Amaris Elliott-Engel/ The Citizen.

Story:

The violent deaths in Cayuga County during an eight-month period beginning Dec. 21, 2004, may have created a sense of unease about the course of crime in this predominantly rural county of 81,500.

But 2005 arrest statistics show that with the exception of homicides, last year's arrests actually fell in a number of categories.

Local officials said the area's safety and security can't be judged by those attention-grabbing deaths. All of those crimes are the sort that will occur every so often, they said; most involved intense emotional situations leading to a tragic death and people who knew each other at least in passing acquaintance.

"The homicides: you really can't define the year by them," Auburn Police Chief Gary Giannotta said.

That eight-month period began with the still unsolved shooting death of John Beer in his Auburn home. The same day, 16-year-old Teri Whyte, of Auburn, held her hand over her infant's nose and mouth in an attempt to stop him from crying. He died the next day.

Bradley Laning, 17, stabbed girlfriend Andrea Kell, pregnant with his unborn child, to death March 31, 2005. And Aurelius resident Bradley Foster strangled his wife in April before committing suicide.

Anthony Agee died from a stab wound July 24. Jolynn Wilson forcibly placed a baby bottle into her 2 1/2-month-old son's mouth, fell asleep with the bottle propped in his mouth and rolled over him while asleep. The child died Aug. 16.

These types of crimes are disconcerting to residents' sense of routine and life's reliability in this area, but it does not fully reflect how safe it is.

"This is a very conservative area we live in with a low tolerance to crime," said Cayuga County Sheriff Rob Outhouse. "A single homicide in our community is a very big news item and people are very intolerant of it, as we should be."

But in reality, 2005 had the third lowest number of arrests in the last 11 years. Seven years in the same period have more violent arrests than 2005.

For a full report on this story, please read Monday's editon of The Citizen.