MOULTRIE, Ga. — A new attorney has been appointed to represent a Moultrie man accused of killing five acquaintances and setting their house on fire.

Melinda Ryals of Tifton will take over for Burt Baker, who resigned as lead attorney for defendant Jeffrey Alan Peacock late last year. Peacock is accused of fatally shooting five people May 15, 2016, at their Rossman Dairy Road residence, killing three dogs and setting fire to the wood frame house.

Baker asked in October that he be allowed to withdraw from the case, reportedly because he was leaving the state’s Capital Defender’s Office to take another job.

Ryals has been a member of the Capital Defender’s Office since 2013, according to her LinkedIn profile. An attorney since 1995, she served as chief public defender in the Alapaha Judicial Circuit from 2004 to 2012.

A Colquitt County Grand Jury indicted Peacock in March 2017 on five counts of malice murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Peacock also was indicted on three counts of aggravated cruelty to dogs and arson.

Prosecutors say that Peacock shot Jonathan Garrett Edwards, Ramsey Jones Pidcock and Aaron Reid Williams, all 21; 20-year-old Alicia Brooke Norman; and Jordan Shane Croft, 22. The five were shot in the head at their 505 Rossman Dairy Road residence before the wood-frame house was set ablaze.

Peacock reportedly was one of three callers who notified Colquitt County E-911 on the morning of May 15, 2016, according to E-911 call logs.

Initial sheriff’s reports said that when a deputy arrived at the burning wood-frame house, located about five miles northeast of Moultrie, Peacock was at the scene. He told officers at that time that he had gone to get breakfast for his five friends living at the house and saw the smoke as he was returning.

Investigators immediately were suspicious that five healthy young adults would succumb to fire, and have said that an autopsy showed no smoke in their lungs — meaning they were dead before the fire started.

According to indictments in the case, all five were shot in the head before the house was set on fire.

Two dogs also died inside the residence of burns and smoke inhalation, according to police, and the body of a third dog with a fractured head was found outside the house.