A registered sex offender who had been sought by the Calhoun Police Department and other law enforcement agencies was arrested recently and is in the process of being transferred to Whitfield County to face new charges of child molestation, indecent exposure and enticing a child.

Thomas Justin Wooten, 37, of 597 Daniel Road, Trenton, was arrested in Huntsville, Alabama, last week on outstanding warrants from the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office.

Whitfield Sheriff Scott Chitwood said Wednesday that Wooten had previously been reported in multiple locations, including Calhoun, as exposing himself to children and attempting to lure children into his black Chevrolet Z71 pickup truck.

The Calhoun Police Department has also levied two counts each of enticing a child for indecent purposes and public indecency, both felonies.

Whitfield authorities began investigating after receiving such reports in November only to discover that Calhoun authorities were also actively investigating similar incidents. They later discovered the same suspect had exposed himself and tried to lure a child into his truck using toys back in March of 2018 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Wooten was arrested by Chattanooga police for indecent exposure and was out of jail on bond.

During the investigation law enforcement officials discovered Wooten is a registered sex offender in Dade County. They also were able to locate the truck outside of Wooten’s place of business and match it and stickers on the vehicle to descriptions given to Calhoun and Whitfield authorities. Additionally, cellphone data also placed Wooten at the scene of the crimes in both locations.

Last week, with the assistance of Dade County Sheriff’s Office and Calhoun Police Department, the Whitfield sheriff’s office executed a search warrant on Wooten’s residence in Dade County. As a result of the search warrant, additional items of evidence were collected and the warrant for the new charges was filed.

Wooten was arrested in Alabama last Friday and was being transferred to Whitfield County on Wednesday.

Chitwood said that the Calhoun Police Department, Dade County Sheriff’s Office, Chattanooga Police Department, Georgia Bureau of Investigations and Huntsville Police Department all assisted with the investigation.

BARROW COUNTY, Ga. — Barrow County authorities are asking the public to be on the lookout for an absconded sex offender who may still be in the county.

The sheriff’s office released a notice around 4:30 p.m. that Matthew Ryan Rakestraw was missing. Rakestraw is described as being a white male who is about 5 feet 8 inches tall and 180 pounds with brown hair and hazel eyes.

Rakestraw was convicted of felony statutory rape in 2009 which is listed in Georgia as “sexual intercourse with any person under the age of 16 years and not their spouse.” The photo provided by the sheriff’s office was taken in October and is in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Sex Offender Registry.

Anyone with information regarding Rakestraw’s location is asked to call Investigator J. Bole at 770-307-3080 Ext. 5811 or email jbole@barrowsheriff.com.

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Rome City Schools board members went over student programs and policies Tuesday as part of their annual retreat, held at the Waverly Hotel in Atlanta.

Superintendent Lou Byars said dual enrollment numbers in RCS skyrocketed from 118 students in the last school year to 252 in this one. With dual enrollment, students also take some college courses. The credits give them a head start once they graduate high school.

Board members talked about ways to keep expanding opportunities.

“One of our goals is to increase diversity in our gifted programs,” Byars said.

While the number of Hispanic students increased the most for minority enrollment in the gifted programs, the gifted and dual enrollment programs are still overwhelmingly made up of white students. The Rome City Schools district is majority minority, Byars said.

“Our student enrollment needs to reflect that. It has to change,” said RCS school board member Alvin Jackson. “The more we get our students involved, particularly our minority students, the better off we’ll be.”

When asked how students were selected for the gifted programs, Byars said anyone can recommend that a student be tested — including the students themselves.

“I know this because my daughter recommended herself over 20 years ago,” he laughed. “The teacher did not think she was gifted, but she ended up passing.”

Dawn Williams, the assistant school superintendent, said even peers can recommend their own friends be tested for the gifted program.

During the retreat the board’s attorney, Chris Twyman, also presented two proposed written policies — one regarding police interviews of students and the other is regarding visitation.

Twyman said both policies are already in practice, but the school system needed clarification on each.

The first policy regarding interviewing and questioning by law enforcement specifies that parents are to be notified if police want to interview a student. The only exception is in the case of an emergency and Twyman said the determination of what constitutes an emergency is judged on a case by case basis.

“If it’s not an emergency, that interview is not happening if we can’t get in touch with a parent,” Twyman assured the school board.

One of the only times a parent might not be contacted is if there is a case of child abuse where the parent may be the perpetrator, he said. The policy also states that the only people who are allowed to search student lockers and vehicles on campus without a search warrant are school administrators.

In regards to the visitation policy, Twyman said that if a parent wants to visit a school, they simply have to give notice. In the case of a parent who is a registered sex offender, they would only be allowed to visit if their child is directly involved with a school event.

Under no circumstances are registered sex offenders allowed to volunteer for the district, and they will be escorted at all times while inside of the school, he said.

However, if a registered sex offender’s sentence states they are not to be on a school campus, they would not be allowed in any Rome city school — even to visit their child.

“We don’t override the law,” Twyman said.

Georgia currently has more than seven million registered voters, a record number. Minority voter registration and turn-out also hit record highs during the 2018 election cycle and governor’s race. Democratic gubernatorial nominee, former State House Minority Leader, Stacey Abrams received more general election votes than any Democrat for governor in Georgia history. All facts.

We all have a right to our own opinion, life priorities and the conclusions which we draw, but we don’t have the option of simply hypothesizing from different facts.

Minority voter registration not only spiked, but now exceeds its percentage of the state’s population. Voter registration does not always translate into turnout though. In metro Atlanta suburbs, and the centers of several of Georgia’s secondary population centers, though there is no party registration in Georgia, the Democratic Party and its nominees won numerous counties, precincts and local as well as state elected offices during the 2018 election cycle. Again, facts.

Though I look forward to a day when race is not a major driving force in Georgia or national politics, we remain a far cry away from there as yet. With all that stage setting, and my revulsion of conspiracy theories generally clear, I’d like to challenge one more. There is no ongoing orchestrated effort to reduce voter participation, registration or voting by minority or Democratic voters in Georgia.

It is county and municipal election superintendents across Georgia, and their oversight boards of election, who determine precinct boundaries, polling locations and hours of operation as well as oversee the tabulation of absentee, early/advance votes and all ballots cast on election day, after all polls have closed.

Much is being made of the potential removal and purge of more than 330,000 voter names from current voter rolls across our state. Georgia has nearly 10 million residents and more than seven million registered voters. Purging every two years, as required by state and federal law, typically removes the dead, those who have left a particular county, duplicates, non-citizens as well as those who choose, for whatever reason they have to simply not vote for a full four year period, and then not respond for an additional two year period when local election officials attempt to confirm their residency and interest in remaining a registered voter. Ten percent of registered voters would be well in excess of 700,000. Five percent exceeds 350,000. The prospective purge list is public and available for searching, as well as updating online.

Consider your own circle, and how many family and friends you have lost or who have moved from your community within any six year window of time. Voter registration is tied to your legal residence and domicile and is not automatic when you change addresses, however any Georgia voter can now go to the Secretary of State’s My Voter Page and update their registration and address information online and for free. That website, created by then Secretary of State Brian Kemp (now Georgia’s Governor) is second only to the automatic Motor Voter process when you receive or renew a Georgia Driver’s License in adding voters to Georgia voter rolls.

Georgia also set records in 2018 for early voting and absentee voting. Another fun fact is that the absentee ballot application have no space to indicate race or political party preference. The only opportunity to even draw such a conclusion is to select a ballot in a Democratic Primary or run-off, or for the election employee to conduct a manual/electronic cross reference search of their voter registration data base. That action leaves an electronic trail. As some have pointed out a disproportionate number of minority voters are on the proposed purge list, several demographers also acknowledge that minority populations tend to be more transient and more likely to move, changing residences as well as voting jurisdictions.

Yet with this proposed purge list up and available for several weeks now, there is only a trickle of activity, being reported by Georgia’s election superintendents, or coming in via the Georgia SOS My Voter Page via voter address updates. Where are the masses being intentionally removed, disenfranchised or somehow disabled from voting?

I will admit though, I still have my doubts about Jeffrey Epstein committing suicide, and I’m not clear as a convicted sex offender in Florida if he still had voting privileges in New York, but he did complete the requirements of his plea agreement, so he may have had his voting rights restored. I still would expect him to be on the Democratic Secretary of State’s voter registration purge list for the 2020 election cycle. As we all know he was already on Hillary’s list, right?

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Two separate sex offenders were stopped by entering two Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools within 24 hours of each other this week.

The first happened Tuesday morning at Vance High School. The next morning, a sex offender was caught at University Meadows Elementary School. There have been several other similar cases over the past couple months.

CMS says their technology worked how it’s supposed to by alerting them to sex offenders in the front office, before they had any contact with students. School leaders credited the visitor tracking system, Lobbyguard.

“I do believe that that’s a good thing, if they have to put their names on it, so they can identify who the person is,” one parent said.

In September, a registered sex offender was stopped at Independence High School.  Jail records show 21 year-old Xavier Farmer was already facing a charge of indecent liberties with a child at the time.  Last month, there was another sex offender at Barringer Academic Center.  It was the second time in about a year the elementary school had a sex offender on campus.

“I’d definitely say it’s uncomfortable, definitely uncomfortable,” a parent previously told NBC Charlotte.

CMS says both of the sex offender cases this week involved people coming on campus to pick up or drop off family members.

“Should not even be near a school,” a parent said.

The parent said she is upset because she says CMS never notified her about the incident.

“The school should still notify parents about these situations,” she said.

CMS responded by saying the sex offenders were both stopped in the front office and never had any interaction with students.

CMS did not comment on what punishment, if any, the suspects are facing.

More news from wcnc.com:

DACULA, Ga. (CBS46) A former youth softball umpire from Dacula has entered a guilty plea following his arrest on child sexual exploitation charges.

According to the FBI, 50 year-old James Hughes Morriss communicated via computer in hopes of setting up a meeting with who he thought was a 14 year-old girl. 

The girl ended up being an undercover agent.

Morriss also requested photos and traveled to Athens to meet her for sexual purposes. He was arrested on July 27.

The arrest was a result of “Operation End Game” a multi-agency effort targeting sex offenders.

“Operation End Game did exactly what it was tasked to do: Put an end to criminal attempts of predators to irreversibly harm young children,” said Debbie Garner, GBI Special Agent in Charge and Commander of the Georgia Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force in a press release. “The GBI and the Georgia ICAC Task Force will work tirelessly with our partners to protect our children against those who seek to harm them.”

Morriss is currently in federal custody and faces a maximum five years’ imprisonment, a $250,000 fine and at least three years supervised release. Sentencing is scheduled for February 12, 2020.

Copyright 2019 WGCL-TV (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.

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GREENSBORO, Ga. – A 45-year-old Greensboro businessman is being held withheld without bond after he was arrested several days ago on multiple counts of sexual exploitation of children, local authorities say.

The arrest of the man stems from an investigation that began back in May.

Greene County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Capt Lee Stancill identified the suspect as Brandon Lee Manning, who had been living in the Charity Drive neighborhood of Greensboro.

Manning, who reportedly is affiliated with a swimming pool business, is specifically charged with eight counts of sexual exploitation of children, according to Capt. Stancill, who is the lead investigator.

Capt. Stancill said Manning was taken into custody at his residence Nov. 14 without incident. Manning’s arrest stemmed from an ongoing criminal investigation that has been underway by investigators with the Greene County Sheriff’s Office for the past several months.

A search warrant was executed at the residence of the suspect back in May, according to the investigator.

Capt. Stancill said during that time, he and other sheriff’s office investigators seized more than a dozen electronic devices from the residence.

The lead investigator said the seizure of the electronic devices came as the result of a tip that potentially explicit images were being accessed from the residence.

“After conducting examinations of each of these devices, several hundred images of suspected child pornography were found,” Capt. Stancill said.

Capt. Stancill said since the case was pending prosecution, he would not be able to discuss exactly what prompted the investigation.

Manning who previously had been a registered sex offender in Greene County was removed from the list in 2009 after he completed certain requirements, Capt. Stancill said.

Manning appeared before Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Terry N. Massey on Monday morning in Greene County Superior Court and was denied bond in the case. Manning was represented by his defense attorney, Mo Wiltshire during the brief hearing before the judge.

Capt. Stancill said during the course of the investigation that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) had provided certain records, but that all digital forensics had been performed by him in his lab with equipment provided him by U.S. Secret Service.

Capt. Stancill, who also works with the Electronic Crimes Task Force out of the U.S. Secret Service field office in Atlanta explained that the federal agency provides him all the equipment, his training, as well as his training and support for work he does when it comes to computers and mobile devices.

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