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Gwinnett Daily Post THURSDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2015
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Vol. 46, No. 62
GWINNETT COUNTY 2015
Decrease in homicides, but more unsolved By Joshua Sharpe
joshua.sharpe @gwinnettdailypost.com
BUTTON GWINNETT
DEBT, DUELS DECLARATION AND THE
The sordid tale of the county namesake By Curt Yeomans • curt.yeomans@gwinnettdailypost.com utton Gwinnett is famously known as the Declaration of Independence signer with the rarest signature, but he was, by all accounts, a failure at almost everything he tried. Gwinnett’s name was in the spotlight earlier this month after late night talk show host Stephen Colbert performed a rap song about the founding father. The song quickly spread on the Internet and was a brief topic of conversation at the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners’
Dec. 15 meeting. “I think it is a pretty neat little rendition,” Gwinnett County commission Chairwoman Charlotte Nash said. “I think we need to let the guy know who Button Gwinnett actually was.” Commissioner John Heard added, “They did have a surprising amount of information in there, though.” Colbert’s seemingly out-ofnowhere tribute to Button Gwinnett capped a year that marked what would have been the 280th birthday for Gwinnett County’s namesake.
What is known about Gwinnett’s birth is that he was born in 1735 in Gloucestershire, England, according to the state’s official biography of him in the New Georgia Encyclopedia. He was the son of the Rev. Samuel Gwinnett and his wife, Anne. He married Anne Bourne in 1757, and they had at least one daughter, according to a biography drawn up by the Georgia Society of Sons of the American Revolution. The family moved from England to Charleston in the early 1760s and shortly thereafter moved again to Savannah. It’s also known that he tried his hand, mostly unsuccessfully, at being a merchant, a planter and a planner of a military expedition into Florida during the American Revolution despite having no military experience. In virtually all of his biographies the expedition is described as a disaster. The one arena where he found a degree of success was in the political ring. Anyone who has read his historical marker outside the Historic Gwinnett Courthouse may be familiar with the basic details: Becoming a justice of the peace in 1767, a commissioner of pilotage a year later and a member of the General Assembly the year after that. After he served a two-year term in the Continental Congress See GWINNETT, Page 7A
The victims turned up dead in houses and apartments, parking lots and lonely patches of woods feet away from the passing world. As of Wednesday, the Gwinnett County Medical Examiner’s Office had worked 28 confirmed homicides in 2015. The number is down considerably from the 37 counted in 2014. The positive shift comes with a decrease in the homicide clearance rate at the Gwinnett police department, which reports resolution in 78 percent of the 23 cases in its jurisdiction this year.
The rate was nearly 93 percent in 2014. But the local rates are well above the national average, which trends less than 65 percent, according to statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. One issue hindering Gwinnett detectives, police said, might be drugs. “Some of the cases have a drug nexus which makes the suspect pool larger and more difficult to access,” said Cpl. Deon Washington, a GCPD spokesman who is also a veteran of the homicide unit. “In addition, some of the parties involved in these cases are not forthcoming with police. These factors create obstacles
See RATE, Page 3A
2015 UNCLEARED GWINNETT HOMICIDES • Feb. 9: Stacy Hall, 24, and Kory Moss, 22, were found shot to death in their apartment at a top-floor unit at the Wesley Herrington Apartment Homes outside Lawrenceville. • July 16: Kevin Rivera, 21, was gunned down in the parking lot of Forest Vale Apartments in unincorporated Norcross. • Nov. 1: Jordan Whitson, 38, died at his Buford. (Police have released no information.) • Nov. 24: Jeffrey Anderson, 25, was found shot dead in a home at 2773 River Station Court outside Lawrenceville. Anyone with information can contact detectives at 770-513-5300 or Crime Stoppers at 404-577-TIPS (8477).
‘Our own Christmas miracle’ By Joshua Sharpe
Ashton Williams looks a lot different in recent days than he did in November. The infant spent days in a coma at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta after he stopped breathing at his Dacula day care. Now, he’s been released from the hospital and can be seen in pictures traveling around the Southeast visiting with family for the holidays. Ashton’s father, Hurchel Williams, is
amazed. “We are calling him our own Christmas miracle,” the dad told the Daily Post on Wednesday. “We know God has a sincere plan for Ashton and his life.” All this after doctors said the boy might not make it. The father has said the child had multiple surgeries due to arteriovenous malformation. Mayo Clinic defines the condition as a “tangle of abnormal blood vessels connecting arteries and veins in the brain.”
See MIRACLE, Page 3A
Left, this marble bust of Button Gwinnett sits in the rotunda of the state Capitol in Atlanta. (Staff Photo: Curt Yeomans) Top, the Library of Congress has this 19th-century engraving of Button Gwinnett in its holdings. There are various images of Gwinnett, most of which were painted after his death. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress)
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Dacula infant makes remarkable recovery
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