Category: News

After a long grueling process Manchester has a new director of schools. Earlier this week the Manchester Board of Education finalized a deal to make Lee Wilkerson the new director. The board had previously offered the job to Dr Don McPherson from Alabama, a contract that he later turned down for another job offer.
Wilkerson comes from the Murfreesboro City School system where he was principal at Cason Lane Academy. The contract that Wilkerson accepted is for three years at $110,000 per year.
Wilkerson is a 32-year veteran of public education with experience as a teacher, principal and human resources director during his career.

A Cannon County man was arrested recently for aggravated domestic assault and vandalism over $1,000.
According to Sheriff’s Department reports, Cannon County deputies responded to a Short Mountain Road residence and upon arrival made contact with Russell Walls who was walking across the front yard with blood on his face and was very irate. He stated that he had been arguing with his family and his sister attacked him by striking him in the head with a baseball bat.
Deputies then went to speak to Russell’s sister Jennifer. Jennifer stated that Russell had been at the residence to see his son. All of a sudden he became aggressive and went after her with a metal object in his hands stating that he was going to kill her. Jennifer stated she was in fear of serious bodily injury and that’s when she picked up a baseball bat and hit him with it in self-defense. When the two were separated, Jennifer stated that Russell grabbed a bat and broke all the windows out of her vehicle parked in the driveway.
Other family members were present when the incident happened. Mr. Walls was placed under arrest for aggravated domestic assault and Vandalism over $1,000. He will answer to the charges on July 5th in Cannon County General Sessions Court. (WGNS Radio)

With the extreme heat and humidity taking place during this time of year, the Coffee County Sheriff’s Department wanted to remind you not leave children inside hot vehicles. A report last year showed Tennessee is among the top 10 states for death of children due to hot vehicles, claiming 23 deaths from 1998 to 2014. State lawmakers passed legislation that protects individuals from the cost of damages if they have to force their way into a hot car to save a child. Tennessee law requires Good Samaritans to first call 911, and then see if any vehicle doors are unlocked. If not, they can break in to rescue a child. Tennessee is among 20 states that have laws that address leaving a child unattended in a vehicle. The temperature inside a vehicle can escalate by 15 degrees in just 10 minutes and with the hot temperatures and high humidity death can come very quickly. Even if you leave the windows rolled down some, the temperatures inside a vehicle can become deadly. Please take children in the store or leave them at home as it would be better than death. When temperatures outside exceeded 86 degrees F, the internal temperatures of the vehicle can quickly reached 134 to 154 degrees F. Heat stroke may occur when a body temperature passes 104 degrees Fahrenheit. This can overwhelm the brain’s temperature control, causing symptoms such as dizziness, disorientation, agitation, confusion, seizure, and/or death. On average, 38 children die in hot cars each year from heat-related deaths after being trapped inside motor vehicles. Even the best of parents or caregivers can unknowingly leave a sleeping baby in a car; and the end result can be injury or even death. Anyone seeing children left in a vehicle without the air conditioner running are ask to call 911. Another reminder is to not leave pets in hot vehicles. They, like humans can be overtaken by the heat very quickly.

A former Grundy County assistant football coach and teacher at Swiss Memorial Elementary School, Thomas “Tommy” Andrews pled guilty on Monday to two counts of aggravated statutory rape. He will be sentenced on August 8.
Deputies arrested Andrews, 41, on December 13, 2015 and charged him with one count of aggravated statutory rape and one count of aggravated statutory rape by an authority figure.
Grundy County Sheriff Clint Shrum said his department received a complaint and they presented the case to the district attorney’s office before charges were filed”. He was indicted in March of this year.
Shrum says during the process of his department’s investigation his officers learned a complaint was made to the Department of Children’s Services about Andrews on May 7, 2015.
Shrum said in a television interview said that his office had collected hard evidence against Andrews. The arrest report states that Andrews had picked up the 14-year-old victim from a friend’s house and had sex with her.
Andrews had been suspended without pay since these charges first surfaced, and he resigned from his position in the Grundy County School System on Monday.

On Monday Coffee County Deputy Blake Simmons says he observed a vehicle allegedly run a stop sign on the Woodbury Highway and Rigney Road. The arrest warrant says that Simmons initiated a traffic stop and upon checking the female’s driving privilege it was discovered she was a habitual traffic offender 2nd offense and was driving on a revoked license 7th offense. Linda Sue Wilber age 49 of Rutledge Falls Rd Tullahoma was arrested and booked at the Coffee County Jail under a bond of $30,500 and she has a court date of August 8, 2016.

Two employees of K-Mart in Tullahoma were arrested on June 12 for theft of property from the store. Arrested and charged with theft of property were Kristen Dawn Avant, 19, of East Lauderdale Street and America Jane Colgrove, 30, of East Lauderdale Street. The women were arrested after store manager Edsel Manuel reported to Tullahoma Police Officer Joshua Yates that the two had been taking items from the store. He stated that both women were price checking items but not scanning to pay for them. According to the police report, Avant allegedly took $371 worth of items while Colgrove allegedly took $252 worth of items from the store.

Almost 25 million people in the U.S. at any given time are living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, according to the support and advocacy group PTSD United. That includes thousands of Tennesseans left with the illness from a traumatic event such as a crime, natural disaster or events surrounding military service. Dr. Matthew Friedman, a senior adviser with the Veterans Administration’s National Center for PTSD, says the diagnosis is only part of seeking help. “On the one hand, there are resilient people who meet the full diagnostic criteria for PTSD, but they can cope with the symptoms, and then there are other people for whom PTSD is completely debilitating,” he states. Friedman says therapies have advanced to include cognitive behavior therapy and medications that help people work through their illness. Friedman says while it’s normal to experience stress after a traumatic event, you should seek the help of a professional if it lasts longer than three months, disrupts your home or work life or you find yourself reliving the event frequently and experiencing flashbacks. “We really want people to recognize that they’ve got PTSD and if they’re not sure they should see a professional who can help them sort that out and if they do, then we have treatments that work,” he stresses. “People who think they have PTSD, or their loved one has PTSD should seek treatment.” The annual cost to society of anxiety disorders is estimated to be significantly over $42 billion, often due to misdiagnosis and under treatment. This includes psychiatric and non-psychiatric medical treatment costs, indirect workplace costs, mortality costs and prescription drug costs.

Gov. Bill Haslam has named longtime state prisons official Tony Parker as the new commissioner of the Department of Correction. Parker replaces Derrick Schofield, who announced earlier this month that he is stepping down to become the executive vice president of a Florida-based prison services provider. Parker is a 33-year veteran of the department who started his career as a correctional officer at the Lake County Regional Correctional Facility in 1983. He was promoted several times until serving as warden at prisons in Tiptonville and Henning. Parker became the correctional administrator of the agency’s West Region in 2011. The state Correction Department oversees 14 prisons holding about 21,000 inmates and supervises 79,000 people on probation, parole or community corrections. The agency employees 6,500 workers.