Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Jonesboro, GA

Jonesboro is a city and the county seat of Clayton County, Georgia, located about eighteen miles south of Atlanta in the upper central Piedmont, just southeast of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Jonesboro began as Leaksville, founded in 1823 on land opened to settlement by the 1821 Treaty of Indian Springs, and the Flint River Baptist Church was erected on a hill in the settlement in 1825.

When the railroad reached the area in 1846, Leaksville was renamed Jonesboro — originally spelled Jonesborough — in honor of railroad official Samuel Goode Jones, and the town was incorporated on December 13, 1859.

Clayton County was created on November 30, 1858, from parts of Fayette and Henry counties and named for attorney and congressman Augustin Smith Clayton, with Jonesboro as its seat.

The Battle of Jonesboro, fought August 31 to September 1, 1864, was the final battle of the Atlanta Campaign: Union troops seized the railroad south of Atlanta, cutting off the city's supplies and forcing its surrender, a turning point that helped propel Abraham Lincoln to re-election.

Tara, the fictional plantation in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, was placed about five miles outside Jonesboro, the closest town, and the city now preserves that legacy at the Road to Tara Museum and along Tara Boulevard, its main north-south road carrying U.S. 41.

Jonesboro's Stately Oaks Plantation museum complex is built around an 1839 plantation house and offers a window into the area's antebellum history.

Many scenes from the 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit were filmed in Jonesboro, and the cover photograph of Lynyrd Skynyrd's first album was shot near the corner of Mill and Main streets in the city.

Jonesboro's population was 4,235 at the 2020 census, living in 1,476 households and 771 families within the city.

In March 2023 Jonesboro elected Dr. Sonya Sartor, its first Black mayor.