Sunday evening around 6pm Hickerson Station Volunteer Fire Department was called to the scene of a pull behind camper fire at Barton Springs camping area at Normandy Lake. When they arrived, the camper was fully engulfed in flames. While extinguishing the fire a body was discovered.
Coffee County Sheriff Chad Partin responded to the scene and told WMSR News that the body has not been identified to be male or female because it was burned so badly. The sheriff’s department secured the scene until the state bomb and arson team arrived to investigate. They will look into the cause of the fire. The body is being sent to Nashville for an autopsy to determine the cause and approximate time of the person’s death. Sheriff Partin says his department is investigating who owns the camper.
WMSR News will keep you up to date on this story when new information is released.

Will the Manchester-Coffee County Conference Center (MCCCC) be sold? Some people have voiced that opinion for a long time because the center has had financial troubles for many years.
In a twist that some leaders did not see coming, County Mayor Gary Cordell wants to see if the City of Manchester would take on the center. Question is, who makes the decision to sell?
According to the agreement signed in November of 2000 between Coffee County and Manchester the two parties agreed to fund on an equal basis the construction and operation of the conference center. According to the contract, upon completion of the construction, “legal title to the real property, improvements located thereon, and the personal property located within the conference center shall be transferred to and vest to the Public Building Authority.” The 2018 audit report on the PBA, completed by the Winchester accounting firm of Bean, Rhoten & Kelly, PLLC, also states “the PBA owns and operates” the center.
If the city did buy out the county’s portion, Manchester would take on all debt and that did not go over well with some city leaders.
One alderman stated that the city should sell to the county. One said schools are more important because of the growth inside the city.
Mayor Cordell has said that he believes Manchester, in time, would have more opportunity to make money on the center than the county ever would.
Some other county officials say Manchester benefits from the MCCCC because of the hotel-motel tax collections. The county does not have a hotel-motel tax in place at this time. The county is attempting to implement such a tax, but it would be on hotel and motels outside the city limits of Manchester and Tullahoma.
WMSR News will continue to update you on the ever-growing saga of the MCCCC.

Leslie Lamont Coleman

Shelbyville Police report that one of two men charged with robbing a Shelbyville convenience store last week is a convicted murderer.
Leslie Lamont Coleman, 51, and Deontre Farris, 18, who share a Landers Street apartment, were arrested Wednesday by Detective Lt. Charles “Chucky” Merlo and Detective Cody Swift of the Shelbyville Police Department. The suspects allegedly robbed the Circle K convenience store, Madison Street and Wartrace Pike, at knifepoint around 1 a.m. last Monday.
Coleman is on parole after being found guilty of first-degree murder and especially aggravated robbery in 1991 in Nashville. The Nashville incident is similar to this week’s robbery in Shelbyville.

Deontre Farris

Coleman, then 23, and his stepbrother, Kenneth Robinson Jr., then 17, robbed several businesses in the Harding Mall-Nolensville Road area of Nashville in the summer and fall of 1990, according to reports in The Tennessean’s archives.
The 1990 victim had given the men free sandwiches before they shot her to death, hid her body in the store and left in her car with less than $100 in cash, a similar amount to that taken last week in Shelbyville. (Shelbyville Times-Gazette)

The Tennessee Department of Education says that 76.1 percent of the state’s public high school class of 2019—53,478 students—participated in the department’s third ACT Senior Retake opportunity in October 2018, the state’s highest participation rate on record. Of those seniors who retook the ACT in 2018, more than 50 percent increased their composite score from their junior year score, a 10.2 percent point increase from 2017. Also, the average ACT composite score increased by 0.5 points for students who took the ACT during their junior year and through the ACT Senior Retake in 2018.
Additionally, 3,825 seniors raised their composite score to a 21 or higher, allowing them to access more than $61 million in HOPE Scholarship funds that provide each student up to $16,000 to help pay for college in Tennessee. This number is up from 2,333 students in 2017.
The 2018 ACT retake also resulted in more students hitting the ACT college-readiness benchmarks across-the-board in each of the four tested subject areas: math, English, science, and reading.