The year 2015 marked Savannah’s bloodiest 12 months since 1991.
Forty-eight people fell victim to homicides in the city. Another five were slain in unincorporated Chatham County and a college student was shot to death at a local university.
In 2014, there were 33 homicides in all of Chatham County.
“It’s a significantly high homicide rate,” said Savannah-Chatham Police Chief Joseph Lumpkin, whose department investigated all but one of the 54 slayings in 2015.
It’s a rate that prompted a mother whose son was slain to run for public office. It’s one that prompted an electorate to push for a sea change at City Hall, where a new mayor running on an anti-crime platform was sworn in just two weeks ago. And it’s one that left families across the county looking for answers as their loved ones lie dead or injured.
Lumpkin’s department plans to release its year-end crime statistics later this month, and they’re expected to show overall violent crime at its highest level since 2009.
Lumpkin, new Mayor Eddie DeLoach and District Attorney Meg Heap hope improved police staffing, targeted operations, tough prosecution and the new End Gun Violence initiative will make a difference in 2016.
“We think it will start coming down now,” Lumpkin said of the violence. “We pray that’s the case.”
Violence on the rise
Savannah-Chatham police say they investigated 53 homicides in 2015. The jurisdiction covers the city, which has a population of about 144,000 residents, and the unincorporated county, where about 97,000 people live, according to Census Bureau data.
Only five of the homicides were in the unincorporated area.
Five other violent deaths were deemed “justifiable” homicides — slayings committed in self-defense.
Only one homicide, the August shooting death of a student at Savannah State University — was outside the metro police department’s jurisdiction. Christopher Starks’ slaying is still under investigation by state authorities.
One of the justifiable homicides was a police shooting — the Oct. 28 death of Tyrie Cuyler, 25. Metro police say they returned fire on Cuyler after he started shooting at two officers when he was pulled over near Cuyler-Brownville. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is still looking into the case.
It was the second time in 2015 that local police shot and killed someone. On March 10, police in Port Wentworth fatally shot 23-year-old Christopher Mitchell to keep him from stabbing a baby.
He already had stabbed a man and a woman, authorities said. After a GBI investigation, the Chatham County District Attorney’s Office declined to seek charges.
Fourteen of last year’s homicides — the largest chunk — were domestic, Lumpkin said. Of those, five were children killed by parents or caretakers. Twelve homicides — the next largest portion — were drug related, including a triple slaying and a double slaying, according to Lumpkin.
In addition to the homicides investigated last year, the metro police department reported roughly 300 aggravated assault with gun cases — the charge typically brought in shootings. There were 198 investigated in 2014. In fact, the jurisdiction saw spikes in all violent crimes except rape, but nearly 60 of those were reported.
Despite a staffing shortage and a 67 percent caseload increase, Lumpkin said he expects year-end statistics will show homicide detectives solved 2015 cases at a clearance rate that’s higher than both the national average and the rate at which they solved cases in 2014.
He also said the forensics unit has been about 24 percent understaffed over the last year but has managed to outperform its 2014 levels as well.
“It’s because information has flowed in the last six to 12 months better than it was 12 to 14 months ago,” he said. “Citizens provided us with more information and a higher quality of information than they had previously. That allowed the violent crime detectives to be more effective and efficient with less of them working.”
Compelled to act
The increased violence of 2015 spurred a slew of rallies, vigils and “die-ins” as part of a community-wide call for change and inspired suffering mothers to make their voices heard.
Among those voices was Linda Wilder Bryan.
As a former sergeant at the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office, Bryan was used to dealing with the justice system but never imagined she would be navigating the system to seek justice for her youngest child.
Lawrence Bryan IV, 23, was shot at a Duane Court residence just after 12:30 a.m. on Aug. 7, 2015. He was taken to Memorial University Medical Center where he died of his injuries.
“The night that I found out that he was in the hospital it was just like something had pulled my whole being out,” Bryan said.
Driven by her son’s unsolved murder, Bryan ran for Savannah City Council, hoping to bring leadership change.
“Lawrence got shot on 52nd, and we still don’t have his killer,” Bryan said. “Rome is burning, and they still did not want to say that there was a crime issue — I sleep with crime.”
Although she lost at the polls, Bryan said she won’t stop fighting for change.
“Your quality of life in Savannah should not be incumbent on where you live,” she said.
Bryan still carries a poster board with her son’s photos in the trunk of her car. The mother of three says she carries his picture everywhere to remind people that each homicide represents a grieving family, regardless of their past.
“I always said that my son’s death would not be in vain, she said. “He was a father and a son. He had a Catholic burial, and over 400 people were there. They’re not going to make him a victim twice.
“No one should be able to kill anyone because of a perception that it’s OK to kill somebody because they sold drugs or they smoke reefer. It’s still a life, and we’ve got to do better. ... They said that I was a mad, angry black woman. I’m not mad, but I was angry with the system of leaders in this community that look like me and sounded like me and they didn’t even play like they cared.
“(Angry with) The system because — I worked there — I know it’s not always fair... You don’t have to be black, (just) be poor.”
End of an era
A demand for change was also reflected at the polls. At the end of 2015, Savannah welcomed in a new mayor and three new city aldermen.
Mayor Eddie DeLoach, who ran on a promise of reducing violent crime, said he expects to see changes this year.
“I think everybody recognizes what effect (violent crime) has just by the amount of talk you hear on the street about it,” DeLoach said. “It’s just overwhelming because people don’t know what to expect. If they’re going out, they don’t know if they’re coming back because of the way things are happening as far as the shootings here in Savannah.”
For DeLoach, perception is everything.
“It has put some fear in people that you can’t get over until you feel safer based on not just necessarily the numbers but your perception of those numbers,” he said. “Whether something is getting done, whether people are doing their jobs, whether we have enough police officers, whether they see enough police officers — all those things enter into your feelings as far as your perception on where the crime is as far as this community is concerned.”
DeLoach said he’s entrusting his hope for a reduced crime rate to the police department’s latest initiatives.
End Gun Violence
Through its primary antiviolence task forces and the End Gun Violence initiative, the police department hopes to drive down the numbers dramatically.
The initiative, which started here with a $240,000 contract with the National Network for Safe Communities in New York, marries community and law enforcement resources to pump social help into at-risk areas while simultaneously identifying and removing the city’s most prolific violent offenders.
In December, law enforcement agencies and prosecutors took their first concrete step in making the anti-violence initiative a reality. After auditing five years worth of data on homicides and two years worth data of aggravated assaults to identify the Savannah area’s most violent offenders and their cohorts, authorities brought them in and sat them down.
The “call-in” targeted members of violent groups and gangs responsible for a majority of shootings and homicides. There, authorities told them to lay down their weapons and gave them the option to seek help from community organizations to receive counseling, job training, and other services to help turn their lives around.
The ones who don’t take a turn for the better, they are told, will be treated to a “laser focus” by law enforcement and prosecutors.
And, as part of the effort, District Attorney Meg Heap says she’s not going to drop or plead down any gun cases.
“I’ve got my most experienced prosecutors assigned to the most violent offenses,” Heap said. “They are also picking up the possession of firearm by convicted felon offenses. The thought behind that is with their expertise we’re going to apply a laser focus to those cases.”
Initially, authorities were able to identify 27 alleged members of a reportedly violent group called Fifth Ward and connect with 24 of them, Lumpkin said. Police have warrants for and are looking for the other three, he said.
Lumpkin says the program allows police to infiltrate the city’s gangs to stop violence from within.
For example, under the initiative Lumpkin says police were able to intervene in a dispute between members of a violent group after shots were fired into a teenager’s home earlier this month before it escalated any further.
Coordinating with the district attorney’s office and other law enforcement agencies, police were able to hold the teen in custody for being associated in a gang to prevent a retaliatory shooting.
“We brought a violation against the person as being a gang member, which is a crime,” Lumpkin said. “But the motive was not only that he was a gang member but to create space between that individual and the perpetrators of the shooting because they were going to shoot at each other until they were successful.
“Instead of having an aggravated assault where it had to be treated at Memorial or a murder, we had neither. We had a house shot up that was empty at the time it was fired upon, and we prevented a crime against persons.”
And, he said, work by a violent crimes task force that managed 62 arrests in a four-day period in early January will continue.
Looking at the overall criminal justice system, the chief pointed out that police and prosecutors can only do so much. If violent offenders they arrest and try are sentenced lightly or even released from their sentences early, he said, it’s hard to make a lasting impact.
“With murder, sexual assaults and armed robbery, you have to stop those criminals or they will continue,” Lumpkin said. “They will be repeat offenders.”
He called it a “catch-and-release” system, and said police attribute violent offenders returning to the streets with crime problems. After all, many of the suspects in the shootings have criminal records, and police repeatedly arrest felons on gun charges — the people who are legally barred from possessing firearms in the first place.
“What we’re asking for is that the offenders who are charged with gun crimes serve their time and not a third of the sentence,” Lumpkin said. “... Those are serious crimes. We want them to serve time. That’s the way we stop violent crime.”
More blue
For the police department, one thing that’s getting better is a reduction in its long-standing staffing shortage.
At the start of his tenure, Lumpkin reported that the department had an attrition rate of roughly 17 percent a year over the last five years. On Tuesday, he said that’s dropped to less than 7 percent in the previous six months.
Counting officers in training, there were 24 vacancies in the department last week, and Lumpkin said he plans to get that number to zero – a level not seen in years. The City Council has budgeted to hire 15 additional police officers this year.
Going into 2016, Lumpkin said, additional officers are budgeted for an undercover drug unit that focuses on street-level narcotics sales and possession of firearms by people who aren’t legally allowed to have them.
DeLoach said he’s expecting positive results from the department’s efforts.
“I went to the first (call-in), and I was really impressed with what they did there,” he said. “I feel like it’s really going to make a big difference in our city within the next year... Once we get community-based policing started up and running, you’ll see a large difference in the overall community.”
CHATHAM COUNTY HOMICIDES IN 2015
January
• Vera Elaine Ribal, Jan. 1: Ribal, 60, and 48-year-old Ramon Anthony Mooney of Rincon were found dead in Ribal’s home on Estill Hammock Road near Tybee Island. Police say the case was a murder-suicide and that the suspect, Mooney, killed himself.
• James Pastures, Jan. 19: Pastures, 34, was shot in front of an apartment in the 1900 block of East 51st Street. This case is open.
February
• James Adams, Feb. 6: Adams, 54, was shot to death in a home he was renovating near Barnard and West 43rd streets. This case is open.
• Mandi Kaiser, Feb. 18: Kaiser, 37, was found dead in her apartment in the 12000 block of Apache Avenue. Her fiance, 38-year-old Willie Moore Jr., was indicted on murder and related charges.
April
• Anderson Mells, Gary Mells and Johnny Green, April 13: The Mells brothers, 52 and 30, and Green, 37, were found shot to death inside a home in the 1200 block of Northeast 36th Street. This case is open.
• Derek Johnson, April 25: Johnson, 19, died at a hospital a day after a drive-by shooting in the 2100 block of Glynnwood Drive, between Skidaway Road and LaRoche Avenue. Za’Kee Robinson, 19, was indicted on murder charges in the case, and an associate, 20-year-old Thelron Winbush, was indicted on a charge he conspired with Robinson.
• Rashad Biggins, April 26: Biggins, 21, died at Memorial University Medical Center after being found shot at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Henry Street. This case is open.
May
• Alonzo Richardson, May 7: Richardson, 30, died at Memorial after being found shot outside Heritage Place apartments in the 700 block of Lavinia Street. This case is open.
• Mikell Wright, May 31: Wright, 15, was shot to death near Sunrise Villas apartments during an armed robbery. Three other teenagers, 15-year-olds Tobias Daniels and Zykieam Redinburg and 13-year-old Antonio Griffin, were indicted on murder and related charges. They are being tried as adults.
June
• Valantine Gant, June 6: Gant, 26, was shot to death during what police called a drug deal gone wrong in the 100 block of Edgewater Road. Justin Edward Cassell, 24, was indicted on murder and related charges in the case.
• Lorraine Manuel, June 10: Manuel, 27, died at Memorial after being shot six days earlier at a rental house on Culverton Court in southwest Chatham County. The property owner, 68-year-old Vivian Corley was indicted on murder and related charges in the case.
• June 9: No public information due to active police investigation.
• Jammell Law, June 20: Law, 17, was found shot to death in a car that had crashed into the steps of a vacant house at West 41st and Harden streets. Arheem DeLoach, 19, was indicted on murder and related charges in the case. Grand jurors charged that DeLoach had been robbing Law.
• Jamon Epps, June 25: Epps, 34, was found shot to death inside an SUV outside Ponderosa Apartments off LaRoche Avenue. This case is open.
• Rosalyn Chapman, June 26: Chapman, 62, was shot to death inside her home in the 2200 block of Mosley Street. Her husband, 55-year-old Edwin Chapman, was indicted on murder, aggravated assault and related charges in the case. He was also charged with shooting and injuring a second woman at the residence
July
• Michael Johnson, July 10: Johnson, 50, died at a hospital after being found shot at 42nd and Montgomery streets. Tyron Henry, 20, was indicted on murder charges in the case after being arrested by U.S. marshals in Wisconsin.
• Ricardo Morris, July 11: Morris, 38, was found dead on the side of the road in the 7400 block of LaRoche Avenue. This case is open.
• Hakeem Clark, July 26: Clark, 21, was shot to death during a reported robbery in the parking lot of the post office at West Bay and Fahm streets. This case is open.
August
• Lawrence Bryan IV, Aug. 7: Bryan, 23, died at Memorial after being shot in the 3600 block of Duane Court. This case is open.
• Marquail Banner, Aug. 18: Banner, 20, died at Memorial after being shot at Fred Wessels Homes. This case is open.
• Christopher Starks, Aug. 27: Starks, 22, died at Memorial after being shot during a fight in the Student Union at Savannah State University. This case is open.
• Marshall Powers, Aug. 13: Powers was found shot to death near West 32nd Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. This case open.
September
• Ja’Von Wilson and Jayquan Turner, Sept. 28: Wilson, 19, and Turner, 24, were shot to death in the 1400 block of Barnes Drive. Emile Randolph, 32, Asim Simmons Jr., 19, and Quamelius Lee, 20, were indicted on murder and related charges in the case.
• Rommell Stephens, Sept. 29: Stephens, 26, was found lying dead on the side of northbound Truman Parkway just south of Victory Drive. This is an open case.
October
• Jenny Keebler, Oct. 3: Keebler, 38, and 41-year-old Jose Perez-Estrada died at a hospital while being treated for gunshot wounds. Police suspected a domestic homicide.
• Marlon Underwood, Oct. 4: Underwood, 22, died at a hospital after being shot at a gas station at Middleground Road and Tibet Avenue. This is an open case.
• Zyra Morgan and Savannah West, Oct. 15: The two children, 1 year and 7 months old, were pronounced dead at Memorial after police responded to a 911 call from a mother stating she had drowned her two daughters in the 600 block of West 59th Street. The mother, 26-year-old Jokeera Morgan, was indicted on murder and related charges in the case.
• Gracie Trotter, Oct. 15: Trotter, 4, and her mother, 21-year-old Melissa Thacker were found shot in their home in the 7800 block of Clyo Circle. Trotter was dead at the scene. Police believed Thacker attempted to take her own life. She has been charged with murder in the case.
• Frank Wilson, Oct. 18: Wilson, 24, was shot to death on West Congress Street next to City Market. Joseph Heyward, 23, was indicted on murder and related charges in the case. Heyward’s girlfriend, Ciera Leeks, was indicted on charges of conspiring to help him commit the crimes.
• Kiana Marshall, Alexis Kitchens and Isaiah Martin, Oct. 22: Marshall, 21, Kitchens, 19, and Martin, 18, were found dead inside a home in the 800 block of Lynah Street by officers checking on reports of a door that was left open. Police charged 22-year-old James Hampton, 18-year-old Dwayne Abneyand 18-year-old Diamond Butler with murder in the case.
• Laila Hawthorne, Oct. 27: Police say that the death of Hawthorne, 4, was deemed suspicious after an autopsy. This month, they charged 23-year-old James Robinson with murder in the case. He was allegedly the live-in boyfriend of Hawthorne’s mother at the time of the child’s death.
• Jimmy Temple, Oct. 29: Temple, 24, died at Memorial after he was shot near the 600 block of Yamacraw Village. This is an open case.
November
• John Williams, Nov. 11: Williams, 22, was shot to death on Sterling Street. Police charged 26-year-old Reginald Johnson with murder in the case and said the shooting stemmed from an ongoing feud between the two men.
• Robert Brown, Nov. 14: Brown, 18, died at Candler Hospital, where he was taken in a privately owned vehicle after being shot at West 57th and Montgomery streets. This is an open case.
• Emanuel Simmons, Nov. 14: Simmons, 31, died at a hospital after being shot at West 45th and Montgomery streets. This is an open case.
• Bobby Owens, Nov. 26: Owens, 43, was found dead in front of a home on Oak Forest Lane. Police are actively looking for 18-year-old Johnathan Muarice Gibbs, whom they’ve charged with murder in the case.
• Mario Williams, Nov. 27: Williams, 29, was shot and killed at a gas station in the 700 block of Wheaton Street. Police charged 18-year-old Deandre Glover and 26-year-old Brandon Miller with murder in the case.
• Marquita Jones, Nov. 28: Jones, 21, and 20-year-old Jordan Fields were found dead inside of two separate cars at Edgewater Road and Montgomery Crossroad. Police say Jones was shot to death by Fields, who then turned a gun on himself.
December
• Brandy Council, Dec. 2: Council, 34, was shot to death near the 100 block of West 33rd Street in an incident that also injured a 17-year-old male and two men. This is an open case.
• Johnee’ Williams Dec. 3: Williams, 19, was shot to death outside an apartment in the 500 block of Pennsylvania Avenue. The suspect, her 20-year-old ex-boyfriend Malique Francis, then holed up in a nearby property, where police say he shot himself.
• Aaron Anderson, Dec. 6: Anderson, 20, died at Memorial after he was found shot outside a residence in the 300 block of East Anderson Street. Ernest Grady, 19, was arrested in Atlanta and charged with involuntary manslaughter in the case.
• Michael Holmes, Dec. 9: Holmes, 33, died at Memorial after he was shot outside an apartment building in the 1900 block of Skidaway Road. Police charged 24-year-old Gregory Rhynes with murder in the case.
• Rocquan Scarver, Dec. 10: Scarver, 17, died at Memorial after he was shot at West 39th and Burroughs streets. This is an open case.
• Randy Hooks, Dec. 25: Hooks, 53, was found shot to death inside a crashed pickup at Reynolds and East 40th streets. This is an open case.
Unknown time
• The bodies of Patricia Witherspoon, 80, and her son, 50-year-old Ralph Terrill were found in their Sunnybrook Road home on April 18. Investigators said they had been dead for some time. On July 19, police announced that they determined Terrill killed Witherspoon before committing suicide.