In the Loop
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Four Drive-Bys and a Shooting Death Happened Over the Weekend
A woman's ex-husband shot and killed her boyfriend during a drunken argument on Linda Avenue Sunday night.
Tommy Lee Morris, 53, had been drinking at a nightclub and started to argue about the woman with Tony Curtis Foster Jr., 43, according to police. Morris went to his car, got what police described as an "assault-style rifle" and shot Foster several times. He then moved closer to the victim and shot him again while standing over him, police said.
Foster was dead when police arrived at about 10:30 p.m.
Shortly after, police found Morris hiding in the woods near the scene. He is being held at the Clarke County Jail on a charge of aggravated assault.
In addition, Athens-Clarke County police reported four drive-by shootings over the weekend:
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Black Leaders Criticize UGA Over Slave Graves at Baldwin Hall
Photo Credit: Maxim DaPlug
Clarke County NAACP President Alvin Sheats (center) and Fred Smith, founder of the Athens Black History Bowl (right) are among those criticizing UGA's treatment of black remains found during construction at Baldwin Hall
A group of Athens African Americans is calling on the University of Georgia to reconsider its decision to reinter dozens of slave remains at Oconee Hill Cemetery.
"We are very upset by all of this," said Fred Smith, head of the Athens Black History Bowl, before the group's annual celebration Saturday at the Morton Theatre. "This is disrespectful to us as black folks."
The university discovered 27 gravesites while working on an addition to Baldwin Hall, which was built on top of Old Athens Cemetery, also known as Jackson Street Cemetery. UGA officials said in 2015 that they thought all of the remains had been removed during Baldwin's initial construction in 1938.
UGA initially thought the remains were white, but DNA analysis conducted by UGA anthropology professor Laurie Reitsema recently revealed that the vast majority were black.
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Democracy in Crisis Podcast: Private Prisons
Shane Bauer joins us to talk about private prisons in the Trump era. Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo supporting the federal government's continuing use of private prisons, rescinding an Obama administration directive last year that aimed to reduce and eventually phase out federal reliance on them. Shane Bauer is a senior reporter at Mother Jones, where he recently won the National Magazine Award for his story "My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard." He was also spent two years imprisoned in Iran after he and two friends were arrested near the Iranian border in Iraqi Kurdistan.
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Athens Man Attacked Downtown for Being Gay
Athens-Clarke County police arrested a Gainesville man downtown early Saturday morning and charged him with beating up an Athens man who was dressed in women's clothing.
Chad Andrew Weaver, 24, saw the victim on Clayton Street near Georgia Bar and called him a "faggot," according to a police report. After exchanging more words with the victim, Weaver punched him in the face. At one point, the 6' 5", 210-pound Weaver had the 5' 6" victim on the ground and was pulled off by a bystander, police said.
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Campus Carry Bill Passes House Committee
Rep. Mandi Ballinger (R-Canton).
A bill that would allow people with concealed-carry permits to bring weapons onto the University of Georgia and other public college campuses cleared a key hurdle Monday.
The House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee passed House Bill 280, sponsored by Rep. Mandi Ballinger (R-Canton), according to the AJC, sending it on for a likely but yet-to-be-scheduled vote before the full House.
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Shirley Sherrod Headlines First Thurmond Black History Lecture
Shirley Sherrod.
Shirley Sherrod, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official who was fired and reinstated during a bogus Obama Administration scandal, will be the first speaker in a new lecture series named for DeKalb County CEO and Athens native Michael Thurmond.
Sherrod was the Georgia state director for rural development at the USDA in 2010 when conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart posted a video online that purported to show Sherrod detailing how she refused to help a white farmer in a speech to the NAACP. Sherrod was fired; however, the video turned out to be misleading and selectively edited, and the Obama Administration apologized to her and offered her a new position, which she turned down.
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Ex-UGA Player Quentin Moses Remembered as 'True Gentleman'
Photo Credit: Joshua L. Jones
Quentin Moses' father, Preston, comforts his mother, Claudette Smith, at a memorial service Thursday at Cedar Shoals High School.
A crowd of over 300 people gathered at Cedar Shoals High School on Thursday for a vigil in remembrance of Athens native and former University of Georgia football player Quentin Moses, Andria Godard, and her daughter, Jasmine Godard, who died in a house fire Sept. 12.
The only people who talked ill of Moses were the players on the opposite side of the ball, who were faced with the challenge of getting by him, said Moses’ former high-school coach Scott Wilkins during the vigil. “On the field, he was a player that locked down the left side of the field defensively, and off the field he was a true gentleman,” Wilkins said, adding, "He was the best player I ever coached.”
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Richie Knight Is the First Candidate in the 2018 Athens Mayor's Race
The presidential race feels like it's barely over, and local elections are still 15 months away, but campaign season officially arrived again when young businessman Richie Knight declared his candidacy for Athens-Clarke County mayor today, joined by a few dozen supporters at City Hall.
Knight said he wants to "see a new generation take over the helm... We've been stuck in a rut the past 20-30 years."
His top priority, he said, is economic development—high-paying jobs to alleviate the city's 30-plus percent poverty rate. He said he would focus on recruiting businesses that will pay a living wage, although he hasn't settled on a figure of what a living wage should be. (It's $10.17 an hour in Athens, according to MIT.)
"We need to have real conversations with employers, not just about coming here, but about what it means to be part of the community, whom they should be hiring, wage amounts," he said.
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