COMMUNITY
COMMUNITY
SCENE
Friends and co-workers remembered a slain mother and her two children who died at the hands of troubled elder son. 3
After years of delays, the 18.3-acre Flatshoals Park in Decatur finally opened across last week with activities for kids and adults. 4
Tea, cookies, hats, painted eggs, arts and craft and a book signing are on tap when the Tupac Amur Shakur Center for the Arts Easter event. 8
Candles for Shelia
Copyright © 2011 CrossRoadsNews, Inc.
New Park unveiled
April 16, 2011
Easter at TASCA
Volume 16, Number 51
www.crossroadsnews.com
Veteran prosecutors joining DeKalb State Court bench By Jennifer Ffrench Parker
Veteran prosecutors Eleanor Ross and Stacey Hydrick will join the DeKalb State Court bench on May 2. The two women were appointed April 8 by Gov. Nathan Deal to fill vacancies created by a forced resignation and a voluntary resignation from the bench in February and March this year. Ross, who lives in Li- Eleanor Ross thonia, will fill the Division 5 vacancy left by Judge Barbara J. Mobley, who resigned Feb. 4 to avoid a Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission inquiry into misconduct on
the bench. Hydrick, a Dunwoody resident, will fill the Division 2 vacancy created by the resignation of Judge J. Antonio DelCampo on March 15 to join the Atlanta plaintiffs’ firm Harris Penn Lowry. Ross and Hydrick will Stacey Hydrick take the oath of office at a 2 p.m. ceremony on April 29 at the State Capitol. They were among 47 lawyers who applied for the vacancies and were picked from a field of eight finalists nominated by the Georgia Judicial Commission. Ross, a University of Houston law graduate, has been an attorney since 1994. She
moved to metro Atlanta in 1997 and worked with the DeKalb Solicitor General’s Office under Ralph Bowden for a year before joining the Fulton County DA’s office. Her high-profile cases include the 2008 conviction of Chiman Rai, the Indian businessman who had his daughter-in-law murdered because she was African-American, and the 2010 conviction of Devonni Benton for firing the stray shot that killed Spelman College sophomore Jasmine Lynn as she walked across an Atlanta University Center campus in 2009. Ross also worked the cases that sent eight members of the International Robbing Crew and 10 members of the Nine Trey Bloods street gang to prison. Since December, she had been assisting former Attorney General Mike Bowers, for-
mer DeKalb District Attorney Bob Wilson, and investigator Richard L. Hyde in their probe into the Atlanta Public Schools test scores cheating scandal. Ross said she applied for the judgeship because she loves courtroom work. “I have done a lot as a prosecutor, and based on the experience I have acquired I applied,” she said. Ross will finish the three and a half years left on Mobley’s term and run for election in 2014. She has never run for office before, but her husband, Brian Ross, was one of three candidates who sought the Democratic nomination in 2006 to challenge Republican Please see JUDGES, page 5
50,000 Pairs of Shoes Needed Martin Kumi puts a pair of new sneakers on the feet of a schoolgirl in Ghana last year. Shoes are prized possessions for Ghanaians, who often go without.
Three-month drive ambitious but very doable By Jennifer Ffrench Parker
Martin Kumi was 16 years old when he came to Stone Mountain from Ghana. When he got his first opportunity to return in 2005, the boy who grew up barefoot in Kumasi had 10 pairs of sneakers with him. As news of his arrival spread, 300 family members showed up. He left the country with only the shoes on his feet. “People were mad at me for not bringing them shoes,” he said. Martin Kumi On his return to DeKalb County, Kumi started the nonprofit Barnabas International, now called the Soul Project, to collect lightly worn and new shoes to ship to Ghana. Over the past three years, he has collected 100,000 pairs of shoes with the help of DeKalb schoolchildren, churches and individuals and has taken them all to Ghana. It wasn’t enough. Each trip, many people are turned away empty-handed and children leave in tears. Last year he took 3,000 pairs of shoes. “No matter how many shoes you take, it won’t be enough,” said Kumi, pointing out that 300 million children around the world are shoeless. Tammy Flagg, who accompanied Kumi to Ghana last year, said the need was so great and the children so grateful. “When we gave them a pair of shoes, it was like you gave them a Cadillac or a Mercedes-Benz,” she said.
Flagg said she returned home to Snellville with a new appreciation for the value of a pair of shoes and how far it can go. “Those with shoes wore them until they literally fell off their feet,” she said. “It was common to see their heels and toes hanging out the shoes and strings holding them together.” In Western Ghana where Kumi is from, children walked up to 10 miles a day to school with no shoes. Kumi said shoes are a rarity for many people and that cuts, scrapes and burns to the feet are often infected and sometimes lead to amputations.
Even though the task of providing shoes for people in his homeland is enormous, Kumi said God has placed it on his heart to collect shoes for people who don’t have them. After helping people in Ghana and Haiti, Kumi and a group of supporters from De Kalb County are going to Liberia in July. They want to take 50,000 pairs of shoes with them and are seeking the community’s help. “We would like people to donate shoes and help us collect shoes,” he said Wednesday. Kumi said people have shoes they have
outgrown or no longer wear. His only requirements are that they are in good repair, are clean and have flat heels. “We don’t want high heels,” he said. “Only flat shoes and sneakers.” Over the past two years, students from Lithonia Middle School collected 3,000 pairs of shoes for Kumi to take to Ghana. He said he also has worked with students at Stone Mountain, Tucker and MLK High and at Rock Chapel Elementary schools. Last year, Louise McNeely-Cobham, the Please see SHOES, page 5