Category: News

Coffee County Central High School Athletic Director, Richard Skipper has announced that he will not return to that position for the 2015-2016 school year. Skipper cited the need to spend more time in his role as Career and Technical Education Director and a desire to be able watch his children’s ball games as a spectator as his main reasons for stepping down.
School Principal Dr Joey Vaughn said, “Mr Skipper has been very involved in the athletic department and we appreciate his hard work and dedication to the student athletes at CCCHS, their families, and our community.”
Skipper began serving as Athletic Director at the start of the 2012-13 school year. No successor has been named at this time.

The search is on for a suspect who led the Tennessee Highway Patrol on a high speed chase through Coffee County into Rutherford County. A suspect, driving a silver Lexus SUV, was clocked at over 100 miles per hour in a work zone at mile-marker on westbound I-24 around 5 a.m. Monday. A pursuit reached speeds of 120 miles per hour.
THP had a trooper working in the TDOT construction zone I-24 westbound inside Coffee County when he clocked the Lexus at 103 mph with workers present. The trooper pursued the subject to exit 81 where Rutherford County and was able to deploy spike strips. The vehicle did make contact with the spike strips, went onto the shoulder, and then came to rest in the grass. The black male driver fled on foot with Rutherford County and Murfreesboro Police city units assisting in trying to locate the suspect. It is believed the subject may possibly be from the St. Louis, Missouri area.
The suspect is described as a black male, around 20-to-30-years old, between 5-foot-8 and 5-foot-10 inches tall and could be injured as blood was found in the vehicle.

It’s been said ‘it takes a village’ to raise a child, and new research suggests that is also the case when it comes to helping kids with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD.
A new study from the American Academy of Pediatrics finds a team approach involving parents, clinicians and doctors significantly improves social skills and overall behavior and has a positive impact on a child’s impulsiveness. Psychologist Carla Allan says these findings confirm what many parents often say that they want more than medication for their kids with ADHD.
“Treatments designed to teach their children new skills, ways of managing their behavior better, ways of making and keeping friends, those are kinds of things parents really want for their kids to have,” says Allan.
The study appears in the journal Pediatrics. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 15 percent of Tennessee children ages four to 17 have been diagnosed with either ADHD or attention deficit disorder. That’s higher than the national average of around 10 percent.
Allan says parents’ involvement in ADHD treatment is critical, no matter what sort of intervention is used.
“Even if you’re just using medication, it’s dependent on the parent remembering to give the child the medicine every day, being able to get the child to take the medicine when the child maybe wants to do something else,” she says. “It’s dependent on parents being able to remember, ‘Oh my gosh, their prescription’s almost out.'”
In 2011, six percent of U.S. children and more than eight percent of children in Tennessee were taking medication for ADHD.

State officials have launched a radio advertising campaign in an effort to get the word out about its new Tennessee Reconnect program.
Tennessee Reconnect is a last-dollar scholarship program that was part of Gov. Bill Haslam’s Tennessee Promise legislation passed last year. The initiative allows adults to attend one of Tennessee’s 27 colleges of applied technology free of tuition and fees.
It also ties in with Haslam’s “Drive to 55″ campaign to improve the state’s graduation rates from the current 32 percent to 55 percent by 2025 in order to help improve overall job qualifications and attract employers to the state.
WPLN reports the ad campaign highlights well-paying jobs that a degree could make possible.
The deadline to apply for fall classes is May 15.

72-year-old John Brown Ramsey, Jr. of Manchester was arrested last week on 33 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.
Manchester Police Investigator Butch Stewart served warrants several weeks ago on Ramsey to take his computer to send it to the TBI for testing.
According to the indictments, Ramsey possessed the pornographic material. The TBI checked Ramsey’s computer and allegedly found images that “included minors engaged in sexual activity or simulated sexual activity” on the computer.
Manchester Police Chief Investigator Billy Butler says that they do not think any of the children shown on the computer images were local.
Ramsey of Kingwood Apartments on the McMinnville Highway was booked into the Coffee County Jail last week on the charges. He was released after posting a bond of $50,000.
Ramsey is scheduled to appear in Coffee County Circuit Court May 6.

A Manchester woman was arrested on statutory rape charges after an alleged incident that occurred on Wednesday April 22.
48-year-old Kimberly Faye Sherrell of Archery Lane, Manchester is accused of having oral sex with a 14-year-old autistic boy.
The teenager was apparently able to tell Manchester police what had happened to him.
Sherrell was booked into the Coffee County Jail on the charge. The woman at last report was being held under a $50,000 bond.

One of four defendants charged in the 2013 murder of Corey N. Matthews will go on trial May 4.
David Jenkins is scheduled to appear at 9 a.m. on May 4 in Franklin County Circuit Court with Judge Thomas Graham presiding.
Jenkins, along with John Corey Lanier, Coty Keith Holmes and Todd E. Dalton, have remained in custody, charged in the March 24, 2013 murder of Matthews, whose badly beaten body was found face up in a Cowan, TN cornfield. The men at one time all lived in Coffee County.
All four men are being held in separate jails in surrounding counties.
Jenkins’ trial had been delayed in February due to his search for new legal representation. Attorney Paul Cross will be representing Jenkins in the trial.
Franklin County District Attorney Mike Taylor and Courtney Lynch are prosecuting the case.

Gov. Bill Haslam has signed a bill to strip local governments of the power to bar people with handgun carry permits from being armed in parks, playgrounds and sports fields.
The bill got tied up amid bickering between Republicans who control both the state House and Senate, and only passed once lawmakers agreed to remove the Capitol complex from the areas where permit holders could be armed.
Opponents say the final version of the legislation is still confusing due to a provision banning guns “within the immediate vicinity” of school activities, but not defining a specific distance.
More than 70,000 people attended the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Nashville earlier this month.