Police say drug activity and people who can’t get along are the two primary reasons behind Gwinnett County’s recent spate of killings.
So far this year, there have been 17 homicides, more than halfway to last year’s total of 28 with nine months left in 2012. If the pace continues, the county could eclipse the 2007 homicide record of 50. There were only five homicides at this time last year.
By comparison, DeKalb County authorities have handled 19 homicides so far this year; the city of Atlanta, 8 as of March 17.
Gwinnett District Attorney Danny Porter said it’s too early to discern a trend in Gwinnett’s grim statistics, as homicides are one of the least predictable crime categories.
One thing is clear: no area of the county seems to be immune. Yellow crime scene tape has sprung up in unincorporated Stone Mountain, Lilburn, Buford, Lawrenceville and Norcross.
Seven of the victims were black males who ranged in age from 15 to 64. Five of the victims were Korean, four were white and one was Hispanic.
None of the slayings arose from the kind of stranger-on-stranger crime that tends to cause greater alarm among residents, Gwinnett County Police spokesman Cpl. Edwin Ritter said.
One of the victims, 24-year-old Christopher Kenney, was shot and killed by Gwinnett County police. Police said he was a suspect in several burglary and car thefts who rammed his pickup truck into several police cars in an attempt to avoid being arrested near Stone Mountain on Jan. 23.
Many of the deadly disputes arose when drug deals went awry, like the Jan. 31 shooting in Buford that resulted in the deaths of two 23-year-old men, Daniel Turpin and Trenton Jones, and left two others wounded. Police said Turpin brokered a drug deal with Jones and another man that devolved into a shootout.
Then there was the Feb. 29 spat at an apartment complex near Lawrenceville over a cocaine sale, according to police, which ended in a triple slaying. Farris Weston, 44; James Isiac, 64; and Brian White, 36, were fatally shot. Two associates of the victims have been arrested for trafficking in cocaine, but police are still trying to identify the shooters.
Police also suspect there may have been some drug involvement in a shooting outside a CVS pharmacy near Lawrenceville which claimed the life of 27-year-old Alex Ramos on March 5. Someone apparently tried to rob Ramos and then fled.
Several domestic disputes have also culminated in killings:
● Vicki Bowles, 54, was allegedly bludgeoned and stabbed to death on March 7 by her brother, Dennis Roger Puckett, at the apartment they shared in Buford. Court records indicate Puckett has history of mental illness. He is being held without bond at the Gwinnett County jail.
● A Norcross resident, William “Billy” Stridiron, 59, was stabbed by his grandson, Arion Henderson, police said. Henderson has been arrested on charges of murder and theft for allegedly taking his grandfather’s 42-inch television and 1998 Ford Windstar Van.
● Police said Eva Blatt, 62, was strangled by her husband, Alex Blatt, at the couple’s home near Lawrenceville on March 19. Blatt then tried to kill himself. Police have not yet determined the motive. Blatt is still hospitalized.
A quarter of the murders in the county happened in Norcross, which has a new police chief, Warren Summers.
Summers retired from the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office in 2006 and then was a county prosecutor for drug cases in Newton County for three years. He decided after seeing the posting for Norcross Police Chief to return to law enforcement. He was sworn in Jan. 3 and a month later was thrown into one of the most tumultuous times the community has experienced in years.
“Violent crime is not foreign to me, but I was expecting a little slower break-in period,” Summers said.
Nicholas Jackson, a 15-year-old football player at Norcross High School and former valedictorian of his middle school, was allegedly gunned down by a six-person robbery crew during an early February home invasion. Summers said the robbery was not a random event. He said the thieves were looking for something “they knew, or thought they knew,” that the Jackson family had.
A few weeks later, tragedy struck again when four members of a Korean family were gunned down at a spa they co-owned on Buford Highway. Police said the shooter, 59-year-old Jeong Soo Paek, took aim at his two sisters and two brothers-in-law because they wouldn’t repay money that he had previously lent them, which he needed to open his own spa in Conyers.
Despite the recent body count, Gwinnett, like much of the nation, has seen declines in both violent and property crimes during the recession. FBI Statistics from 2011 are not yet available, but in 2010 Gwinnett police agencies reported a 15 percent drop in violent crime — with a 43 percent drop in murder — over the previous year. Property crime fell 6 percent in 2010 from 2009.
That trend has baffled criminologists who expected the economic downturn to result in an uptick in criminal activity.Robert Friedmann, a criminologist at Georgia State University, who follows local and national crime statistics, said he sees nothing to indicate a crime wave is returning.
“By and large, it’s not happening,” Friedmann said.
About the Author
