A Georgia judge died by suicide at the courthouse after leaving a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp, Newsweek reports.
Judge Steve Yekel, 74, was found Tuesday morning by a deputy. The Effingham County Sheriff's Office posted on Facebook that Yekel appears to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a courtroom of the Effingham County Courthouse. Yekel had asked to resign on Monday, one day before his term was set to end.
Yekel, who had a 45-year legal career, wrote that he had won two previous elections for his judge position. He noted that the 2022 election was won "by over 1,400 votes." In the second election, last May 21, Yekel received 900 more votes than any other candidate but not enough to avoid a runoff on July 18. He lost the primary runoff to Melissa Calhoun by less than 400 votes among nearly 6,000 cast. "I feel that the office of State Court Judge of Effingham is too important to be decided by only 6 percent of the eligible voters of Effingham County," Yekel's letter said. Kemp replied that, "The results of a fair election should not be nullified on the basis of a manufactured legal technicality." Before becoming a judge, Yekel was an assistant district attorney in Chatham County and worked as a special agent in Georgia's Alcohol & Tobacco Tax Unit.