Fund Established For Family of Decatur Murder Victim
Decatur Metro | July 20, 2016 | 1:37 pm
A concerned local resident has established a GoFundMe fund to help the family of murder victim Gerald Foster, who was murdered at the Allen Wilson Apartments in Decatur on July 6th. He left behind a wife, 7 children and two grandchildren, according to his obituary.
Here’s an excerpt from the GoFundMe page…
Gerard was married just over a year to an established City of Decatur resident and mother to two CSD students. During this time of grief for the family this campaign has been created to express condolences, show support and help in a small way to defer costs associated with this tragedy.
Photo courtesy of GoFundMe page
Thank you for sharing this and thanks to the concerned citizen who helped to set it up.
Be careful out there:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/stevenpetrow/2016/07/20/when-turn-down-gofundme-medical-plea/86879582/
That’s good advice, generally speaking. But it should be noted here that, to the best of my knowledge, this particular effort has been vetted for its legitimacy and deserves the community’s support.
This is a true tragedy for a long-standing City of Decatur family with children in the City Schools of Decatur and a valid effort by the community to raise funds for them. Decaturish’s Dan Whisenhunt played an important role in the effort. If you go to the fund website, you’ll see the names of local teachers and community members. I know that there have been other recent tragedies in Decatur and efforts to raise funds for the families involved; I hope that our community can support this one as well.
I didn’t want to come across as tooting my own horn, but this is how it went down. I had several readers ask me about a Go Fund Me for the family. I reached out to Lt. Jennifer Ross with the Decatur Police Department to explain that there was some desire to establish a fund for the family. She had the victim’s wife call me. I took down her information and passed it along to a reader who had inquired about the Go Fund Me account. The reader agreed to take the lead on establishing the account and making sure the money gets to the family. I trust this person fully, or I wouldn’t have asked for her help. I just felt bad for the man’s family. Some of us are fortunate to have people in our lives who are tech savvy enough to set something like this up to provide assistance. That didn’t appear to be the case here, so I took the unusual step of facilitating that. I’m sure his funeral alone was a burden to the family. If this in anyway alleviates some of that financial strain, then I’m glad to have played my part. Long story short: Yes this is legit, and you can contribute – if you’re so inclined – comfortable in the knowledge the money will get where it’s supposed to go.
This is why I love both Decatur Metro and Decaturish. The community is lucky to have you both.
Turns out that some of the reports of GoFundMe hoaxes are hoaxes themselves. See today’s article in AJC Metro section about the inspiring homeless young man who bicycled to college and was camping until the dorms opened. After police helped him and a GoFundMe account was set up to great success, some nasty rumors circulated:
““He called me crying like crazy,” Adamson said. People were saying “he was just some kid who conned everybody and ran.”
That apparently is not the case. A spokeswoman for the Barnesville police said officials have heard the rumors and chalked them up to gossip. Gordon State College in Barnesville, Barley’s destination on his marathon ride from Conyers, acknowledged that he is registered for the fall semester.
Moreover, officials at GoFundMe told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that there appears to be no impropriety with the account. They have been in contact with the woman who founded it, and say she is taking pains to make sure the money goes to Barley and his education, said spokesman Bobby Whithorne.” And there’s more in the AJC article showing that the nasty rumors were just the dark side of social media.
So don’t just write off GoFundMe which has been operating for 6 years and states “Less than 1 percent of the campaigns have proved to be fraudulent”. Of course, don’t use GoFundMe foolishly but local causes are pretty easy to check out.