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Archive for January 2010

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Family, church trying to cope with death of 4-year-old boy

Marquel Peters, 4, was killed just after midnight on Jan. 1 after a stray bullet came through the roof of The Church of God the Prophecy in Decatur and struck him in the head during a New Year's Eve church service. Photo provided
Natalee Peters still speaks of her son in the present tense. Nearly a week after 4-year-old Marquel Peters was killed by a stray bullet at a New Year’s Eve church service, his mother is struggling with the realization that her only child was taken ...

Board approves $15K raise for schools superintendent

The DeKalb County Board of Education approved a $15,000 raise for Superintendent Crawford Lewis this month, angering educators who said they’ve been denied raises due to the poor economy. The board voted 8-1 on Jan. 4 to increase Lewis’ salary fr...

DeKalb employment numbers stagnate over last several months

The percentage of unemployed workers in DeKalb County has hovered around 10 percent for the last several months, and local officials believe that number could slightly worsen before it improves. The county’s unemployment rate was 8.4 percent in Jan...

Police search for suspects in animal cruelty case

A dog that was shot in the head on Dec. 30 in Lithonia is recovering from his wound. Photo courtesy of DeKalb County Police.
DeKalb County Animal Cruelty Task Force investigators are searching for persons responsible for shooting a dog in the head on Dec. 30, DeKalb Police spokesman Jason Gagnon said. Officers responded to 5412 Terrytown Lane in Lithonia where they found t...

Mitchell sponsors bill to help homeowners facing foreclosure

State Rep. Billy Mitchell, center, addresses an audience at a press conference at the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta attended by Rev. Jesse Jackson, left, who supports Mitchell’s proposed legislation to provide consumers with a 90-day notice requirement and right to cure a delinquent mortgage in foreclosure.
Homeowners in Georgia do not enjoy the same protection from foreclosure that those in other states have. Here, depending on the lender, the foreclosure process can begin one day after the grace period if an owner is late with the mortgage payment. St...

Keeping weapons out of the hands of criminals

The VIPER unit of DeKalb’s district attorney’s office destroyed 115 firearms on Dec. 17 that had been used in a variety of crimes. “It is particularly reassuring to know that the firearms we destroyed will never again be used for criminal activ...

Yale University a capella group comes to MJCCA for one night

The Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta (MJCCA) will host the Yale a capella group known as The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus (SOBs) on Thursday, Jan. 7, at 7:30 p.m. Now the second-longest running collegiate a cappella group in the nation, th...

Local gallery a salvation for Atlanta artists

Art crawls and twists from floor to ceiling at Donna Van Gogh’s gallery like colorful kudzu directed by a natural force of feng shui. It is, all at once, complex and charming and evocative and bright, from covering the gambit of traditionalist conc...

Campus religious club asserts right to discriminate

Agnes Scott College and Georgia Perimeter College both have Christian student organizations, as do most colleges throughout the state and nation. As one would expect, many of these student groups require their members to adhere to certain religious p...

Principal helps McNair Middle make the grade

Susan Freeman was named principal of McNair Middle School four years ago.
Susan Freeman reached into a desk drawer inside her office in November and pulled out an old copy of The Champion. It featured a front-page article several years old detailing serious disciplinary problems that plagued the school years before she arr...