Sometimes being stupid can get you killed.  Some how I myself can’t believe i’m still living.

 

The popular “Batman the Ride” rollercoaster at Six Flags Over Georgia remained closed Sunday while authorities continued investigating the death of a teenager who jumped over two fences and was struck by the ride.

The 17-year-old South Carolina teen who died was identified as Asia Leeshawn Ferguson, of Springfield, S.C. He was on a church outing when the incident occurred about 2 p.m. Saturday. It was the second Batman ride-related death at the Cobb County park.

According to police and the amusement park, Ferguson and a friend climbed over two 6-foot fences—a wrought-iron style park perimeter fence and a second chainlink fence around the Batman ride—as a shortcut to get back into the park after lunch. Signs about 40 to 50 feet apart on the outer fence warn that it is a “restricted area” for “authorized personnel only.”

According to park officials, a sign on a locked gate at the chain link fence also reads “Danger zone” and “Do not enter.”

Ferguson was decapitated when the ride struck him, police said.

“It is still unclear why the two men were trying to gain access to this unauthorized area,” park spokeswoman Hela Sheth told reporters Saturday, reading from a prepared statement.

She declined to answer questions at a news conference and did not return calls seeking more information.

The teen was with a group from Oakley Spring Baptist Church in Salley, S.C., a small town about 50 miles east of Augusta. He had been in Six Flags earlier in the day, but he and another boy left the park property to get some lunch, according to Cobb County police spokesman Sgt. Dana Pierce.

Rather than returning to the park through the regular entrance, the pair took a shortcut, Pierce said.

“The area’s clearly defined with signs,” Pierce said. “It’s very tragic that these individuals would decide to jump over the fence. It would be hard to imagine somebody not seeing the signs and jumping two fences.”

No one on the ride was injured, Six Flags said in the statement. Ferguson’s family was at the park at the time of the accident, according to the amusement park.

Pierce said there were many witnesses, and the county’s 911 center was almost immediately flooded with calls from people reporting what they had seen.

The park’s statement said one of the first to call for help was an Marietta police officer who had been in line for the Batman ride.

“Six Flags security and safety personnel responded immediately, and Cobb County Fire [Department] was on site just minutes after the incident occurred,” Sheth said. “The medical examiner arrived on scene and confirmed that the 17-year-old male was killed instantaneously.”

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the family,” she said.

The Batman ride was run briefly after the accident so police investigators could take measurements. It was closed to the public Saturday evening. The rest of Six Flags remained open. The park said the ride likely will resume operating on Monday.

Batman riders dangle beneath a track and travel up to 50 m.p.h., climbing and dropping the distance equal to an 11-story building and going through two vertical loops and two single corkscrews.

The first fatality involving the Batman ride in Georgia occurred six years ago.

A 58-year-old park worker, Samuel Milton Guyton of Atlanta, was killed May 26, 2002. Guyton was in a restricted area on a platform when he was kicked in the head by 14-year-old girl on the front car of the ride. The girl was hospitalized with a leg injury.

Over the years, several ride-related deaths have been reported at Six Flags parks nationwide.

Last March, a worker dismantling a ride at Six Flags Great America near Chicago fell 40-feet to his death. In 2004 at the same park, a maintenance worker was hit by a roller coaster and killed.

A 55-year-old disabled man was killed in May 2004 when he was thrown from a ride at Six Flags New England near Springfield, Mass. Five years ago, a grandmother strapping her 4-year-old grandson into Six Flags New Orleans’ Joker’s Jukebox ride was hit by a spinning car when the ride began operating before she was out of the way.

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Chiman Rai, 68, was convicted on seven charges, including felony murder and burglary. Prosecutors will seek the death penalty.

The story is that He disapproved his son getting married to a black female. Some people in India believe in the caste system.  Normally all the marraiges are arranged.  The parents usually pick matees.  Well it happens that his son ends up getting a black women ( Sparkle Rai) pregnant.  Quickly he felt like he needed to get married to her.

According to Associated Press reports, two women arrived at the apartment of Rai’s son Ricky and his new wife, pretending to deliver a package. A 300-pound hit man then choked Sparkle Reid Rai with a vacuum cleaner cord and stabbed her a dozen times within earshot of her 6-month-old daughter.

This case, which turned from a simple murder investigation into an alleged hate crime across two communities of color, highlights the complexity of race relations in a country that has often framed its prejudice in black and white.

But racial intolerance, sometimes in the form of violence, is increasingly more inclusive. Experts say that such bias is nothing new, although the national immigration debate has fueled that hate, giving bigots of all complexions more excuses to act on their ignorance.

Donna Lowry, who married Sparkle Reid’s father and is now raising the victim’s daughter, said, “It was such a shock to us when we found out a few years ago and we were floored.

“We had no idea it would go in this direction,” she told ABCNEWS.com today en route to the trial. “It’s mind-boggling. We are raising her biracial child and there is so much hatred on the other side of the family.”

Rai’s lawyer, Don Samuel, had earlier told ABCNEWS.com, “I’m arguing that my client is not guilty. There is no racial issue involved at all.”

A dozen witnesses of all colors who had known Rai — once a professor at two historically black colleges — said he was not a racist. But Rai’s former cellmate, a convicted forger, testified this week that the accused had made bigoted remarks while in jail, according to reports in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

American-born Amardeep Singh, director of the national Sikh Coalition, which defends the civil and legal rights of Sikhs, admits that his own ethnic group is capable of bigotry.

“You don’t come to American to learn to be a bigot,” Singh said. “There is bigotry in India. The caste system is deeply ingrained and South Asians in the U.S. still practice caste exclusion.”

And he, too, has been a victim

 The mother of victim, Donna Lowry Reid, adopted the 6 month old baby.  The father shortly left Atlanta and moved to Chicago.  He then married a new woman who this time happens to be an Indian.  He actually hid his former life to his new bride.  He has no contact with his own child since the murder and his new wife did not know his gruesome past.  Well that’s not the whole story.  There still is something very fishy here.

They was caught around 5:20 am this morning.  They was about to hit up the outlet mall in Dawsonville

Bravo’s hit tv show (one of my faves) The Real Housewives is now hitting Atlanta.  Previously they did 3 seasons of The Real Housewives of the OC and just showed the finale of The Real Housewives of New York Season 1.  Not one black Housewife was ever featured on any of the 4 seasons total.  But now, after rumors of this new season have been going around for a while, it’s official that Bravo is bringing the show to Atlanta.  And 4 out of the 5 Housewives are YBF chicks.  Sources associated with the show have given YBF some exclusive inside info and pics of the cast.  They just wrapped the season last week and a few of the Housewives were spotted at a private party for Ed Hartwell a few nights ago.

Meet The Real Housewives of Atlanta when you read the rest…  read on

Atlanta has placed sixth in the United States and 25th globally in the “Top 75 cities in the MasterCard Worldwide Centers of Commerce Index,” released Monday.

Atlanta was ranked in sixth in the United States and 20th globally in the 2007 index. In 2008, only New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Boston were ahead of Atlanta.

MasterCard said its annual list evaluates and ranks major cities based on how they perform critical functions to connect markets and commerce. The index looks at cities’ legal and political framework, economic stability, ease of doing business, financial flow, business center, knowledge creation and information flow and livability.

Atlanta placed fifth among U.S. cities in the knowledge creation and information flow index, which evaluates the number of higher education centers and programs, patent applications and concentration of media. It also came in fifth out of all U.S. cities in services that support business, such as travel options and accommodations.

When it comes to ease of doing business, Atlanta garnered 17th place.

Atlanta was 10th in the United States in terms of livability, which evaluates factors related to quality of life, basic services and health and safety.

_{Source Atlanta Business Chronicles}

The High Museum of Art is focusing on the civil rights era in two new exhibits timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. The exhibits that opened Saturday were built over three years and include more than 200 photographs, many that have never been publicly displayed.

“Road to Freedom” spans 12 years — from Rosa Parks’ stand in Montgomery in 1955 to King’s death in 1968 — and includes images from watershed moments such as the Freedom Rides of 1961, the Mississippi murders during Freedom Summer in 1964 and the Selma-Montgomery March of 1965. Iconic images of King, an Atlanta native, and his wife, Coretta, hang alongside the nameless men and women who fought for equal rights across the South. Read On

It wasn’t that far back when I could remember getting 85 octane gas for only .79 cents a gallon.  This was only back in 1992.   My My My has time sure has changed.  Remember feeling guilty when someone gave you some “gas” money for taking them somewhere?  Taking $5 dollars for driving a few miles down the road sound like it was fair.  Nowadays this is mandatory..

The housing crisis has created a big problem for local governments — too many vacant lots.

Metro Atlanta has enough vacant lots ready for housing — 148,300 — to supply builders for the next five years, according to the national real estate research firm Metrostudy, which has an office in Atlanta. In a healthy market, the lot supply would be less than two years.

Many of the lots are being neglected, panelists said. In some cases, the cleared land is producing streams of mud when it rains, polluting waterways and lakes. Thieves are stealing unprotected manholes covers because the price of scrap iron is up. And people are dumping trash on the lots.  Continue here

Video of the latest robbery at the Kaleidescope store.  Check out the Video Here