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POULAN, Ga. (WALB) -A Poulan family is grieving after a 45-year-old father was shot to death in his own neighborhood on Christmas Eve. The man’s widow says a dispute with a neighbor stripped her of her husband and the father of her six children.

Tricia Cummings says her husband, 45-year-old George Cummings, was the backbone of their family. He worked every day, built much of their home and carried the family on his shoulders. The couple had been together 17 years. She says he was a devoted father to all of his children. Now she says, the house feels empty without him.

“It’s really hard to go to sleep at night without him. I hate waking up in the morning and him not being there,” Tricia Cummings said.

Cummings said on Christmas Eve she and her husband walked to a neighbor’s home on Melanie Lane to discuss holiday plans with her daughter who had been staying there. She says a man at the home went inside, grabbed a gun and ordered them off the property. When her husband tried to disarm the man, she says he was shot and fatally wounded.

“I said, ‘Baby, come on, before he shoots you.’ He said, ‘Baby, he already did.’ He just fell,” Cummings said.

The Cummings family is now trying to pick up the pieces.

“Why? Why? We always sit around and talk about the stupidest acts that destroy people’s families. They literally destroyed ours. I don’t know why,” Tricia Cummings said.

Cummings says she doesn’t know how to explain her husband’s death to her younger children. She says it never should have happened.

“He’s never done anything to these people. They could have simply said, ‘Don’t come on my property.’ He had time to tell us we weren’t welcome and we would have turned around and gone home,” she said.

Now, the family will spend the rest of holidays working on putting George Cummings to rest.

Arrest made on Christmas Eve

After learning of the deadly Poulan shooting, WALB searched through the Worth County Sheriff’s office inmate database. We learned that a man was arrested and booked into the Worth County jail on murder and other charges on Christmas Eve. William Yerby is facing charges of murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm or knife.

WALB News 10 tried to make contact with Poulan Police, the Worth County sheriff’s office, the Worth County coroner’s office, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) to find out if Yerby is connected to the death of George Cummings. We have not gotten a response.

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