Free Republic

A teenager accused of killing four people at Apalachee High School in Barrow County was previously investigated for threats about a shooting, the FBI Atlanta office said late Wednesday. Colt Gray, 14, was charged with murder after Wednesday’s shooting, according to investigators. He was not charged after an investigation last year. In May 2023, the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center received several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting, the FBI said in a statement. The threats didn’t identify a school or when it would happen, but they contained pictures of guns. Investigators tracked the post to...

Barrow County commissioners have agreed to pay $150,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a court agreement over a Ten Commandments display that has been removed from the courthouse. Commissioners voted Tuesday night to pay the money. Barrow County and the ACLU agreed to settle a federal lawsuit last month and remove the Ten Commandments display hanging in a breezeway of the courthouse. As a part of the settlement, U.S. District Judge William O'Kelley ordered Barrow County to pay "John Doe" — an anonymous Barrow County resident who sued the county — $1 in damages. The $150,000...

WINDER - A Ten Commandments display in the Barrow County Courthouse, which was the subject of a nearly two-year legal battle, has been quietly removed, in compliance with a federal court order. And Barrow County residents likely will be left with a $150,000 legal bill, the price it cost after one anonymous resident sued his government over the Judeo-Christian icon hanging in the breezeway of the county courthouse in downtown Winder. U.S. District Court Judge William O'Kelley entered an order Tuesday ordering that the Ten Commandments display be removed, according to court records. As a part of that order, Barrow...

Jackson County Commissioners decided in a 4-1 vote Monday night to put up a Ten Commandments display in the Jackson County Administrative Building. Commissioner Stacey Britt proposed the display as a means of supporting the Barrow County Commission, currently embroiled in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union claiming that a Ten Commandments display within the Barrow County Courthouse is unconstitutional. But the Jackson County display will have a significant difference from the Barrow County display. While the Ten Commandments are displayed solo in a breezeway within the Barrow County Courthouse, the Jackson County display will hang alongside...

More than 200 people gathered in front of the Barrow County Courthouse this afternoon to support the county's decision not to remove the Ten Commandments from the government building. The rally was organized by J.J. Harper, the self-proclaimed imperial wizard of the American White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and members of the controversial African-American church, the House of Prayer. The groups were protesting against the American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed a lawsuit to force the removal of a framed poster of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse. Barrow County commissioners voted in June to fight the...