MACON, Ga. — A Macon man says he faced a scary situation that the Bibb County Sheriff's Office took too long to respond to.
In November 2022, the sheriff's office told 13WMAZ their average response time is 30 minutes. However, Michael Bailey says it took them four hours to respond to his call.
Baily is a property manager at the Mercer Village Apartments.
On Friday, December 1, one of Bailey's employees came out to inspect an evicted apartment unit, but when they arrived they found a man inside.
Bailey says the man slammed the door in the employee's face.
"He ended up coming out the window and he ended up coming into this unit over here," Bailey said pointing to the unit across the street.
When Bailey arrived at the unit the man was standing outside. He said he called 911 on his way to the complex.
"There's just way too much shooting and everything else happening, so we were trying to keep our distance and let the professionals handle it, but nothing was happening," Bailey said.
He then lost track of the man.
"We don't know if he's armed. We don't know anything, we can't just leave the property. That's also a danger to our other tenants," Bailey said.
He says they called about every hour to check-in. Bailey was told no deputies were on the way each time.
After two hours Bailey says a dispatcher told him all available deputies were at another call.
They believed he was inside the apartment he was standing outside of. When he opened the door, a malnourished dog ran outside.
Bailey says employees tried to call animal control to get any kind of help.
"It ended up taking four hours for the deputy to come out. Animal control wasn't going to come out until the deputy came out," Bailey said.
Before deputies arrived the man ran off. However, Bailey says when a deputy finally arrived they were very helpful.
"They ended up finding two dogs that were severally malnourished as well as two puppies," he said.
Bailey says the tenant who owned the animals was arrested for animal cruelty.
However, Bailey says he shouldn't have had to get involved.
"We're supposed to be calling 911 if there's an emergency. I don't know how much more of an emergency when there's an intruder. We don't know if he's armed or not. We need somebody here right now. The only step up from that is he's armed, I'm armed, and now we're having a shootout. We have enough of that in Macon. I don't ever want to be in that situation," he said.
We reached out to the sheriff's office for more information on the case. They have not responded.