Daycare fingerprint program reviews mixed: Voucher tracking method seen as discriminatory
Jackson resident Jessica Purnell, 29, rises at 5 a.m. every morning to get her four children, Camaurice, 10; Maurico, 8; Carlisha, 6; and Kierra, 3, ready for school and day care.
Before driving across the city to work as a cashier at Richland’s Walmart, the single mother drops Kierra off at Jamboree Child and Development Center off Northside Drive in Jackson.
Lately, it’s taken longer to get in and out because Jamboree is a pilot site for a new (E)ChildCare fingerprint scanning system.
Dog fighting is epidemic in parts of Madison County
Debra Boswell, director of the Mississippi Animal Rescue League, has a thick folder of reports and numerous packages of photographs featuring bloody, scarred dogs — some with missing ears, others with deep gashes in their necks. Some are pictures of lifeless animals that are evidence of an underground crime, a secret blood sport.
Boswell said dog fighting has reached “epidemic proportions” in the area. She has been asked to help with more than 50 dog-fighting cases this year, and MARL takes in around 150 American pit bull terriers annually.
Domestic violence program’s funding to end
A legal assistance program that aids Jackson area domestic violence victims will run out of money next month.
Brandi Brown, senior attorney and program manager of the Catholic Charities Legal Assistance Clinic, said the clinic is operating with money provided by the Mississippi Bar Association, but funding ends Sept. 30.
Brown’s staff has applied for federal and local grants, and is awaiting responses. Without funding, she said it’s impossible to say what will happen to the 250-300 women and children the clinic serves annually.
Duplex symbol of blight: Some surprised suspected drug house remains
The dilapidated blue duplex at 1305 W. Ridgeway Street in Jackson has become an iconic symbol of government intrusion, community blight and city crime.
Some find it hard to believe the damaged structure at Ridgeway and Sears Streets is still standing.
Aug. 26 will mark the fourth anniversary of the night then-Jackson Mayor Frank Melton, accompanied by two police bodyguards and a group of young men, used sledgehammers to raid and partially demolish the suspected drug house.
DUI arrests double in county
The Madison County DUI arrest rate almost doubled from 100 in March to 194 in April, and law enforcement officials say it’s due to stricter enforcement.
Eddie Belvedresi, chief deputy of the Madison County Sheriff’s Office, said grant funds are helping his department enforce DUI laws.
“The last couple of years, we have been given an overtime grant through the state Governor’s Highway Safety Program,” Belvedresi said. “We get $25,000 a year, and that is used for overtime for DUI enforcement.”
Fatal fire breaks hearts: School principal calls child killed in blaze delightful, bright
She wore a white coat and a stethoscope on career day at Wilkins Elementary School because she wanted to be a doctor when she grew up.
But 9-year-old Tirysha Taylor’s life was cut short 15 days before Christmas when she died from smoke inhalation following a south Jackson house fire.
There were two adults in the house with her Thursday when the fire erupted.
The NASA Challenger disaster 25 years later
Jane Merchant grew up in Huntsville, Ala., where her father worked for NASA as an Ordnance Guided Missile School instructor. Those early childhood experiences led her to shoot for the stars in an attempt to become the first teacher in space.
Merchant, a ninth-grade social studies teacher at West Point Junior High School in 1986, applied for the position that was later awarded to Christa McAuliffe.
It’s been 25 years since McAuliffe and six astronauts died during the Challenger disaster. Mississippians still live with the tragedy.
Graveyard Boys terrorize Canton neighborhood
The Graveyard Boys — it sounds like the title of an upcoming Halloween horror film. And for the residents of Adams, Fulton and East Academy Streets, the name evokes the same emotions.
It has been attached to a group of young men (some in their 20s, some younger) who have made a pastime of harassing area residents. Police say most of them are jobless and spend a large portion of their week hanging around the neighborhood creating trouble.
Nuclear blast from the past part of landscape: New book describes role of salt dome
He was 7 when U.S. government representatives came to his Lamar County home, boarded it up and evacuated his family three miles away to protect them from a nuclear blast that would both shake his body and the earth in a 30-mile radius of the Tatum salt dome.
“We were probably about a mile and a half from ground zero,” said Kevin Saul, now 55. “They evacuated us to my grandmother’s house in Baxterville. It was just like an earthquake came through. The house was shimmering and shaking. The ground had a buckle effect to it. It would knock you off your feet.”
UM chancellor listening sessions: Alumni, faculty and staff voice opinions on next chancellor
Dozens of alumni and faculty Tuesday let a search committee know what they want in the next University of Mississippi chancellor.
They want a chancellor who graduated from Ole Miss and understands Ole Miss culture. They want a unifying figure with a broad understanding of the world who, perhaps, currently lives in a different region of the United States.
They want someone unconnected to and uninfluenced by Mississippi politics, someone who understands education globally and a person who can repair trust that some feel was broken following former chancellor Dan Jones’ departure.
Fleeing from Katrina: A port in the story
Yvonne Hookfin abandoned Redemption for salvation. The former St. Bernard Parish resident escaped the New Orleans Redemption housing complex, where she’s lived for nine years and sought safety with her best friend Dionne Cole. The two are now Broadmoor Baptist Church shelter residents.
Hookfin, a New Town, Mississippi native, said her shelter stay has been a positive aspect of the Katrina tragedy. “I will hate to go and leave the people I have met, but I will be glad to find a house to live in,” she said Thursday, while sitting outside the shelter. “I have met some people I will never forget.”
Purple Drank: Prescription cough syrup key in drug abuse trend
Mississippi authorities say a drug commonly known as “purple drank,” “lean,” or “sippin’ syrup” is becoming more visible in the state.
The main ingredient of the drink is prescription-strength cough syrup that contains promethazine and codeine. Abusers mix it with another liquid, such as a soda and hard candy.
Though popularized in Houston, Texas, the recreational use of purple drank has spread to other Southern states. The drink is a recurring theme in Southern rap culture, with songs discussing its use.
Mississippi interest renewed in storm shelters
Kisha Jeanes, her husband and their two young daughters piled into a closet when the bad-weather sirens went off in Benton County. They waited nervously.
Then Jeanes, 36, put Sydnee, 11, and Kaitlyn, 9, in her car and drove through the storm to the county’s only community storm shelter, a structure Jeanes said has been around since she was a child.
“It was full of people,” she said, “probably 100 to 200.”
They were safe, but when the storm cleared last Sunday, numerous homes a mile from her own were destroyed and two people were dead.
Agencies, churches, neighbors go beyond the basics
As black devoured the sky above her Libby Lane neighborhood in northeast Jackson, Daisy White, 50, knew she had to escape, but there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
She grabbed her 86-year-old mother, rushed her into the bathroom, placed her in the tub, and covered her with pillows, hoping to protect her from the approaching tornado.
Trapped, with no alternative but to wait out the storm, White decided that if she had to, she would give up her life for her mother. And as the noise grew louder, she waited, wondering if she would survive.
Emotional recovery from tornadoes takes time
David Kahlstorf was standing under a tree in his front yard when the tornado approached the Old Canton Hill neighborhood in north Jackson. His wife, Mary, called to him, and he ran inside. Moments later, limbs cracked and a 100-year-old oak fell to the ground.
“It happened so quickly,” he said. “You didn’t have time to think about anything. Everyone says you will hear a roar like a train, and I heard that. By the time we got the windows open, it was over. You just kind of feel dumbfounded. You think about what could have happened.”
Shelter, safe room inquiries rise in aftermath of storm
Madison residents Pat and Willie Hughes had a tornado safe room installed inside their Madison home three weeks ago.
They didn’t get a chance to use it April 4 because they weren’t at home when the storm struck, but Pat Hughes said it’s nice to know the safe room is there should another funnel cloud twist through the county.
“You are always interested in what you can do when the storm comes,” she said, “but this is a proactive gesture to be ready.”
Tornado strikes Copiah County
Betty Cox and her two sons stood outside her Monticello Road home Thursday, pondering the force of nature that blew a 10-foot metal cattle feeder 300 yards from a neighbor’s home to the base of a large uprooted tree in her yard.
A one-mile radius of Copiah County just outside Hazlehurst was the epicenter of an EF2 tornado that blew through the area Thursday morning.
The National Weather Service says the tornado began 2.5 miles southeast of Hazlehurst and traveled four miles. With maximum winds of 115 mph, a path length of 3.9 miles and a maximum width of 500 yards, the whirlwind started along James Road.
Attala County residents in a ‘state of shock’
Debris, downed trees, and damaged homes and businesses stretch along the roughly seven miles from Possumneck to Hesterville.
County emergency officials said about 100 homes have some structural damage from Saturday’s storm.
Tim and Sandra Cook had completed the finishing touches last week on their year-old, two-story, brick home in Possumneck, a community about 10 miles northwest of Kosciusko.
And as soon as things were in perfect order, an EF4 tornado blew through, snapping trees and sucking off the sides of the Cooks’ kitchen and den.
Churches may be gone, but not faith
They returned to the sites where, together, they had worshiped and found the structures destroyed.
But little things left undisturbed and religious icons not spared by last weekend’s tornado made them feel God remained in control amid the chaos.
Like the hymnal found in Hillcrest Baptist Church.
“One of the songbooks was open, and a piece of trash was lying across it,” said church trustee Gene Creel. “The song showing was ‘Til the Storm Passes By on page 543.”
Churches reaching out to victims
Many Jackson metro-area churches are reaching out to tornado victims throughout the state.
Here are a few ways:
Rita B. Anderson, missions ministry assistant for Clinton’s Morrison Heights Baptist Church, said teams have been to Yazoo County every day this week, helping victims clean and restore the area. “Often that means protecting what is left of their homes with blue roofing tarps,” she said.
Judy Seabrook, director of operations for Jackson’s Meadowbrook Church of Christ, said church members collected enough funds to buy 25 blue tarps, three boxes of nails, and 18 flats of Gatorade.
Unemployment, nutrition aid offered in counties hit by tornadoes
Mississippians in five counties affected by recent tornadoes have received about $400,000 from the regular and Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and around 40 people have filed disaster-related unemployment claims.
Cheryl Sparkman, director of the state Department of Human Services’ Division of Economic Assistance, said Attala, Choctaw, Holmes, Warren and Yazoo county residents affected by the April tornadoes have qualified to receive SNAP assistance. Oktibbeha, Monroe and Union counties were added to the program Friday.
12,000 Miss. children said to be homeless
Around 12,000 Mississippi children and youth are homeless, the National Center on Family Homelessness reports.
“The numbers have increased as the economy has been hurting more and more over the past few years,” Christina Murphy, director of the center’s Campaign to End Child Homeless, said.
The group will offer recommendations today on ways to combat homelessness among children.
About 1.5 million U.S. children are homeless, according to a 2009 report by the group.
Campus mourns Tougaloo student killed in crash.
In a third-floor dorm room on the campus of Tougaloo College, decorated with a youthful pink theme and a painting of Audrey Hepburn hanging above her bed, Sacramento native Alexia Pickett was reminded Thursday that adulthood isn’t always promised.
Just the other day, like good friends sometimes do, she had gotten miffed at her dear friend Joshua Robinson for something ridiculous and petty, something she could have easily gotten over.
The next day, he was gone — killed in an automobile accident on I-55.
You must be logged in to post a comment.