When it gets around lunchtime on Saturday, April 22, you might want to be as far away from Fayetteville as possible.

That’s when the 2006 Georgia Police Memorial Ride will be hitting the area. Around 2,500 vehicles are expected to participate and officials guess that highway intersections along the route will be shut down for up to 40-45 minutes at a time.

The caravan is expected to enter Fayette County from Atlanta on Ga. Highway 314 N. Then it will continue southbound on Ga. Highway 85, where traffic will likely back up for miles.

“We’ll do the best we can to get through as quickly as possible,” said Lt. Col. Wayne Hannah of the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department. “But it is intrusive and it will hurt somewhat.”

Because cars will be backed up for so long on Hwy. 85, officials predict that even after the roadblocks are lifted, it may take a while for traffic to get back to normal.

The only option for those wishing to get back into downtown Fayetteville is to go north on Hwy. 85 to Corinth Road and turn right. That path eventually leads to the eastern leg of Ga. Highway 54, where motorists can turn right to head back into Fayetteville, Hannah said.

The caravan will end at the Villages Amphitheater in downtown Fayetteville for a ceremony honoring law enforcement officers in Georgia who died in the line of duty last year.

Among those to be honored are former Peachtree City resident David Wilhelm, who was killed at a home he was building in Buckhead, allegedly by Fulton County Courthouse escapee Brian Nichols.

Wilhelm was a supervisor for the investigations office of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He oversaw a group of employees who worked human smuggling and drug trafficking cases.

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