The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/27/09 Section: News

Media Credit: JIM DIFFLY Jace Gordon, an Athens resident, places flowers at the memorial formed outside the Athens Community Theater on Grady Avenue, where the killings occurred Saturday. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: WAITES LASETER Police gather outside Zinkhan's house at 372 Chesterfield Road in Bogart. Police had been stationed outside Zinkhan's house since 12:45 p.m. in case he planned to return. The street was lined with cop cars, press vans and reporters during the day. [Click to enlarge]

Media Credit: DANIELLE MOORE Images are left at a memorial for those killed at the Athens Community Theatre on Grady Avenue. [Click to enlarge]

George Zinkhan's children rode bikes through their Huntington Park neighborhood and played soccer in their yard.

With a basketball hoop in the driveway, a soccer goal in the front yard and a playhouse out back, Zinkhan's 10-year-old daughter, Beth, and 8-year-old son, Jim, were active.

They had friends in the neighborhood and attended Timothy Road Elementary School. Beth danced, and Jim was shy, neighbors said.

Their mother was outgoing and polite. Their father was reclusive but didn't seem threatening, neighbor Emily Foshee told The Red & Black.

"He wasn't real sociable. But you'd never expect this type of behavior," neighbor Dana Adams said. "We just thought he was the eccentric professor kind of person ... Occasionally we'd see him out playing with the kids, but not much."

The children's lives changed dramatically at 12:25 p.m. Saturday, when their mother, Marie Bruce, was killed and their father accused of her murder.

They would not learn the news until hours later, even though they were near the scene of the crime.

Zinkhan put his kids in his 2005 maroon Jeep Liberty Renegade before walking into a gathering of Town & Gown members armed with two guns.

Minutes later, he returned to his car and drove the kids back home to Bogart. He dropped the children off with his next door neighbors, the Covingtons, saying he needed someone to watch the kids for about an hour.

At about 2 p.m., police came for the children, Foshee said. The officers took the kids to a safe location where they could be with friends and family, she said.

"It was a very safe, comfortable environment - neighbors and family there when they were told about their mom," Foshee said.

As a national search for their father continues, Bruce's family is keeping the children.

"That's where they slept last night. That's who they're with," she said.

Foshee said the children have been shielded from much of the information about the killings, and they did not witness the search for their father in their neighborhood.

"[The kids] were gone by the time it was surrounded and the helicopter was overhead. They didn't see any of that, she said."

When Zinkhan left his children with neighbors, his actions were not considered suspicious. Leaving kids with neighbors in the Huntington Park neighborhood is common, Foshee said.

"That's very typical," she said.

Foshee described the neighborhood as a great place to raise kids. Neighbors are close, children are in and out of everyone's homes and it's a safe place to be.

Though most of the neighbors have personal relationships, Zinkhan was not well-known.

"Most neighbors said they didn't know much about [him]," Foshee said. "It's still very bizarre to me that nobody knew what he did."

Other neighbors agreed.

"He really wasn't sociable, so we never got to talk to him that much," Robert Adams, who lives across the street from Zinkhan, said Sunday. "We've lived here for three years, and we'd see him out in the yard and stuff."

But his wife was different, neighbors said. Many said they knew and liked her.

"I think she was very much the extrovert," Foshee said. "Anybody who even casually knew her knew about the theater and knew about her other activities. People knew where she worked, what she did, so I think people really knew her and I don't know who you had to be to know him."

Foshee and Adams said Bruce was willing to help others.

"She wasn't bothered to help neighbors out; people she represented spoke very highly of her," Foshee said. "She was easygoing when it came to kids showing up there. I think that she had a relationship with the Covingtons much like all of us do - 'Can you watch the kids?' Can you do this? Can you do that?' ... just like the rest of us."

But Dana and Robert Adams said they saw the couple spend time with their children outside.

"They built this little rock piece about two weeks ago. The whole family was out there smiling, laughing, talking," Dana Adams said. "Just this Friday afternoon and Saturday they were out looking at the garden."

After the idyllic picture was interrupted Saturday afternoon, neighbors said they hope Zinkhan is arrested.

But, they said their primary concern is with his children.

"The general thought right now - basically what you have is a 10-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy whose lives were irrevocably changed on a Saturday morning - and that's the sad part," Foshee said. "Nobody's ever going to be able to fix that."

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