A 66-year-old Barrow County Alzheimer's patient who wandered away from a Statham nursing home Saturday was found in Western Clarke County shortly after 6 p.m. Tuesday, according to a statement issued by the Barrow County Sheriff's Office.
Frank Comer Starr disappeared sometime Saturday from the Bowles Personal Care Home in Statham. He was in the custody of the Barrow County Sheriff's Office on Tuesday evening, and deputies will reunite Starr with his legal guardians soon, said Murray Kogod, chief deputy of the Barrow County Sheriff's Office.
Dozens of law enforcement officers and volunteers helped search for Starr over the more than 48 hours he was missing, including members of Barrow County's Citizens Emergency Response Team, Barrow County's emergency management department, the Statham Police Department and the West Jackson Fire Department.
Boy shot in leg while he and friend played with gun
A 10-year-old Barrow County boy was shot in the leg Thursday morning while playing with a shotgun, but is expected to make a full recovery.
The boy, who police will not identify, was accidentally shot shortly before noon while playing at a 12-year-old friend's home at 14 Herald Drive in Bethlehem, according to Murray Kogod, chief deputy with the Barrow County Sheriff's Office.
"It appears that they gained access to a 12-gauge shotgun," Kogod said. "It went off accidentally while they were handling it."
A 39-year-old Bethlehem man faces murder and aggravated assault charges for allegedly shooting his mother in the back with a crossbow while she was sleeping.
Deputies found Rodney George Thompson, 39, on the porch of his mother's house at 102 Carterdale Court in Bethlehem just minutes after she dialed 911 to report that her son had stabbed her. Dispatchers at Barrow County's 911 center received Lynch's call about 9:45 Thursday morning.
Paramedics found 63-year-old Marjorie Lynch on the floor of her bedroom with an arrow in her back, according to Barrow County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Murray Kogod.
Five Barrow lawmen who responded to car crash honored
WINDER - Three Winder police officers and two Barrow County sheriff's deputies won medals for pulling injured passengers from two burning cars after a deadly head-on collision on Georgia Highway 11 last month.
The Winder Police Department's Medal of Honor is the second-highest award a police officer can receive, and the officers honored Tuesday are the first to receive the recognition, said police Chief Stan Rogers.
Winder police Lts. Rob Currot and Henry Schotter and officer Andy Smith, as well as deputies Buck Stover and Cory Kruse, were honored for valor at Tuesday's Winder City Council meeting.
Investigators in Winder continued to search for clues Wednesday to begin to understand a pair of crashes that killed five people at almost the same spot on Georgia Highway 11 within a week.
In both wrecks, a northbound vehicle crossed the centerline of the road just north of a bridge over Marbury Creek to collide head-on with an oncoming vehicle in the southbound lane.
"We've never had accidents like this," said Winder Police Capt. Dennis Dorsey. "They're looking for road defects, anything you can put a finger on."
A taxi driver and her passenger died in a head-on collision Tuesday morning on Georgia Highway 11 in Winder just yards away from where three people lost their lives in a fiery crash a week earlier.
Tuesday's fatalities brought to six the number of motorists killed in traffic crashes in Winder this year, twice the number of people who were killed in all of 2007.
Police said the cabbie and her fare were killed about 9:30 a.m. when a sport utility vehicle crossed the centerline on Ga. 11 north of Georgia Highway 316 and collided with a taxi owned by Winder Barrow Cab.
Auburn narcotics detective Tony Lafreniere has been tracking a disturbing crime trend in Barrow County for a year and a half.
He's busted prescription drug dealers in single-wide trailers and three-story McMansions; he's locked up 19-year-old students and middle-age professionals.
He's learned the complexity of the illicit prescription drug trade and just how far people will go to get a fix.
The Barrow County Commission has voted to accept a $34,386 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to purchase three thermal imaging scopes for the Barrow County Sheriff's Office.
The scopes are able to detect heat given off from an individual's body, helping deputies to find suspects or fugitives who have disappeared into wooded areas.
Without the equipment, Barrow County deputies have called the Georgia State Patrol when they needed the technology.
An elderly couple from Monroe were taking a friend home from a religious revival meeting in the wee hours Tuesday morning when another car slammed into them head-on on Georgia Highway 11, killing the couple, Winder police said.
A third person died in the 1 a.m. crash near Fort Yargo State Park and The Eagle Greens at the Chimneys golf course; two other people were critically injured.
Wilber F. Taylor, 71, and Dorothy Jean Pike-Taylor, 70, were taking 65-year-old Gerald Whitlow to his Winder home when a car coming the other way crossed a double-yellow line to pass a tractor-trailer truck and struck the Taylors' car, according to police.
Barrow County sheriff's deputies have arrested 19 men and women and obtained felony drug warrants for 24 others as part of one of the widest-reaching narcotics investigations in the county's history.
The arrests come after a two-month investigation, which started with undercover investigators making buy-busts that produced information leading to other dealers, said Chief Deputy Murray Kogod of the Barrow County Sheriff's Department.
Deputies and officers seized what they said is almost $24,000 worth of methamphetamine, ecstasy, cocaine and marijuana and what they called more than $111,000 worth of prescription drugs like Oxycontin and morphine, which are powerful and addictive painkillers.
