Controversy swirls around Dawson mayor

DAWSON — With a growing number of citizens calling for Mayor Christopher Wright to step down from office as he awaits his pending trial on a number of sex-related charges, Wright has defiantly refused to do so, denying any wrongdoing while facing charges that include aggravated child molestation, aggravated sodomy, rape, child molestation and statutory rape.

That call grew in volume recently when it surfaced that Wright had been stopped by Albany police and cited for impersonating a law enforcement officer, blue lights prohibited and aggressive driving.

According to sources in the legal community, Gov. Nathan Deal has been asked to convene a tribunal to consider whether Wright should be removed from office, but so far the governor has announced no plans to do so. A number of messages left with Deal’s staff over the past week asking if the governor planned to take any action against Wright yielded no response.

Wright’s latest brush with the law, while minor, continues the pattern of what has been a tumultuous tenure as the top elected official in Dawson. Since unseating 32-year incumbent Mayor James Albritten by a 30-vote margin in 2012 to become, at 22, the youngest mayor in Georgia, Wright has been a magnet for controversy.

He drew the ire of the Dawson City Council and City Manager Barney Parnacott when, even after the council voted to stop him from driving a city-owned car, he continued to do so.

Taking shots at his predecessor, Wright told The Albany Herald at the time, “The mayor serves as CEO of the city government, and as CEO has the responsibility of initiating what goes on in the city. They say the city manager is the person with the power, but the city manager is responsible for carrying out what the mayor initiates. There just hasn’t been much initiating going on around here lately.”

The controversy swirling around the mayor turned violent on Halloween night 2013 when Nakia Jones and Corderio Laney broke into Wright’s Crawford Street home, tied up and beat his mother, and later shot him several times, leaving Wright in serious condition. The mayor later said the attack was politically motivated, and he asked the city to give him “24-hour, around-the-clock” protection. The City Council voted not to take such action.

Wright was implicated, and later indicted, on the sex-related charges in June of this year when a 17-year-old witness in defendant Milton Johnson’s molestation trial said Wright had had sex with her when she was 12 years old. Johnson was later sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of rape, aggravated child molestation, aggravated sodomy and sex exploitation of a child.

The Herald also obtained copies of a 2011 police incident report from Gwinnett County in which Wright was charged with two counts of reckless conduct for his part in a domestic disturbance complaint. In his report of the complaint, Officer J.A. Bailey said the dispute arose when a man found Wright having sex with his male partner.

The document did not indicate the manner in which that case had been concluded.

In the Albany incident, Albany Police Department Officer Jonathan Renaue said in his report that a driver reported being pulled over on Clark Avenue by a Dodge Ram pickup with flashing blue lights. When the driver of the pickup passed the person who had pulled over, that person told Renaue that the pickup driver “pointed a finger at (the person who filed the complaint) as if the driver of the Dodge was pointing a gun at him.”

The original driver took down the license plate of the Ram and called 911. Renaue later spotted the vehicle, which, according to his report, was registered to Dawson Police Chief Charlie Whitehead. Wright was the driver of the vehicle, and he initially denied knowledge of the blue lights. Renaue called Sgt. Paul Guhl to the scene, and Guhl asked Wright for consent to search the vehicle.

Attempts to reach Whitehead for comment Saturday were unsuccessful.

Wright granted consent, and when the blue lights were discovered in a bag, Renaue wrote in his report that Wright said “another person had just driven the vehicle to get it washed.” The APD officers noted that there were “bugs all over the front of the truck,” indicating it had not been washed.

Some in the community have suggested that Wright received preferential treatment in the traffic stop, since he was only given citations on the three charges. But APD Chief Michael Persley said his officers acted properly.

“According to Georgia Code, there is a restriction on use of blue lights on vehicles, but charges for doing so are misdemeanor charges unless the lights are used during the commission of a felony,” Persley told The Herald. “At no time did (Wright) identify himself as a police officer. This was treated, correctly, as a traffic incident, Mr. Wright was cited and he was released.

“Our officers did their job properly.”

Attempts to reach Wright were unsuccessful.

— Jon Gosa, Albany Herald Staff Writer, contributed to this story