A local activist running for District 2 Commissioner in Augusta says he is an ex-con who “served his time” and now wants to clean up the mess he helped create.
Leroy Crew Jr., who goes by “Ray Montana,” makes no secret about his criminal past. A year ago, he posted this Facebook message: “For the last 20 years of my Activism in and out of our city, I have always told my story of being a X-con who served his time and came back to clean up what #BLACK #MEN like myself MESSED UP in our Communities .. The Sheriff, the Mayor, School teachers, Preachers, Commissioners are not the answer to our problems. WE ARE THE ANSWER TO OUR PROBLEMS.”
The 49-year-old activist is running against retired firefighter Ralph Gunter and realtor Stacy Pulliam to replace Dennis Williams, who has reached his term limit and is running for mayor. Gunter and Pulliam have a clean criminal record in Richmond County except, though Pulliam was convicted of a 2019 traffic ticket for “disobedience of a traffic control device,” according to online records. Pulliam paid $140 in fines and fees.
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Crew, on the other hand, has a lengthy criminal history. His last two arrests occurred in 2017 when he was booked for simple battery and harassing phone calls. Just two months ago, a jury found Crew not guilty of the simple battery charge. Prosecutors dismissed the harassment charges in July 2020 after the case lingered without resolution.
When he was 22 years old, Crew was indicted for drug trafficking and possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. He was arrested in July 1995, indicted in September 1995 and took a plea in November 1995. Judge J. Carlisle Overstreet granted him “First Offender Status” and sentenced him to three years of probation and a $500 fine for a cocaine possession conviction, according to online records. The trafficking charge was dismissed, along charges for driving on a suspended license, no proof of insurance and a stop sign violation.
Three months later, Crew was again arrested for cocaine possession and was sentenced to an additional 10 years of probation by Judge Overstreet.
In May 1999, he was accused of dealing marijuana, but the case was dismissed without an indictment a year later.
In April 2004, cops arrested Crew for cruelty to children, battery and obstructing an emergency phone call. As that case lingered in court, he was jailed again for obstruction of officers in March 2005. By 2006, Judge Albert M. Pickett accepted a plea on all four counts and gave the repeat offender four years of probation and $1,300 in fines, according to court records.
There are no records of offenses between 2006-2017 except two different traffic charges with driving while license suspended in 2011 and 2013, the last one getting him 10 days in jail and more probation.
Crew garnered some of his biggest headlines in 2002 when he accused a local photographer of killing 4-year-old Divine Monroe in a high-profile hit-and-run. After making the accusation, Crew was sent to a drug rehabilitation center for a parole revocation.
In court, Crew tried unsuccessfully to explain why he didn’t report to his parole officer during a hearing, saying he was scared and feared for his life because of what he knew about Divine’s killer.
But parole board member Bobby Whitworth revoked it anyway, citing a positive drug screen for cocaine and his failure to report to his parole officer for 18 months. According to a newspaper story, Crew was scheduled to be sent to a drug rehabilitation center in Homerville, Ga., for an undetermined period.
Crew’s parole revocation hearing at the Augusta State Medical Prison was attended by family, friends, then-Homicide Investigator Richard Roundtree and Unique Monroe, Divine’s father. At the time, Investigator Roundtree said he was there to listen to what Crew might have had to say.
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Crew told authorities that a photographer confessed to hitting Divine and tried to sell him the damaged car. Sheriff’s officials investigated his claims and interviewed the photographer, but they were unable to build a case and reached a dead end. For his part, the accused photographer claimed he wrecked his car on the day after the girl was struck. But he refused to take a lie-detector test.
According to an Augusta Chronicle article from 2002, Roundtree followed up new leads from people claiming to know who hit Divine as she ran across Teakwood Drive on March 13, 2000. She died more than a year later of complications related to the accident.
The case shocked the community and led the governor’s office to add $5,000 to the Sheriff’s Office’s $2,000 reward for information.
Meanwhile, Crew told the Chronicle this year that he wants to join the commission because he’s “tired of poor leadership.” He says many people have asked him to run and he feels he is the “right person for the job.”
As “Ray Montana,” the activist founded CSRA Street Justice and organized protests following the 2016 deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. In 2020, also helped with protests following the George Floyd death and led rallies to remove the Confederate monument from Broad Street.
All three District 2 candidates have filed a declaration, meaning they can legally raise funds. Qualifying is not until March.
However, any candidate must abide by state Constitutional rules that disqualify candidates who “have been convicted of a felony involving moral turpitude, unless that person’s civil rights have been restored and at least 10 years have elapsed from the date of the completion of the sentence without a subsequent conviction of another felony involving moral turpitude.”
Greg Rickabaugh is the Jail Report Contributor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at greg.rickabaugh@theaugustapress.com
Senior Reporter Scott Hudson contributed to this report.
