Capt. Jeff Richards with the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office said his office investigated only one possible murder, occurring in November.
“We usually investigate around four in a normal year,” Richards said. “That’s just what’s typical, but this year has seen several fewer incidents like that.”
There were also two alleged killings investigated in the Carrollton city limits, making a total of three homicides investigated for the year.
As for other violent crimes, such as rape, robbery and aggravated assault, the numbers have remained level or dipped a bit, Richards said.
“We’ve seen several home invasions, but nothing compared to other areas in metro Atlanta,” the captain said. “I hope those Atlanta crimes don’t come over here.”
Richards said a great deal of the crimes investigated last year were drug-related, and that there was little stranger-on-stranger crime in 2012, which he considers a positive.
“Our stranger-on-stranger crimes are not near the numbers of metro areas, and our murder rate is nowhere near theirs either,” he said.
Richards said he will have more thorough data in the coming days, as the sheriff’s office new software database boots up.
CCSO investigated the death of a Franklin man at a party in Bowdon in November, in which a Bowdon man was arrested and charged with murder.
Herman Lee Smith III, 20, allegedly shot Cardarius Steagall multiple times in the upper torso at an establishment referred to as Club 100 on Highway 100 in Bowdon. Steagall died on the scene.
Smith was denied bond in December by Judge John Simpson, though his attorney, public defender Harry Daniels, said his client acted “completely in self-defense.”
The defendant’s attorney said the defense intends to prove that Steagall had a gun on his person and that Smith was acting only to protect himself and others.
The two men, along with up to 100 other people, were attending a party at a building on the 3600 block of Highway 100 in Carroll County, just north of Ephesus.
No one else was injured in the shooting, police said.
Smith is currently being held in Carroll County Jail, awaiting indictment.
Carrollton Police Department investigated two fatal stabbings in 2012, with one happening 10 days before the new year.
In July, a Carrollton man was arrested and charged with murder for allegedly stabbing a card game opponent.
The man, 26-year-old Roy Lee Gates Jr., pleaded not guilty in November to the charge that he allegedly stabbed Robert Lee Hill Jr. following a fight over who had won a game of spades.
Hill, 53, was taken to Tanner Medical Center, but was pronounced dead once there.
The men, along with several others, gathered on Gates’ front porch at the house he and his father share on Spring Street in Carrollton on the night of July 15. Gates, Hill and two other men were playing the popular card game spades.
Hill was stabbed once in each leg, in the chest and in the bicep.
Gates was previously represented by public defender Julie Moore, who has opened up a private practice in Villa Rica. For the duration of his court appearances, he will presumably be represented by Moore’s replacement, Rebecca Dembkowski.
And finally, in December, a Carrollton woman was charged with murder after allegedly stabbing her boyfriend following an altercation.
MoQuita Green, 25, was denied bond in her first appearance hearing on Saturday, Dec. 22, after the man’s death on Friday.
Green allegedly used a “regular kitchen steak knife” to kill her boyfriend after an argument “got out of hand,” Capt. Chris Dobbs with CPD said.
The male victim, 24-year-old Carrollton man Angel Asenjo Jr., was taken to Tanner Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
The incident took place at Magnolia Lake Apartments on Burns Road in Carrollton.
Green called 911 and told the dispatcher that she had stabbed her boyfriend shortly after 7 a.m. that Friday morning after a verbal argument became physical, police said. Asenjo was found to not have any weapons on him when police arrived.
Police are still investigating the couple’s history to see if there was any past violence between the two.
Green was employed at the Carrollton Walmart in the loss prevention department, Dobbs said.
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