Morning, y’all! We love our bees, don’t we? They’re not hurting anyone, just pollinating and minding their own business. If you want to be a friend to the bees this spring, look out for their enemy: the yellow-legged hornet. These little jerks target honeybees and are invasive to boot. Learn how to spot and stop them here. (Look for the nests!)
Let’s get to it.
GRIEF AND RELIEF ON OCONEE
Credit: Ben Gray/AJC
Credit: Ben Gray/AJC
Rescuers have finally found the body of track and field coach Gary Jones, who went missing a month ago on Lake Oconee. The latest details:
- Jones’ body was recovered about 100 yards from where the body of his fiancee, Spelman College instructor Joycelyn Wilson, was found Feb. 9, the day after the couple’s abandoned boat was reported floating on the lake.
- The search for Jones was a community effort. Local boaters and residents pitched in and were joined by the famed Cajun Navy and other groups.
- Over the last month, efforts were complicated by poor weather and obstacles in the lake.
- Jones’ body was located by Wisconsin search-and-recovery expert Keith Cormican, who was brought in by Jones’ family over the weekend.
- Cormican’s boat was equipped with high-tech sonar gear and special rigging to raise the body from the water.
🔎 READ MORE: Who is the expert who found the body of the missing Oconee boater?
“Everybody was happy that we finally found the body, and quite relieved,” Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said. “Obviously Mr. Cormican proves he really knows what he’s doing.”
The complex and grueling search may be over, but it still isn’t clear what happened to the couple. Here’s a timeline of events so far.
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INSIDE AN AJC INVESTIGATION
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
When you read a story from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s investigations team, you’re reading the product of months, if not multiple years of work.
Recently, investigative reporters Asia Simone Burns and Justin Price released the final installment in a two-year-long, three-part series about the Georgia State Patrol’s aggressive pursuit culture.
I talked to Burns about what the process looks like, from the first glimmer of an idea to the final publication.
It starts with a pattern: “It started with Jennifer Peebles on our data team,” Burns said. The data from Georgia Administrative Services didn’t look like much to the untrained eye, but the team saw a pattern of payouts, alleged liabilities and anticipated lawsuits related to pursuits of the Georgia State Patrol.
Among them was a brief description of a woman who had been standing in the front yard with her brother and was hit by a car. The team filed some records requests for some of the cases and that led them further.
The pattern reveals a story: The woman was Ruthie Richardson, who had been hit and killed by a fleeing car a Georgia State trooper forced off the road.
“She died from a pursuit she played no part in and had nothing to do with,” Burns said. “It was the details of the Ruthie Richardson case that turned into the rest of the investigation.”
The story takes years to be told: The investigations team filed the first requests for the reckless pursuit investigation in 2022. The first installment published in 2024. It’s a winding road, Burns said, full of data analyses, further records requests, cross-references, and conversations with experts and other state departments. Even comparing how different agencies gather data and do their own investigations can be a monthslong process.
“It took (fellow reporter) Justin Price a year of going back to the agency and filing open records requests and asking for additional data sets before we felt comfortable.”
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
The result is a three-part series that looks at the Georgia State Patrol’s pursuit policies and tells the real stories of bystanders and passengers harmed or killed in such incidents.
“When I was writing this story, I agonized over it,” Burns said. “Our entire team did. We wanted to make sure it was engaging and digestible and informative and that it served the readers we write for. This style of reporting is a lot of hard work, and publishing it is a long journey. It’s really encouraging when you get to the end and see how many people were willing to go there with you.”
🔎 Read the AJC’s Chases Unchecked series here:
Part 1: How state patrol pursuits endanger Georgians
Part 2: GSP tactic meant to end chases leads to death at high speeds
Part 3: Bystanders injured in GSP pursuits have few legal protections
MUST-KNOW POLITICS AND BUSINESS
💸 The Georgia Senate passed a bill that could lead to President Donald Trump and his fellow defendants in the Fulton County election interference receiving reimbursement for their attorney fees. Who’d be on the hook for the money? Georgia taxpayers.
⚕️ Most of the 80,000 federal workers under the Health and Human Services Department were offered a $25,000 buyout to leave their jobs as part of ongoing cuts from the Trump administration.
🖥️ A group of labor unions asked a federal court to stop Elon Musk‘s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the Social Security data of millions of Americans.
REMEMBERING BLOODY SUNDAY
Credit: Mike Stewart/AP
Credit: Mike Stewart/AP
This weekend marked the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, a heroic display of courage by civil rights activists in Selma, Alabama, that was met with violence from waiting law enforcement.
Politicians and modern civil rights activists were led by Georgia’s own U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock on a commemorative walk across the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge.
🔎 READ MORE: Scenes and remarks from a historic day in Selma
The day was heavy with meaning as revived strains of racism and animosity course across the country.
Warnock offered stark words of warning to people of all races about the price of hatred.
“They are stirring up old racist resentment,” he said, referring to President Donald Trump and adviser Elon Musk. “Convincing folks that other folks are your enemy. But while they got you looking over there, they are picking your pocket.”
I found it very interesting that some called the weekend of remembrance in Selma a jubilee. That old Biblical word is typically defined as commemoration or celebration, but it has deeper meanings, too: A time of absolution and emancipation, or a song of hope for a better future.
NEWS BITES
Rumor is, Falcons QB Kirk Cousins wants out of Atlanta
Aw, was it something we said?
The son of Backstreet Boys’ Brian Littrell is trying to make it big on ‘American Idol’
Setting aside the “things that make millennials contemplate their mortality” comment, because wow! That boy looks just like his father.
Stats from Atlanta United’s underwhelming draw this weekend
Biggest stat: Not a win.
Watch the moon turn red during a total lunar eclipse this Thursday
Woo! Time to dance around outside and scare the neighbors!
ON THIS DATE
March 10, 1960
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
From the front page of The Atlanta Constitution: The Saints Preserve Us! River May Run Green. Tom Woolley wants to dye the Savannah River green on Saint Patrick’s Day. And the mayor and city council are considering letting him do it.
And they did do it! Once. It didn’t go well. Now, it’s Savannah’s lovely Forsyth Park fountain that gets the festive dye job.
Credit: Justin Taylor/AJC
Credit: Justin Taylor/AJC
Pretty! You can see more pics here. Warning: It will make you want to take a little road trip to the coast for St. Paddy’s Day. (Do it, do it!)
ONE MORE THING
Happy belated International Women’s Day (it was Saturday) to my fellow women, international or otherwise! I appreciate you. May you be unbothered and free.
Thanks for reading to the very bottom of A.M. ATL. Questions, comments, ideas? Contact us at AMATL@ajc.com.
Until next time.
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