Douglas County Coroner admits not properly reporting child death

DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. (FOX 5 Atlanta) - Douglas County coroner Renee Godwin admitted she made a mistake with how she handled the recent death of a teenage boy.

Her admission came after complaints surfaced about how she reported other child deaths, complaints that prompted a Superior Court judge to order her to follow the law.

By law, the coroner is supposed to report any child death to a special child fatality review board to see whether there's a way to prevent similar deaths in the future. Douglas County Superior Court judge David Emerson issued an order saying Rene Godwin had failed "on numerous occasions to perform those duties" and he told her to follow the law.

Then another death went unreported.

It happened June 10 in a Lithia Spring mobile home park. Bilian Williams said he was looking down at his phone while two friends played video games. Suddenly he heard a gun go off.

"I said pass me the controller and I heard a click," Williams remembered." And it was so fast that there was no time to hit the ground. It was just boom."

Gonzalo Lamar Gonzalez-Abara was 17. He died from a gunshot wound. His friend Gabriel Martinez Cruz was later indicted for malice murder.

But Douglas County coroner Rene Godwin failed to report Abara's death within 48 hours as required by law.

When he heard about the Abara case last month, judge Emerson cited Godwin for criminal contempt.

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He scheduled a Monday hearing to decide whether to punish Godwin. Instead, on Thursday she agreed to a consent order, promising to "implement new procedures" in the way future child deaths are handled... and train her staff on "the various reporting obligations of the Coroner's office."

The agreement pointed out that even though Godwin failed to properly report Abara's death, she was not in violation of the judge's order because her mistake was in not reporting it to the DeKalb County Medical Examiner, the county where the teenager actually lived. That Medical Examiner is then responsible for reporting the death to DeKalb County's child fatality review board.

Godwin has been a magnet for controversy since the political novice was elected to office in 2016. Her chief assistant sued her after he was fired, claiming retaliation for blowing the whistle on problems he saw in her office. The case was settled with no admission of wrongdoing by Douglas County.

Soon after taking office, Godwin asked commissioners to nearly double her salary for a position that's always been considered part-time, creating even more uproar. They said no.

The coroner did not respond to our requests for comment.