Sherry Willingham, a bank teller at Fifth Third Bank in Merchant’s Walk, was at work Monday when her daughter-in-law called.
She asked Willingham if she had been contacted by the management of the Hamptons at East Cobb apartment complex at 1523 Roswell Road. Willingham lived on the second floor of the complex’s 200 building. The fire had indeed broken out in Willingham’s building, displacing her and nearly 40 more residents while also leaving a 74-year-old man dead. Thomas Alexander, or “Tommy,” as he was known to Willingham and others in the building, was found dead in apartment 226, just across the hall from Willingham’s unit, following Monday’s fire, according to Officer Shenise Barner, spokesperson for the Cobb Police Department.
Willingham left work to check on her dog, a 14-year-old chihuahua named Chi Chi, and came home to find her building ablaze.
Firefighters had rescued the dog, Willingham’s emotional support animal since 2016, from the burning building. Though she is grateful she and Chi Chi are alive, Willingham is devastated, having lost her home. It adds to the traumas she has suffered in the last two decades: the death of her mother, a bout with breast cancer and a recent divorce. Police and the Cobb and Marietta fire departments responded to the fire around 11 a.m. Monday.
Fire units were on scene within five minutes, the Cobb County Fire Department said in a news release, finding “heavy fire at the front of the building and flames through the roof.” Fifty firefighters and a dozen fire trucks responded.
Cobb County has sued the contractors behind the largest water system project in county history, alleging their negligence led to a “massive and catastrophic failure” of a wastewater facility in 2018.
The county’s lawsuit — which seeks at least $39 million — accuses contractors J.F. Shea and Traylor Brothers of faulty welding in the construction of the sewage pumping facility.
A 200-foot deep concrete shaft, the structure sits near the Chattahoochee River in south Cobb and pumps waste from a huge underground tunnel up to the county’s treatment plant. J.F. Shea and Traylor Brothers — two of the country’s largest construction firms, who completed the project under the joint venture Shea-Traylor — were hired in 2008 to construct both the pumping facility and the nearly 6-mile tunnel, and awarded a contract worth $305 million. Construction lasted nearly a decade, and was completed in February 2018.
But the failure of the project happened less than a year later. On Dec. 30, 2018, per the county’s lawsuit, a cover for one of the gates separating the wells from the tunnel system “suddenly ruptured and exploded upward.”
The result was that liquid sewage flooded the pump chamber, spilling “a combination of rainwater, creek water, and untreated wastewater” into nearby Nickajack Creek, the county said at the time. The volume of the spill was some 113 million gallons. It took the county months to clear out the pump facility, the lawsuit says. The county alleges the failure was directly attributable to faulty welding and that Shea-Traylor hasn’t helped with the cleanup or remediation efforts.
Kennesaw State University is not the only major research university with a foothold in Cobb County. Just ask Ángel Cabrera, the president of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Cobb Chamber of Commerce Chairman Greg Teague did just that, interviewing Cabrera on the stage of the Coca-Cola Roxy at the chamber’s monthly luncheon Monday.
Cabrera, the 12th president of Georgia Tech, touted the Atlanta-based university’s impact, across the U.S. and globally, but also in Cobb. He added that Georgia Tech is the fastest growing university in Georgia and the second fastest growing in the country over the last decade.
And now, for two straight years, Cabrera said, Georgia Tech is the top spender for research among universities without a medical school, a title the Institute wrestled from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A portion of that research takes place at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), Cabrera noted, which focuses on applied research, or research focused on solving real-world problems.
About 900 of the nearly 3,000 research engineers and scientists in the GTRI are based at the Cobb County Research Facility, Cabrera said. The Cobb location of the GTRI is based at the Lockheed Martin campus adjacent Dobbins Air Reserve Base.
With Jackie Smallwood Field, home of Marietta’s baseball program, sitting at the low point of the school’s campus, rainouts and a sloppy playing field were an issue each season.
Now, after the recent completion of a $2 million upgrade to the Marietta baseball and softball facilities — featuring the installation of artificial turf surfaces — neither should be a problem again. New Marietta baseball coach Josh Davis said his players have raved about the facility upgrades, and it has allowed him to hold practice outside, while other programs around Cobb County have had to move indoors to get their work done. McKinney said the baseball and softball facilities were the first of Marietta City Schools’ SPLOST VI projects to be completed. Other athletic projects still on the docket as part of the overall $71.5 million which include an LED video scoreboard for Northcutt Stadium, in addition to a scoreboard for the on-campus field that serves as home for Marietta’s track and field, lacrosse and soccer programs.
The project was done by Hellas Construction. The turf is called Major Play Matrix, which was created specifically for baseball and softball. It is designed to deliver “consistent and predictable ball response, a shock-absorbent field of play and a long-lasting investment.”
A Marietta man previously convicted of stabbing his stepson to death over dirty dishes has once again been found guilty by a Cobb jury, the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office announced.
Aaron Edward Strong was found guilty of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault and two counts of possession of a knife during the commission of a felony in the August 2015 attack of his stepson, 32-year-old Maurice Arnold, and step-grandson, 22-year-old DeAndre Arnold.
Strong was granted a new trial in 2020 after the Georgia Supreme Court overturned his first conviction. According to the DA’s office, Strong came home after a weekend away to the residence he shared with his wife Felicie Strong, Maurice Arnold and DeAndre Arnold on August 24, 2015.
Strong, upset about dirty dishes in the sink, began a verbal altercation with his stepson and step-grandson, the DA’s office said, and after Aaron Day, a neighbor and friend of DeAndre Arnold’s, overheard the altercation in the background of a video game chat, he suggested Maurice and DeAndre Arnold leave the residence.
As the Arnolds sought to retrieve some belongings from the home, Strong attacked Maurice Arnold with a hunting knife. As DeAndre Arnold attempted to stop Strong from continually stabbing Maurice Arnold, he was injured by Strong, the DA’s office added.
Police arrived at the scene and arrested Strong after talking to witnesses, according to the DA’s office. Maurice Arnold later died from his injuries.
A crucial heads-up play by Zach Bleshoy helped propel Pope into the Region seven six A championship game after a nail-biting 51-50 win over Alpharetta on Tuesday at Roswell High School.
With 30 seconds left in the game, the Raiders had possession and Alpharetta leading scorer Bryant put up a shot that just missed off the front of the rim. It looked like the Raiders were going to keep possession as the ball was heading out of play, but Bleshoy found a way to give the ball back to the Greyhounds.
He grabbed the ball, and as he was heading out of bounds, managed to throw it off an Alpharetta player. The win sends Pope into the region title game where it will face top-seed Blessed Trinity on Friday. The Titans beat Greyhounds 55-46 in mid-January and then 61-52 just over a week ago. Alpharetta will take on Sprayberry in the third-place game.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
