The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current, April 03, 2024, Image 12

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The times., April 03, 2024, Image 12

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Newspaper Page TextCHI OUR REGION John Chambliss I Managing Editor 770-718-3407 I news@gainesvilletimes.com The Times, Gainesville, Georgia Midweek Edition-April 3-4, 2024 Woman charged with Sosebee BY NICK WATSON nwatson@gainesvilletimes.com Editor’s note: This pub lished in a previous E-Paper edition and is being provided here for print-only readers. A Gainesville mom was charged with murder after her 13-year-old son died from a fentanyl and xylazine over dose in June, according to authorities. Holly Deanna Sosebee, 30, was charged with second- degree murder and second- degree child cruelty. She was booked Friday, March 29, in to the Hall County Jail, where she murder in son’s overdose remains with no bond. The Hall County Sheriff's Office began investigating after Landon Nicholas Sosebee, 13, was found dead June 8, 2023, in his Lee Street home. Because of his age, Sos- ebee's body was sent to the Georgia Bureau of Investiga tion crime lab for an autopsy. The autopsy determined Land- on's cause of death was “com bined toxic effects of fentanyl and xylazine,” according to the Sheriff's Office. “The investigation deter mined the illegal narcotics belonged to his mother, and she had left them in an unsecured area where they were easily accessible to the victim,” the Sheriff's Office wrote in a news release. While murder carries a life sentence with at least 30 years before parole eligibil ity, second-degree murder has a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 10 years but does not exceed 30 years. From homeless to the helm ren SINGIN; HY MEMORY 0 E Ay MATER, ALMA rfjH DER. FAIR,If ATEFUf iUE UNFAIL Scott Rogers The Times New Gainesville High Principal Roberto Rivera was most recently the school’s head wrestling coach and oversaw the ninth grade. New Gainesville High principal rises from humble beginnings BY BEN ANDERSON banderson@gainesvilletimes.com Editor’s note: This published in a previous E-Paper edition and is being provided here for piint-only readers. At just 15 years old, Roberto Rivera was on his own and home less, crashing with friends and living out of a car he had bought after working all summer at McDonald's. “I was able to buy a little car, and that kind of helped me because that ended up being where I spent some nights,” Rivera said. After a few weeks, a family kindly took him in. “Wonderful family,” he said. “I probably owe them my success all the way to where I'm at now.” Now, as Gainesville High School's next principal, Rivera wants to pay it forward. “I always remember the folks that lent a hand,” he said. Rivera will officially take the helm when current principal Jamie Green steps down at the end of the school year in May to take a teaching job in Brazil. Rivera, who is currently the head wrestling coach and 9th grade assistant principal, was chosen to lead the high school in part because he is already a famil iar face on campus. In fact, it was students' voices that rang the loudest during the search process. “To be perfectly honest, both times the students are the ones who have guided us to the next leader of Gainesville High School,” Superintendent Jeremy Williams said, referring to the hir ing of both Green and Rivera. “They were able to ask ques tions of Mr. Rivera, and that ranged anywhere from academ ics to how's he going to balance the importance of every club and every extracurricular activity and things like that,” Williams said. “It was just great to hear them engage with their new principal.” Green said students trust and respect Rivera. ‘And that’s what teenagers want,” Green said. “You can say a lot of things about this genera tion, but they are keenly aware of folks that say things and don’t do things. That is not Roberto Rivera. If Roberto Rivera says he’s going to do it, it’s going to get done.” The youngest of 13 children, Rivera, 51, was raised in the housing projects by a single mother who moved to the U.S. mainland from Puerto Rico in the early 1970s. He has never met his father. Rivera was bom in New York City, moved to Puerto Rico when he was about 8 years old, back to New York City around 12, then to Delaware when he was 15. All of that moving around, he said, has turned his early boyhood into a blur. “You know, I tell folks, and this is completely true ... I have no recollection of my early school years, I just don’t,” he said. Rivera used the phrase “hum ble beginnings” to describe his upbringing, and although he was reluctant to share certain details, he believes his background will allow him to connect with stu dents and inspire them. “I want to use my experiences and everything that I’ve been through to just be a beacon of light,” he said. “Some kids may not exactly know every little detail about me, and that’s not always necessary ... but I think I see a lot of myself in some of the kids that we have here.” Likewise, many of Gaines ville High School's 2,400 stu dents may also see themselves in Rivera, who will be the first His panic principal in the 132-year history of the high school. Alexa Mondragon, a senior whose family immigrated from Mexico, said her initial impres sion of Rivera was that he was uptight and strict. But since join ing the wrestling team earlier this year, she has discovered a softer side to Rivera, noting that he helped connect her with scholar ships designated for immigrant students like her. “He kind of understood my sit uation,” Mondragon said. “I feel like he will help not only the peo ple that are already coming here and getting a good education, but people that come as Dreamers,” she said, referring to people who immigrate to the U.S. as children and remain undocumented. About 62% of the Gainesville City School System's 8,000 stu dents are Hispanic, and roughly one-third of all students are English learners — the highest percentage of any public school district in the state. Additionally, about 70% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch (the metric used to measure a district's pov erty rate), which is about 10% higher than the state average. “Regardless of what upbring ing you have ... your life can be better,” Rivera said. “You just gotta dream, and you gotta make sure that you have plans and goals and aspirations. And, of course, you gotta be lucky with having a couple of people in your life that (are) going to guide you.” And Rivera has been just that person for a couple of other stu dents on the wrestling team, both on and off the mat. “He's made sure that I became more than just a great wrestler,” said Erick Willock, a senior. “He's always keeping up with things outside of just wrestling. He keeps up with my academ ics, he keeps up with how I am at home, always asks me questions about that.” Christian Rosales, also a senior, said Rivera convinced him to stay on the wrestling team when he felt like quitting and has since become an important mentor in his life. “He pulled me aside, he moti vated me,” Rosales said. “I felt like not only in the sport but coach himself built my character and definitely shaped my mentality, and I feel like he made me a better young man.” Rivera's own development as a young man was likewise forged in the wrestling room. Rivera started wrestling as a high school freshman in Delaware, where his coach quickly became the male role model he never had. “When I met my coach and I got involved in wrestling, I mean, this was a stand up guy, this was somebody who wore a shirt and tie and spoke correctly and took care of his family,” Rivera said. But just as Rivera was begin ning to find his footing, his mother told him that she was moving the family back to New York City. Rivera couldn't bear the thought of packing up and starting over again. So he didn't. “I was kind of thriving a little bit at school in terms of athleti cally ... and I made a conscious decision not to go back with her,” Rivera said. From that point on, he said, “I kind of raised myself.” “I could see how his back ground has led to the kind of leader that he is,” Green, the cur rent principal, said. “He under stands that students that come from a variety of backgrounds where they have obstacles and challenges that are not typical still need that firm but fair leadership, because he experienced that and had coaches and mentors and teachers in his life that made a difference.” “Also what's really important, I think, and maybe what a lot of people don’t realize, is Roberto has raised a family of five who are all incredibly successful,” Green added. “He’s got college athletes, all of his kids took dual enrollment, advanced placement. ... To me, it’s really exciting to have somebody who’s come from humble beginnings but who also has set the bar high for his own family and understands that we have an obligation to do that for all students.” Rivera says he is the first per son in his family to graduate high school or college. He has an associate's degree from Southwestern Illinois Col lege; a bachelor's in Spanish language and literature from Northern Illinois University; a master's in educational leader ship and administration from Kennesaw State University; and a specialist degree in curriculum and instruction from Lincoln Memorial University. Rivera moved to Georgia in 2001. He taught for more than 16 years as a Spanish teacher and wrestling coach in Cobb County, then worked as an assistant prin cipal at Marietta High School and North Paulding High School. He was hired as the head wrestling coach at Gainesville High School in 2019 and took on an additional role as the ninth-grade assistant principal in 2021. When Green announced earlier this year he would be stepping down, he encouraged Rivera to apply for the position. “I felt that he would be a great leader for the school,” Green said. “In everything that we've asked him to do here over five years, he's had great success.” “Eve put Roberto in some pretty difficult situations,” he laughed. “And he has very quickly, very effectively remedied any challenges that he's faced.” Rivera said becoming the prin cipal of Gainesville High School is the pinnacle of his career and a dream come true. “My goal has always been to try to reach principalship. As an AP (assistant principal), you're kind of restricted with your own department,” he said. Now, he looks forward to “being able to put things in place that can affect an entire building, entire community.” In what little free time he has, Rivera likes to spend time with his wife, his five children and his two grandchildren. Williams, the superintendent, explained the district's search process and the decision to hire Rivera. He said each of the district's eight schools has a governance council made up of parents, staff and business partners. Applica tions for the position closed Feb. 9, and over the next week the governance council whittled the list down to six candidates for an initial round of interviews. Three of those candidates made it to the second and final round of inter views, which is when Williams and his cabinet joined the process. “We also want to incorporate our student body as much as we can as well as our staff mem bers, and so I worked with Mr. Green to get about a dozen of those students and to get about a dozen or so staff members that the three finalists were able to inter view with,” Williams said. “And through that process, everybody was unanimous in their support for Mr. Rivera.” “It became very clear that the kids connected with him, they already knew him in many ways because, being the ninth grade administrator, he's already built a lot of relationships with our fami lies,” he said. “Mr. Rivera knows our community, he loves our stu dents and he'll be the best person to lead us in this next chapter for Gainesville High School.” Man gets sentence in $22M drug case BY NICK WATSON nwatson@gainesvilletimes.com Editor’s note: This published in a previous E-Paper edition and is being provided here for print-only readers. After a day of work pres sure washing and cleaning floors, Candido Rangel- Garcia, 47, agreed to give his room- Rangel-Garcia mate a ride. That Dec. 30, 2022, ride ended up costing him the next five years of his life, as authorities busted him and Adolfo Solorio-Garcia with an estimated $22 million of liquid methamphet- amine in gas cans. Rangel-Garcia was sentenced Tuesday, March 26, to 57 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to possession with intent to distrib ute meth and fentanyl. After prison, U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones imposed three years of supervised release for Rangel-Garcia if he is not deported. Law enforcement started inves tigating after getting information on a Mexican-based phone number belonging to “a source of supply of large quantities of controlled sub stances,” according to a sentenc ing memo filed by Rangel-Garcia's attorney Molly Parmer. An undercover agent started recording calls with this source, who told the agent about a deliv ery of liquid meth en route to Hall County. “The source of supply told the undercover agent that he was to steal the methamphetamine from the couriers,” according to Parm er's memo. Parmer wrote that Rangel-Garcia had “never knowingly transported controlled substances” before that day, as he had helped Solorio-Gar cia run errands in the past. A Hall County Sheriff's Office deputy pulled over Rangel-Garcia's Toyota Tacoma Dec. 30, 2022, at Mountain View and McEver roads. The investigator testified at a prob able cause hearing about seeing gas cans in the backseat and truckbed but not smelling any gas. Field tests came back positive for meth and fentanyl, according to the officer's testimony. “Mr. Rangel-Garcia had no knowledge about where the drugs came from nor who else was involved,” Parmer wrote. “He had no involvement in planning or organizing the criminal activity. He had absolutely no decision-mak ing authority nor did he influence the exercise of decision-making authority. Both he and Mr. Solorio were fungible; just couriers follow ing instructions.” Rangel-Garcia grew up in Mex ico and moved to California at age 19 “in hopes of securing employ ment and supporting his family financially,” Parmer wrote. “He returned to Mexico after working in the United States and stayed in his home country for many years, harvesting papaya, lemons and grapefruit,” Parmer wrote. Rangel-Garcia returned to the U.S. three months before he was arrested with similar hopes of a better job. Parmer requested 46 months in prison, which was 11 months less than what Solorio-Garcia received. Parmer did not immediately return a request for comment from The Times.