NEWTON COUNTY, Ga. — A local coroner who has spent just a few months on the job has announced that she is resigning from her position.
In a lengthy post on her Facebook page, Newton County Coroner Dorothea Bailey-Butts claimed her office was getting “little to no support from the people around [it].”
“I have put my heart, soul, and even risked my life for this job, hoping to serve this county the best that I can. But it’s been very difficult to do my job well when people I work with do everything they can to sabotage me,” she continued in the post.
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Bailey-Butts said that she will resign from her position as Newton County’s first woman of color coroner effective Friday morning.
“It was my mistake to think that the county is ready to accept a woman of color to become their coroner,” she wrote.
Bailey-Butts claims that many of the “scandals and issues” surrounding her office stem from the fact that she is Black and that “they are intimidated by my capacity, knowledge, and experience.”
She ends her post by saying, “I didn’t fail the people who trusted me, the system failed me.”
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Bailey-Butts’ short time in office was not without controversy. In February, County Manager Lloyd Kerr drafted a petition to have her removed from office.
Newton County officials claimed Bailey-Butts refused to transport bodies and even disrespected grieving families. The county said Bailey-Butts has asked a hotel worker to help her with a body and even told firefighters it’s not her job to remove a body. She denies all of these allegations.
There is no word yet on when a special election to select a new coroner will be held.
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