Only one murder in Polk for 2018
Two shootings remain unresolved for the year
Polk County usually doesn’t see a lot of death at the hands of others. Some would consider the trio of murders in Polk County an outlier for an otherwise quiet community when it comes to these kinds of crimes.
This year marked what people consider usual for the community as a whole: only a single homicide was reported (as of press time ahead of the holidays on Dec. 22) for the entirety of 2018.
It dates all the way back to late June, when police arrested Laryan Yance Walker, of 501 Line St. in Cedartown, for the shooting death of Ronald Morris Bentley on Gibson Street back in the summer.
His arrest came after Cedartown police teamed up with the GBI to probe the circumstances of the killing and make an arrest.
It came after Bentley was shot and killed in the early morning hours of June 24, when 911 operators received calls from several residents reporting gunshots in the
The 40-year-old Bentley was pronounced dead on the scene at 5:45 a.m., according to Polk County Coroner Tony Brazier, who ruled his death a homicide by shooting.
Walker was quickly arrested for the homicide and has since been through court proceedings leading up to a trial set to come in 2019, according to District Attorney Jack Browning.
The area wasn’t without tragic circumstances this year, though fortunately in the case of two other shootings in Polk County no one was killed.
Police are still looking for suspects in those two incidents – one in the Cedartown area, and the other in Rockmart.
In the early morning hours
of July 9, the driver of a still unidentified silver pickup truck shot newspaper carrier David Gilmore in what police believe was a road rage incident.
Though video from one convenience store on South Main Street near where the bypass ends were able to provide surveillance video of the truck and the aftermath of the shooting when Gilmore pulled into the parking lot and sought help, they have yet to be able to identify a suspect.
Gilmore went through surgery and recovered from his wounds.
As mentioned in the Rockmart Year in Review story, police also don’t have a suspect in a similar incident on the eastern side of the county.
Mallory McClarity, 50, of a Decatur address, was at 45 Pine Mountain Street in the Rockmart area off Morgan
Valley Road in September when he was shot.
He drove himself to the Triangle Grocery store parking lot and called 911 for help. Police were unable to develop more information about a suspect following the incident, based on reporting at the time.
One fortunate bit of news provided by the coroner as the year was coming to a close: overdose deaths and suicides are on a decline for the 2018 calendar year.
Brazier said that the number of suicides his office handled in 2018 was down significantly for the year by at least a dozen, as well as overdose deaths.
That could partially be attributed by decisions by local law enforcement agencies to begin allowing officers to carry naloxoline in order to help reverse an overdose.