Anger over the death of Andrew Wordes – a keeper of chickens who apparently killed himself rather than be evicted from his home in March – is reflected this week in ramped-up security at Roswell City Hall, Channel 2 Action News reported.
Starting Wednesday, visitors to the municipal offices and courts no longer can use the front entrance. They must come through a special door and pass through a metal detector. A police officer mans the security post, and video surveillance records all visitors.
Officials told Channel 2 they had been talking about making the changes for some time.
“We have talked about putting a metal detector into City Hall for several years now,” Roswell Community Relations Director Julie Brechbill said.
But threats that followed Wordes’ March 26 death sped up the project.
The 53-year-old Wordes is believed to have blown himself up in his house in the 300 block of Alpine Drive in defiance of marshals who had come to evict him.
Since then, conspiracy websites and videos posted to YouTube have sprung up, accusing Roswell officials. Followers of some websites have emailed and called City Hall, “threatening to kill people, threatening to blow the building up,” Brechbill said.
Roswell police said they were investigating the threats but were not prepared to comment if they were credible or if arrests were imminent.
Known to neighbors as the “chicken man,” Wordes began raising chickens on his .97-acre homestead just off Alpharetta Highway in 2005. In February 2009, the city cited him for raising livestock after a neighbor filed a complaint.
Wordes' fight with the city drew the attention of former Gov. Roy Barnes, who represented him in court and persuaded Municipal Judge Maurice Hilliard in May 2009 to throw out the city ordinance.
Neighbors told the AJC that Wordes’ financial troubles began that September, when much of the man's home was flooded.
Also, in December 2009, the Roswell City Council approved a new ordinance banning roosters and using lot size to determine how many chickens a resident can keep. Since then, Wordes was repeatedly cited for code violations, nuisance complaints and traffic tickets.
Last summer, about a third of the birds on Wordes' property died mysteriously.
In November 2010, he pleaded guilty to violating city codes. He was arrested in August for violating his probation related to that citation and served 99 days in jail.
In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in February, Wordes blamed the city for all of his woes that helped land him in foreclosure. Wordes apparently had fallen behind on his mortgage payments while in jail.
When marshals arrived to evict Wordes the morning of March 26, he warned them off his land.
Two hours later, an explosion ripped through the house followed by a fire, likely started by gasoline poured throughout the dwelling, investigators said. It took a day for investigators to positively identify the body found in the debris as Wordes’.
-- Staff writers Alexis Stevens and Patrick Fox contributed to this article.
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