Fresh Loaf

"Cap'n" Ken Womack

Last summer, when several homes on her Ormewood Park street were hit by burglars – some more than once – Donna Williamson decided she wasn’t going to wait her turn to get robbed.

She posted a meeting notice for anyone interested in finding ways to deal with the crime wave. Then, a few days prior to the July 2 meeting, a woman was abducted from the nearby East Atlanta Village at gunpoint and forced to withdraw money from an ATM before being released. For Williamson, that was the last straw.

“I said at the meeting I didn’t want people to simply sit there and moan and bitch about what someone else should do about the problem,” she recalls. “We need to do it for ourselves.”

The result was Safe Atlanta For Everyone, a group of about 50 East Atlanta and Ormewood residents who walk their nearby streets to keep an eye out for suspicious cars and hand out occasional flyers listing safety tips.

If SAFE sounds reminiscent of a neighborhood watch from a bygone era when neighbors actually bothered to learn each other’s names, that’s intentional. But technology has brought improvements. These neighbors also Twitter and blog and use an arsenal of virtual tools to keep each other informed – often in real time – of the latest crimes and suspicious behavior in their community. Instead of waiting for the criminals to come to them, they post mugshots online, swap “be on the lookout” notices by e-mail and even track the whereabouts of shady characters so folks down the block can see them coming.

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Matchstic, a marketing firm based near Ormewood Park, and a few other partners are offering about $80,000 in services to the winning nonprofit that applies. The deadline is March 23, and surprisingly, the application isn’t filled with questions that most fledgling nonprofits won’t be able to answer. The “prize” includes a new logo, Web site design and development, promotional print materials (and the copy writing and actual printing services) and some help with strategy and brand positioning.

It’s true the “On the House” campaign will probably benefit the providers, too, but there’s no harm in supporting a community organization in the process, right? Last year’s winner was City Church Eastside.

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Usually, the most excitement East Confederate Avenue sees is a car wreck. There have been a few over the past year. On those occasions, neighbors congregated on the sidewalk to see what happened and to lend a hand if they could.

That’s what makes the incident at the painted brick house on the corner of Confederate and Woodland all the more shocking. Early this morning, the police cars that descended on Confederate, at the south end of Ormewood Park, weren’t responding to an accident. They were investigating the murder of two men. And according to CBS 46, police later learned that a third victim had been kidnapped from the house and severely beaten. He was discovered by a passer-by in the trunk of an abandoned car two miles away.

The neighbors were dazed. I know, because I’m one of them.

At around 1 a.m., I awoke to the flashing blue lights on the bedroom wall. A short while later, I glanced out the window to see an ambulance pull silently away from the scene. Later, when I took the dog for his morning walk, I learned there was no need for sirens.

Witnesses had reported hearing gunshots and breaking glass (somehow, I slept through that) and saw a man stumble from the brick house and collapse next to the Baptist church next door. Police found him dead at the scene. The second victim died inside the house.

Atlanta Councilwoman Carla Smith, who lives a few houses down Woodland from where the shooting occurred, says she went to check out the scene in the early morning hours, wearing her pajamas, and remained behind the crime-scene tape.

She realized the severity of the situation when she noticed the telltale attire of the arriving investigators: “As soon as I saw those fedora hats, I was like, ‘Oh no, there was a homicide.’”

She also says that, based on phone conversations with police, “It was probably drug related.”

The man discovered in the trunk, who had just moved into the house on Confederate the day before, confirmed the drug angle. According to the AJC:

The man, whose name has not been released, “admits that it was part of a drug deal that had actually gone bad,” [Atlanta police Lt. Keith] Meadows said. “He was scheduled to meet the other individuals that were involved in the drug deal, and I guess things kind of went awry and they ended up killing the two that were inside the house and putting him in the trunk of the car.”

Smith says the loss of life is a tragedy — one that she hopes won’t reflect poorly on Ormewood Park. She wants people to know that the evidence suggests this was not a random crime.

“I really have deep roots here and love this neighborhood,” she says. “And I am not scared at all.”

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Monday morning, Memorial Day, I pulled my car into the driveway of my Ormewood Park rental house that sits perched near the top of a hill on Glenwood Avenue, just a stone’s throw from the sweet Glenwood Park development that has served as a barometer for the growth in the neighborhood ever since I moved here from New Orleans almost exactly a year ago. Almost immediately, I could see the trail of evidence: strewn DVDs, a few soiled napkins that only could have come from inside, and, oddly enough, a half-eaten bratwurst, and a half-gnarled tortilla. Huh?
I knew one thing had happened: My four-decade streak of never having been burglarized had been unceremoniously snapped. It had been a good, safe run; previously, I’d only suffered car break-ins in both Tallahassee and New Orleans (that’s what you get for driving a Miata). And now it was over.

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