COMMUNITY
WELLNESS
Fueling more discord
World of influences
JenCare Medical Center which caters to seniors on Medicare has opened a facility on Candler Road in Decatur. 4
The Scores sports bar and restaurant on Wesley Chapel Road in Decatur could be replaced by fuel pumps if Kroger gets its way. 3
The quartet Vientos del Pueblo will bring its fusion of music from Africa, Europe and American Indigenous roots to the Decatur Library. 7
Health care for seniors
SCENE
EAST ATLANTA • DECATUR • STONE MOUNTAIN • LITHONIA • AVONDALE ESTATES • CLARKSTON • ELLENWOOD • PINE LAKE • REDAN • SCOTTDALE • TUCKER
Copyright © 2013 CrossRoadsNews, Inc.
September 21, 2013
Volume 19, Number 21
www.crossroadsnews.com
More to teen’s kidnapping than first meets the eye By Ken Watts
The abduction of 14-year-old Ayvani Hope Perez from her Ellenwood home in the early morning on Sept. 17 may not have been as random as police first believed. Police records show that Ayvani’s mother, Marie Corral, was arrested with one of the suspects in a 2012 drug raid just Ayvani Perez south of Atlanta. Vincent Picard, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, confirmed Juan Alberto Contreras-Rodriguez’s identity Thursday. “He is the same person in our cus-
tody that was arrested on drug-trafficking charges,” Picard said. Contreras-Rodriguez, a 40-year-old Mexican national, and Wildrego Jackson, 29, of Atlanta were arrested Sept. 18 after the teen was found unharmed in Conyers, Contreras-Rodriguez about 25 miles from her home. Authorities suspect two other men – portrayed in widely circulated police sketches after the abduction – are still on the run. Ayvani was taken from her Brookgate Drive home just south of the DeKalb County line. The girl’s relatives say two men, wearing black clothing and armed with handguns,
pried open the family’s back door about 2:15 a.m. Tuesday. Corral and her two children – Ayvani and her 15-year-old brother – hid inside the home, but the intruders found them, shot the family’s dog and Wildrego Jackson took Ayvani in a gray Dodge van. They also said the men demanded a $10,000 – then $100,000 – ransom for the teen’s release. Clayton County Police, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the FBI were involved in the search for Ayvani. During a Sept. 18 news conference, Clayton County Police Chief Gregory Porter
said the teen was reunited with her family that day. “She’s safe,” he said. “She’s being evaluated as we speak. This is a good day for the Perez family, but more important for Ayvani.” FBI Special Agent Rick Maxwell said the captured suspects were not the two men portrayed in police sketches. “We believe those two suspects in the drawings are still at large,” Maxwell said. Police said the family moved into the two-story house about a month ago. Contreras-Rodriguez is being held on immigration-related charges. Jackson, the second man arrested in the kidnapping, was charged Wednesday with conspiracy to kidnap. Arrest records paint him as a career criminal, arrested multiple times on charges of assault, child cruelty, sale
Homeless sisters want jobs to get back on feet Cylinthia and Camille Fitchett lost their apartment and car after layoffs. The two have been sleeping at a vacant county building in Decatur while they search for jobs.
Women fell on hard times when economy tanked By Ken Watts
For 20 years, Cylinthia Fitchett was a dedicated social worker back home in New Jersey, helping clients escape the grip of poverty and homelessness. Today at age 51, she and her younger sister, Camille Fitchett, are among DeKalb County’s homeless. The two have been sleeping on the steps of the old Candler-McAfee Library building in Deca- Cylinthia Fitchett tur since about early September. Fitchett said they are at wits’ end. “We have nowhere else to go,” she said. On Sept. 16, the sisters’ few belongings were neatly stacked outside the building’s covered entrance. It’s certainly not the way Fitchett envisioned her life unfolding when she graduated from William Paterson University in 1998 with a degree in psychology and dreams of making a difference. She and her sister are among 6,664 homeless people in the city of Atlanta and in Fulton and DeKalb counties. From her hometown of Hillside, N.J., near Newark, Fitchett was drawn to the Atlanta area’s more prosperous image in the wake of the 1996 Olympics. After several visits to test the waters in the early 2000s, Fitchett landed a job as a receptionist at School Specialty Inc., a wholesale school supply company in Norcross, in 2005. “That lasted for about six months until they eliminated my position,” she said. Fitchett returned home briefly to take
Ken Watts / CrossRoadsNews
care of some family business before moving to DeKalb for good in 2006 – at about the same time the local economy began to head south. “My sister and I sold our parents’ house in New Jersey and moved here that fall,” she said. “We were able to live on the house proceeds and my savings until I could get a job in social work.” But it didn’t work out that way. Unable to find employment in her field, Fitchett filled time doing volunteer work at the DeKalb Rape Crisis Center and served as a peer counselor at CareNet Pregnancy Center of Atlanta. She continued to look a job – any job. “I go to the library every day and use their computers,” she said. “I’ve sent in resume
after resume and logged more interviews than I can remember. They tell me I’m overqualified.” The younger Fitchett, who does not have a college degree, said they are looking for anything that will bring income. She found a job at an Atlanta customer service agency but was laid off during the economic recession. From 2006 to 2009, the sisters lived in a rented condo in Stone Mountain, but when their funds dried up, they were evicted. They put their furniture and other household property in storage, but they were later auctioned off for lack of payment. Cylinthia Fitchett said they lived in her car for about nine months until it broke down. “I had no money to get it fixed,” she said.
“Friends and acquaintances let us stay with them here in DeKalb and out in Conyers from 2010 until this year, 2013. We’ve been on the streets off and on since the winter months and here outside the old library for about two weeks.”
Homeless census As the Fitchett sisters wage their personal survival struggle, homeless advocates are trying to figure out ways to help thousands of homeless people like them. The Metro Atlanta Tri-Jurisdictional Collaborative on Homelessness, or Tri-J, is studying results of its biennial homeless census done on Jan. 29. Please see HOMELESS, page 4