Response Team came in, searched the cellblock area," Davis said.
The sheriff didn't say much about what happened exactly, but he says they're working to find out how the gun got into the jail, and how long it was there before they found it. The other thing he wants to find out: "Who may have had possession of it during its time here."
Davis says it's been a few years since the last time they found a gun in the jail. That time, he says a woman somehow took a gun in with her when she was booked.
In September, someone broke into the jail yard and tried to smuggle in contraband. According to an incident report, that happened near the C-300 block.