Entries by Walter Geiger

A 35-year-old Barnesville man is being held in the Lamar County jail on a $10,000 bond after being caught up in a video sting at the Griffin Walmart where he allegedly planned to meet what he thought was a 14-year-old boy for sex.

James Thomas Crews of 205 Georgia Ave., Apt 4 was charged with one count of enticing a child for indecent purposes by LCSO investigator Kathryn Knapp Monday. His bond was set at a hearing before chief magistrate Karen Jackson Wednesday morning. [Full Story »] 

Policy is, or at least should be, based on public opinion. Public opinion has always been like a pendulum - constantly swinging. It swings to the far left and then slowly to the far right. The period of time the pendulum spends in the balanced middle, where common sense thrives, is very short.

There are many out there who try to control the narrative of events you hear in order to swing your opinion toward policies they support and would like to see put into effect.

Perhaps no other issue illustrates this as well as the debate over abortion in America. [Full Story »] 

Between Tuesday, June 11 and Monday June 17 the Barnesville Police Department made the following arrests: [Full Story »] 

If you are looking for a bargain on desks, chairs, tables or similar items, the LC athletic program has just the opportunity for you. Vast quantities of surplus furniture and other items from the soon-to-be-demolished old high school building will be available at a huge yard sale Wednesday and Thursday.

The sale will be conducted in the high school building from 8 a.m. - 3 p.m. both days and all proceeds will go to the athletic department. All items must go and will not be priced until early Wednesday.

Buyers should park in the old gym parking lot off Peacock Street and enter the high school through the back entrance near the college and career academy building.

The demolition team will take possession of the old campus Monday, June 24 and the bulldozers will turn it into rubble from which a new soccer/practice filed will soon arise.

At a press conference Thursday evening, sheriff Brad White indicated his suspicions that Frenchie Fambro was the likely shooter in a double murder/suicide earlier in the day on Fredonia Church Road.

Pending confirmation from GBI crime scene techs, White said it was likely Fambro, 55, shot Al Ogletree, 50, at his home at 159 Fredonia Church Road. Ogletree did not report for work Thursday morning and a relative checking on him found his body blocking the door. He had trauma to the head - likely a gunshot wound.

Fambro is also thought to have shot his stepfather, 88-year-old Charlie Sutton, who was found dead in a bed in his home at 234 Fredonia Church Road. Fambro was also dead in a bed in that home from what is likely a self-inflicted gunsot wound to the head. A gun was found near his body. Sutton's wife Annie is currently a superior court bailiff for the sheriff's department.

Fambro was invovled in another shooting here in 2011 but was one of the first people exonerated under Georgia's Stand Your Ground law which was new at the time.

Here is our online coverage from the day he was freed, Nov. 12, 2012:

For the second time, Frenchie Fambro has been cleared of any wrongdoing in connection with the July 21, 2011 shooting death of Christoper Martin Stepanski, 26.

Stepanski was shot and killed in the parking lot of JR Food Mart on College Drive in Barnesville.

Judge Bill Fears signed an order November 12, noting his finding that Fambro shot Stepanski in self defense. Testimony and forensics indicated Stepanski was in - or very near - Fambro's car when Fambo fired, striking Stepanski twice.

Judge Fears' order grants Fambro immunity from prosecution in the case.

Fambro, 49, had originally been charged with murder but chief magistrate William Thomas dropped that charge at a hearing on September 8, 2011. Fambro was later indicted on one count of involuntary manslaughter - the charge which Judge Fears has effectively dismissed.

Fambro has long been free on bond.

By Mike Ruffin

In late spring of 1964, I joined my fellow graduates of Miss Sylvia’s Kindergarten on the stage of the Gordon Grammar School lunchroom. At a designated point in the midst of all the pomp and circumstance, I stepped forward and, with trembling knees and shaking voice, recited the first poem I ever uttered publicly. It was “The Swing” by Robert Louis Stevenson.

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
[Full Story »] 

A Bluffton, S.C. man was arrested here on Memorial Day after an alleged road rage incident on I-75 during which he fired four shots from a .45 caliber handgun through his own windshield at another vehicle on I-75 South. The vehicle he fired at had twin 9-year-old girls inside. [Full Story »] 

A Lamar County couple is stranded at their home at 181 Ponderosa Lane after heavy rains burst a dam adjacent to their driveway, cutting a 12-15 foot ravine through their only means of access to their property.

James and Vivian Parker said a neighbor measured over seven inches of rain before the dam burst sometime Sunday night. The half-acre pond yielded only two fish after it was suddenly drained. A considerable amount of water is still running through the waterway and fire chief Douglas Matthews is trying to find some help for the couple. "It is going to take someone with an excavator," Matthews said.

If you can help or know someone who can, contact the Parkers at 770.358.2234 or chief Matthews at 678.603.5630.

The driver of a tandem tractor-trailer rig walked away from this crash Tuesday morning on Hwy. 36 East. The driver told responding deputies he was talking on the phone to his boss when he lost control and ran off the roadway. The westbound rig overturned in a ditch on the northbound side of the highway at about 9:30 a.m.