Murder on the New Hope Plantation

The New Hope Plantation Mobile Home Park is “[nestled] in the midst of centuries old live oak trees [...] near the center of the high ground of Historic New Hope Plantation[,] that dates back to a Crown Grant in 1763 to Henry Laurens.” Laurens was the 2nd president of the Continental Congress.

It’s a southern trailer park, a place subject to negative assumptions and presumptions from folks who have never lived in one, but it’s located along the idyllic, balmy Georgia coast, the part of the state left mostly untouched by Sherman’s Civil War rampage to the sea. Violence isn’t unknown in that corner of the state, but mass murder is perhaps a once-a-generation occurrence just about anywhere. And today, the New Hope Plantation Mobile Home Park is the scene of a gruesome tragedy.

Seven people are dead and two more lay critically injured in a Savannah hospital. A Glynn County (GA) official says it is “the worst crime scene” he has seen in nearly 2 decades with the county Coroner’s Office. Glynn County Sheriff Matthew Doering says the scene is probably the largest homicide in county history.

Jacksonville.com reported on a woman who came to the trailer with a young man. Photos show her standing, stricken, next to a grim-faced cop.

She said “They killed my boy” before leaving the scene.

A neighbor who wouldn’t give his name spoke of a man who entered the trailer earlier in the morning before leaving, crying, “My whole family is dead!”

Crime scene tape flutters beneath the centuries-old oak trees. As many as 30 law enforcement officers are working the scene. There is no word as to suspects, no word on how the victims were killed.

So an unnamed resident puts as fine a point on a story like this as one can at the moment: “It’s horrifying and terrifying.” New Hope resident Lisa Vizcaino, speaking to the Associated Press, painted a clear portrait of the first effects from a crime like this. According to Vizcaino, residents are “pretty much on lockdown.”

It can get horribly hot in Georgia as August turns to September. Sometimes, the heat builds, and eventually, something explodes.