MUSCOGEE COUNTY, Ga. – A multi-agency operation led to the arrest of two men wanted for separate child sex crimes, authorities said.

Muscogee County child exploitation arrests

What we know:

The Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office Collaborative Intelligence Group worked with regional federal and state partners to track down and arrest two wanted men. 

Authorities executed a search warrant in Macon County, Alabama, to arrest John Hunter Blanton on multiple bench warrants out of Muscogee County. Those warrants include two counts of aggravated child molestation, child molestation, statutory rape and enticing a child for indecent purposes, according to the sheriff’s office. 

Blanton was taken into custody without incident and is being held while awaiting extradition back to Muscogee County.

In a separate action, investigators arrested Brian Spargo in Muscogee County on a felony warrant from the Phenix City Police Department in Alabama. 

Spargo was wanted for first-degree sodomy in connection to an ongoing case involving the sexual abuse of a child under the age of 12, the sheriff’s office said. 

He was taken to the Muscogee County Jail and is waiting for extradition to Russell County, Alabama.

Ongoing Georgia-Alabama sex crime investigation

What we don’t know:

Officials have not yet confirmed the specific dates or locations where the alleged crimes took place. It remains unclear when Blanton and Spargo will face their first court appearances. Authorities have not released details regarding how long Blanton had been a fugitive in Alabama before his capture.

Sheriff vows protection for local children

What they’re saying:

“We won’t stop until the criminals do!” Sheriff Greg Countryman said in a statement. “The Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office will not tolerate crimes of this nature against our children. We remain committed to locating and arresting wanted offenders to ensure the safety of those in our community.”

Future charges pending in child sex abuse cases

Both cases remain under active investigation, according to the sheriff’s office. Authorities noted that additional charges may be pending against the suspects as the investigation continues.

Downtowns are a rich tapestry of local history, unique businesses, and fun places to hang out. Some of the best examples are in Georgia’s small towns, with WorldAtlas recently releasing its list of recommendations.

Here are the eight highlighted and excerpts of what the platform said about them:

Athens GA

“The student crowd packs the independent restaurants, bars, and record stores past midnight. The grid stays flat and walkable….Live music drives the strip. The 40 Watt Club on West Washington Street launched R.E.M. and the B-52s. It still books shows most nights. The Georgia Theatre stages concerts a few blocks over. Its rooftop bar overlooks the streets. Mama’s Boy serves Georgia peach French toast to the morning crowd.”

Blue Ridge GA

“Blue Ridge grew up around a working rail line….Independent shops, galleries, and restaurants line both sides of the rails. The Swan Drive-In has operated since 1955. It still shows double features on summer nights. The Chattahoochee National Forest closes in on three sides. The mountains stay in view down every cross street.”

Dahlonega GA

“Dahlonega built its square around the oldest surviving courthouse in Georgia. The 1836 building now holds the Dahlonega Gold Museum….The shops sell gold-panning kits, fudge, and mountain crafts. Tasting rooms pour wine from the Dahlonega Plateau.”

Darien GA

“Scottish Highlanders founded Darien in 1736….They laid the town out on a grid of Oglethorpe squares. The riverfront is still the heart of it. Skipper’s Fish Camp on Screven Street pulls shrimp and oysters off the local fleet….The Old Jail Art Center fills the 1888 county jail on North Way. Galleries and a small history museum share the cells. Fort King George stands just east of the squares.”

Helen GA

“The only Main Street in Georgia that looks airlifted from the Alps. Helen now hosts the longest-running Oktoberfest in the country….The Chattahoochee River cuts through the middle of the village. Tube rentals crowd the water all summer. Bakeries, beer halls, and candy shops line the cobbled side streets.”

Madison GA

“Madison wraps its core around the 1905 Morgan County Courthouse. The town holds one of the largest historic districts in Georgia….The Madison-Morgan Cultural Center fills the arts calendar from an 1895 schoolhouse….Galleries and a performance hall sit inside it now. Heritage Hall opens its 1811 Greek Revival rooms for daily tours on South Main Street. Antebellum and Victorian houses line the blocks in every direction.”

Senoia GA

“Film crews have used the streets as a backdrop since the late 1980’s. ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ shot scenes here in 1989. ‘The Walking Dead’ rebuilt the streetscape into the fictional Woodbury in 2012….Nic and Norman’s stands at 20 Main Street. Actor Norman Reedus and producer Greg Nicotero opened it in 2016. It feeds fans and locals the same burgers. The Veranda Historic Inn rents 1906 rooms a block off Main, in the former Hollberg Hotel. Maguire’s and the Senoia Coffee and Cafe handle the regular lunch crowd. Boutiques and antique shops fill the rest.”

St Marys GA

“St. Marys ends its main blocks at the waterfront. The daily ferry to Cumberland Island National Seashore loads at the foot of the street….Seagle’s Restaurant has served seafood on the waterfront since 1926. The St. Marys Submarine Museum stands a block away….The First Presbyterian Church has held its corner since the early 1800s. Brackish Beer Company pours local brews a few blocks back.”

Miguel Legoas is a Deep South Connect Team Reporter for USA Today. Find him on Instagram @miguelegoas and email at mlegoas@gannett.com.

‘They want us to stop seeing each other, to lose contact, to feel alone,” the Icelandic writer Sjón told me. By “they”, he meant the dark forces rising across the world: populists, fascists, fundamentalists.

That was in September 2025, at the Tbilisi international festival of literature, attended by more people than ever before. The halls were full, and I think everyone present felt grateful to the foreign guests for coming – in defiance of “them.”

I don’t think coming to Tbilisi is an act of great heroism – yet. But already I have countless examples of people no longer coming – people who hold this city and this country dear, people who understand the context, who don’t need things explained to them. Their absence gives me a completely new and unfamiliar feeling of abandonment.

Europeans who put down roots here over decades are leaving Tbilisi. Most of them came in the 1990s on humanitarian missions. My father jokingly called them “cultural refugees”. They fell in love with this place and stayed here for ever. But nothing lasts for ever, and their departure feels like an alarm bell to me.

Our young people are leaving, too. Quietly, without fuss. You think someone is still here because they remain active on social media, and then it turns out they are already trying to settle in Lisbon, Dublin or Berlin.

There are too few of us to create communities and diasporas abroad. We will simply dissolve, scatter across the world, and disappear. Or rather, the part of us that loves thinking and is incapable of flattery will disappear.

For those of us who remain here, literary festivals and similar cultural events are places where it is possible to breathe freely. You see like-minded people and tell them how glad you are to meet them somewhere other than one of the protests that have continued since the government called a halt to Georgia’s EU membership negotiations. The festival doors are open to everyone, but regime conformists have no need to meet foreign or Georgian authors. They already know everything.

There was an empty chair for poet Zviad Ratiani at the book festival. Two months earlier, he had effectively forced his own arrest by repeating the act of another political prisoner, the nonconformist journalist Mzia Amaghlobeli, who slapped a police officer.

Ratiani believed his action would change something. The last time I saw him was in court. He stood throughout the hearing, rolling cigarettes in his hands. Even his refusal to sit in the defendant’s chair was symbolic.

Ratiani is in prison now. Yet I often see him in the city streets, regularly mistaking passersby for him.

At the annual Tbilisi film festival in December, the name most often heard from the stage was that of another prisoner of the regime, actor Andro Chichinadz. Every speaker mentioned Chichinadze, transformed from a charming and talented young man into a hero and a symbol of resistance.

I watched every film, even Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors, about Stalinist repression from a new perspective. Following Russia’s example, the cult of Joseph Stalin has been brought out of mothballs here in Georgia, and to my astonishment it is alive. Stalin’s resurrection coincides with the rebirth of the most absurd ideas of Georgian messianism. Unknown professors and pseudoscientists have begun speaking about the uniqueness of Georgian civilisation.

The festival opened with the Italian biopic Duse. I asked the person beside me why such a boring work was chosen as the opening film, and he whispered back that outside, in the cinema foyer, there was a buffet and several bottles of wine gifted to the festival by the Italian embassy.

Everything became clear.

The Tbilisi international film festival was always poor, but this one was simply destitute.

Despite its poverty, the festival always had interesting guests who were happy to come here. And we eagerly awaited meeting them, attending their masterclasses and public lectures.

This time there was one foreign guest, the actor who played Benito Mussolini in the film. I missed the 10-minute scene featuring Mussolini because I fell asleep, but woke up after the screening to see the Il Duce actor on stage – with his thick neck and square jaw – saying that Tbilisi was a beautiful city. Why Mussolini, of all people? Perhaps the actor was simply in Tbilisi as a tourist, and his visit coincided with the festival.

The most emotional audience at the film festival was the one at the screening of Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague. Nobody wanted to go home afterwards; strangers hugged, smoked together. This joy and excitement felt very real.

“We are part of this, we always were, and they want to separate us from it,” a woman from my generation, whom I know from the protest rallies, told me.

By “this”, she meant Europe.

The film touched me deeply, too, taking me back to the day my young parents came home after seeing Jean-Luc Godard’s masterpiece Breathless.

In my Soviet childhood, everything reached us late, and I vividly remember my parents watching Breathless 20 years after its release and being overwhelmed by it.

In Linklater’s nostalgic film, the young Godard and his friends are shooting Breathless. It is a tribute to the past, made with great tact and love – to people who in the distant 1960s created a masterpiece and laid the foundation for something new and real, perhaps for that very Europe we admire so much, the Europe we aspire to, the Europe each of us imagines differently; a Europe that has already become a myth, and now even the road toward that myth is being closed to us. We are forbidden from approaching it, and we grow angry, sometimes cry, sometimes fall into complete helplessness.

Among like-minded people, you believe everything will be fine, that the efforts of so many good people cannot possibly end in defeat. Yet, still, the tragic feeling of abandonment does not leave me. It feels as though we have returned to those old days when European films reached us, but their creators never did.

Above the hall full of nonconformists hovered the spectre of isolation. The film festival ended, but the street protests continued, and so does our life in a country where laws designed to oppress and constrict us are being adopted at accelerated speed.

We have neither money nor brute force nor, thank God, weapons. They are not afraid of us, but we greatly irritate the government and those who have chosen the path of conformism – as well as others who possess the skills necessary for life in an empire but not in a free society. Such people have begun calling themselves “traditionalists”. They label the pro-European part of the population “liberals”, regardless of political views, and have learned to pronounce the word with particular hatred.

Traditionalists are driven by spite towards liberals. If liberals are noticed caring for stray dogs, traditionalists consider it their duty to treat stray dogs with cruelty.

Tbilisi is becoming a difficult and depressing city to live in.

I walk through the streets of my native city and, once again, I think I see the imprisoned poet and his carrot-coloured jacket.

Every April, I spend several weeks guiding European birdwatchers, and the work never tires me – I enjoy it. But this year, I had only one group, from the Netherlands, in May. No matter where my guests are from – the Netherlands, Belgium or Germany – at some point they will ask me why there are so many EU flags hanging in Georgian towns and villages.

I would usually answer that my country strives to join the EU, and that this is the will of the Georgian people.

Birdwatchers are pleasant people and they come prepared. They know everything about our birds in advance; they have even studied their calls. But most are surprised to hear that 80% of Georgia’s population wants EU membership.

And if the birdwatcher is a good person, that surprise is inevitably followed by discomfort. Especially after I tell them that people have stood in the streets for more than 500 days for European ideals, that many have lost their jobs because of their civic stance, that even more have been fined and beaten. Some protesters are in prison, showing rare resilience, committing acts of civic heroism, refusing pardons.

With my Dutch visitors, we travelled through different regions of Georgia, through various bird habitats, and the tour was a great success. Despite wars and countless disasters, birds continue their annual cycles: crossing borders they know nothing about, rebuilding nests, pairing up.

After five days on the road, none of my birdwatchers had asked the awkward question about EU flags. I do not have to give my prepared angry answer – that, yes, people here go to prison for the European idea. They have stopped asking this question because, in the cities and villages of Georgia, EU flags are now a rarity.

• Archil Kikodze is a Georgian fiction writer, screenwriter, professional photographer and ecoguide

• This article was translated by Maia Gabuldani-Schneider. A longer version was published by VoxEurop.eu