A man was murdered at Rooty Creek last night (around 6:40 p.m. Friday, Oct. 9) and two men have been arrested in connection with the murder, according to Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills.
Zachary Brandon Smith, 19, was pronounced dead at the scene at Flat Rock near Pea Ridge Road. Sills said he Smith was living in Milledgeville, but the address on his driver’s license is Eatonton.
Two Madison men were arrested a few hours later. Michael David Ludwick, 20, was charged with murder; and his father, Joshua David Ludwick, 38, was charged with murder as a party to the crime, Sills said.
The body was discovered a couple of hundred yards from the Rooty Creek bridge on Pea Ridge Road. Sills said the victim had been shot multiple times with a rifle. Saturday morning, that rifle had not yet been found by authorities.
A witness of the shooting identified the men from Madison, and Sills and deputies with Putnam, Morgan, and Walton county sheriff’s offices went to the residence and arrested the accused shooter in his living room.
“I had talked with the boy’s daddy on the phone before we got there and he was waiting on us across the street,” Sills said. “He was later taken into custody, too, and has been cooperative with us, and actually been of assistance.”
When asked about the motive for the shooting, Sills said investigators were still sorting that out, but “it appears to be an insignificant discord.”