Five Killed, Six Injured in South Georgia Attacks
RUSS BYNUM
Associated Press Writer
TIFTON, Ga. (AP) -- Five men were killed and at least six other people were wounded in what appeared to be a string of robberies targeting Hispanic immigrants at trailer parks in and around the city early Friday, authorities said.
Some of the victims were beaten with an aluminum baseball bat found at one of the crime scenes, and at least one of the victims was shot, Colquitt County Sheriff Al Whittington said.
Police were looking for two black men in the attacks, but Whittington stressed the attacks appeared to be robberies, not hate crimes.
All the dead were immigrants from Mexico, and all but one belonged to the same family, said Francisco Dominguez, who says his uncle and a cousin were killed in their trailer on the outskirts of town.
''He came here to work and here is where he died,'' Dominguez said of his uncle, who immigrated from Mexico a year ago. ''He should have gone out to build chicken houses this morning.''
The attacks took place in southern Georgia, about 180 miles south of Atlanta. Three of the attacks were in Tift County _ two within Tifton city limits _ and one in neighboring Colquitt County.
''We think they're tied together,'' said Colquitt County Sheriff's Capt. Hal Suber.
Among the injured, at least two were in critical condition, said Mike Lewis, a GBI agent.
In the Colquitt County attack, a man was shot in the head and beaten with a baseball bat, and his wife was hit in the mouth, Suber said. The man was in stable condition at a hospital in Thomasville. The woman has been released, Whittington said.
Whittington added the attacks might be linked to other robberies of immigrants in the past two weeks, including some in neighboring Cook County to the east.
Immigrants ''carry large sums of cash and that makes them an easy prey,'' Whittington said. ''I don't think it has anything to do with race or hate.''
Hispanics in the area fear otherwise, said the Rev. Alfonso Gutierrez of Our Divine Saviour Church, the only Catholic church in Tifton.
''There is a lot of fear because people wonder up to what point it could be a race question,'' Gutierrez said. ''It's a vulnerable community.''
Many immigrants are undocumented and therefore can't open bank accounts, which means they tend to carry a lot of cash or keep it in their homes. They are also afraid to call the police when threatened _ even in these killings, those who found the bodies hesitated to call 911, Gutierrez said.
Tift and Colquitt counties are home to at least 14,000 immigrants from Mexico and Central America who work on cotton and peanut farms, said Luz Marti, a volunteer with Gutierrez' church. Census data indicates that Hispanics make up at least 11 percent of Colquitt County's population and at least 8 percent of Tift County's residents.
''They're panicking,'' Marti said, adding that lack of Spanish-language media beyond a small, bi-weekly two-page supplement to the Tifton Gazette makes the community especially jittery.
At Town & Country Mobile Homes in Tifton, two bodies were found by a 14-year-old boy _ one behind a trash can and the other out in the open. The boy, who lives in a trailer next door, first saw the bodies from his living room window then ventured outside to get a closer look.
Neighbors said they didn't hear any gunshots or noticed a struggle during the night.
''All I heard last night was the dog barking too much,'' said Margarito Castillo of his dog. ''We're used to having the dog bark because there is always strangers walking up and down the street. So we didn't pay much attention to that.''
One woman who lives in the mobile park was so terrified that she refused to give her name. Sitting in a plastic chair holding her six-month-old son, the woman said the community isn't secure, pointing out a missing front door knob on one home.
She just hopes that the suspects are found before anyone else is harmed.
''We're afraid to sleep at night because they might return,'' she said. ''We want justice done. ... We don't want them to think nothing will happen so they return and commit more crimes.''