An area of Hall County has a history of gang-related activity, but some residents say they feel safe.
A grand jury recently indicted 12 people on federal drug charges, after drug agents said they'd broken up one of the largest drug rings in the north Georgia area.
Agents seized more than $800,000 in methamphetamine, $20,000 in cocaine and $12,000 in marijuana in March, dubbing the drug ring the “Lenox Park Cartel” because virtually every single one of the people arrested lived in the Lenox Park subdivision or knew people who did.
But the Lenox Park area, located around the apartments at 1000 Lenox Park Drive in Gainesville, has a history of gang activity going back more than a decade, according to Joe Amerling, who works with the Gainesville Police Department and is vice president of the Georgia Gang Investigators Association.
Amerling said Ernesto Reyes, 18, and a member of the La Onda-05 gang, Jose Arellano-Villatoro, 17, were at Lenox Park in 2007, looking for a rival gang member.
He testified in 2007 that Reyes, a member of the Hispanic street gang BOE-23, admitted to firing a 12-gauge shotgun at homes in the Lenox Park and Silverwood subdivisions, according to the Gainesville Times.
The front bedroom window was blown out from gun fire, which also sprayed glass on a sleeping woman, the paper reported. Though no one was injured, shotgun pellets were found embedded in the wall behind her, Amerling said in court.
“If they had been six inches lower, she probably would have taken a direct blast,” Amerling said.
Fewer than a handful of years after that shooting, a fight in 2010 between two rival gangs, Latino street gangs La Onda and SUR-13, ended in the death of 23-year-old Daniel Adame, of Gainesville.
Police charged eight gang members, whose ages ranged from 15 to 21 years old, with fighting and violating the street gang and terrorism act, the Gainesville Times reported.
But months after the most recent drug bust, residents told The Gainesville Times they feel safe and some even called the Lenox Park area calm.
John Feliciano, who has lived at the apartments for almost a year, told the newspaper he had never heard of the alleged drug deals until seeing it in the news. Feliciano described the area as pretty quiet, where most people keep to themselves.
“I’ve never seen anything like that happen over here, but I don’t know about that street over there,” Feliciano said, referring to the houses.
While children ran around on the lawn near the apartments, Hunberto Sandoval said through a Spanish translator that the area always seems to be calm.
“I feel like right here it’s safe,” he said.
Martin Lopez, another man who lives in the complex, also in Spanish described the area as “calm.”
“The police always cruise around in the evening,” Lopez said through a translator.
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