National

Brutal killing of a woman and her dog in an Atlanta park reignites the debate over city’s growing crime problem

By Tim Craig
Today at 8:00 a.m. EDT

ATLANTA — The last time Emma Clark saw her girlfriend, Katherine Janness, she was headed out for a late-night walk with her pit bull near Piedmont Park, a sprawling and popular 187-acre green space in Midtown.

An hour later, Janness had not returned home and wasn’t answering her calls, so Clark used an app to ping the location of her cellphone. The phone returned a signal from the edge of the park.

Clark took off on her bike and arrived at the park’s 10th Street gate around 1 a.m. Once inside, she saw Janness’s pit bull, Bowie, motionless on the ground. About 50 feet away lay Janness, dead.

“There was a slice on her face, like in an X pattern on her face,” said Clark, 30. “And there was a deep cut to her throat; it was cut all the way to the bone.”

Janness, 40, had been stabbed repeatedly and appeared to have been mutilated, police said. Her dog also was stabbed to death.

{snip}

By Tim Craig
Tim Craig is a national reporter on the America desk. He previously served as head of The Washington Post’s Afghanistan-Pakistan bureau, based in Islamabad and Kabul. He has also reported from Iraq, the District and Baltimore. Twitter https://twitter.com/timcraigpost