Jonathan Ryan Banks

A 3-year-old child was burned by suspected meth chemicals Saturday in Manchester.  Police found even more appalling items inside the residence where the child lived.  Manchester Police answered a call to a house on Raven Street and found chemicals used to produce meth and multiple roaches and bugs in the house. The child got into chemicals that were used to produce the drug. The 3-year-old and three other children were treated at United Regional Medical Center where they were decontaminated for meth.  The Department of Children Services took custody of the children and turned them over to the other family members. The father, 29-year-old Jonathan Ryan Banks, was charged with simple possession of marijuana after admitting to smoking pot when police found a bag of marijuana.  He was also charged with aggravated child endangerment.  The mother, 22-year-old Ashley Marie Harrell, was charged with child abuse/neglect for allowing the children to live in uninhabitable living conditions.

Ashley Marie Harrell

Outside the Coffee County Jail... By Barry West

A follow-up to a story that we first reported to you Monday.

Coffee County Sheriff’s Deputies transported 25 prisoners to the Tennessee Department of Corrections Monday.  According to Sheriff Steve Graves,  20 men and 5 women were sent to prison.  Federal agent’s picked up 4 inmates who had been indicted on federal charges.  The sheriff stated that he still has about 9 state prisoners in the jail and is not sure when the state will take custody of those inmates.  The state agreed to take the prisoners after the Tennessee Correction Institute notified the corrections department of the overcrowded conditions.  Construction for a planned new jail is not yet underway.  Even with the inmates being moved, 232 inmates remain in the current jail, which was designed to house 196 inmates.

Sales tax collections for the month of March are released for Coffee County and the cities of Manchester and Tullahoma. The net collection for the entire county is $1,541,862. In the county alone the total was $149,663 up from the March 2011 total of $141,481. In Manchester sales tax collection for March of 2012 was $610,689 up from the $545,421 in March of 2011, a difference of over $65,000. Tullahoma also saw an increase $99,400 with a total March 2012 collection of $781,500. All three governments are seeing great increases over the totals in the first quarters of last year.