By Huey Freeman
Herald & Review
DECATUR — Martez Jones, a 27-year-old Macon County Jail inmate, was arraigned Monday on a felony charge of aggravated battery in connection with an incident where a correctional officer was punched in the face.
Jones, who is being held on $265,000 bond, was booked into the jail July 17 on a charge of failure to register as a sex offender. He was awaiting trial in that case when the alleged attack on the officer occurred.
Macon County Sheriff’s detective Adam Walter witnessed the attack and made the arrest at 11 a.m. Sept. 9.
Walter was in the process of booking another man into the jail when he “heard a commotion” nearby, he wrote in an affidavit. He said a man he identified as Jones, outside of a holding cell, aggressively “striking (the correctional officer) repeatedly in the face with a closed fist.”
When Walter “approached the battery in progress,” Jones stopped striking the officer. After Jones was given a jolt from a Taser, Walter ordered him to lie “face down on the floor with his hands behind his back.” Jones was then handcuffed and re-booked into the jail on the aggravated battery charge.
In an interview with Walter, the jail officer said he had been serving a tray of food to Jones, when Jones rushed out of his cell “and instantly began punching him in the face.”
The guard was treated for a laceration to the top of his head, as well as swelling, lumps and redness around both eyes.
Circuit Judge Timothy Steadman set Jones’ bond on his new charge at $250,000. He had previously been held on $15,000 bond on the sex registration charge.
Jones is required to register his address change with police within three days of moving, due to a 2006 DeWitt County conviction of criminal sexual abuse of a teenage female. He was arrested in the failure to register case, after Decatur Police detective Charles Hendricks visited an address he had listed. A resident told him Jones did not live there and had not even spent the night recently, Hendricks wrote in an affidavit.
Jones is due in circuit court Sept. 25 for a preliminary hearing in the aggravated battery case. He is on the court docket Sept. 29 for a jury trial in his sex registry case as well as a status hearing in a 2013 burglary case.