Category: News

A Powerball ticket worth $1 million was purchased in the southern Middle Tennessee town of Fayetteville in Lincoln County.
The ticket matched five of the six numbers from Saturday’s drawing.
Matching five numbers pays out a $1 million prize. The ticket is the 158th Tennessee Lottery ticket sold worth $1 million or more since the lottery’s inception.
This is the second Tennessee Lottery ticket in two weeks that won at least $1 million. A $2 million ticket last week was purchased in Houston County.

An investigation by Special Agents with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has resulted in the indictment of a Lincoln County man charged with child abuse and illegally possessing guns.
At the request of 17th District Attorney General Robert Carter, TBI Special Agents began investigating Timothy Neal Smith on November 3, 2014. During the course of the investigation, Agents developed information that Smith was involved in the physical abuse of his 7-year-old stepdaughter, causing bruising to the child. Agents also learned that Smith is a convicted felon and had been carrying and using firearms while operating a fugitive recovery business.
Last week the Lincoln County Grand Jury returned an indictment charging Timothy Smith, 29, with two counts of Child Abuse and six counts of Convicted Felon in Possession of a Firearm. Smith was arrested and booked at the Lincoln County Jail where, at the time of this news release, he is being held on a $200,000 bond.

Tennesseans join the rest of the country in support of policies that help provide support to caregivers.
A poll released this week by AARP shows 77 percent of those surveyed from both major political parties favor policies that help support those caregivers.
There are 1.6 million Tennesseans who care for a family member or friend, and Rebecca Kelly, AARP Tennessee state director, says many of them do it at great personal cost.
“We all want to keep our loved ones at home as long as they possibly can, but the burden of that can often be from emotional stress, to balancing work and family to financial stress,” she points out.
This week U.S. Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee joined other members of Congress in the creation of the bipartisan Assisting Caregivers Today (ACT) Caucus.
The caucus will help bring greater attention to family caregiving and helping people live independently, educate Congress on these issues, and engage legislators on a bipartisan basis to help lead to solutions.
Chris Courington of Hendersonville is caring for his aging father as he also works to care for his own family. He says it’s not easy.
“If you think about how busy most families are with two parents working, when you add to that caregiving for someone who is 76 years old, it definitely adds to the stresses of your daily life,” Courington says.
AARP estimates nationwide the value of the unpaid care people provide is $450 billion annually.
Kelly says caregivers actually save the public money in the long run.
“If the family caregiver can have some support to continue to do this, it actually saves taxpayer money, and less government money is necessary to support the family caregiver,” she maintains.
Kelly says the average family caregiver is a 49-year-old female taking care of a 78-year-old woman and provides 20 hours a week of assistance to their loved one.

According to the Tennessee Highway Patrol, two Tennessee Department of Transportation salt trucks where spreading salt on I-24 eastbound at the 105 mile marker on Thursday morning around 4:35am. As they were attempting to clear snow and ice from I-24 a tractor-trailer was traveling in the left lane of I-24 behind one of the TDOT vehicles. The driver of the 18-wheeler, 24 year-old Jonathan White from Swainsboro, Ga. merged into the right lane attempting to pass the TDOT vehicle which was in the left lane. It was at this time the tractor-trailer crashed into the rear of one of the salt trucks driven by 53 year-old Steven Gowen of Manchester, TN which was in the right lane of I-24. The TDOT truck was struck so hard by the 18-wheeler that it was knocked over onto its side.
Gowen, White and a passenger in the tractor-trailer were taken by Coffee County EMS with unknown injuries to Medical Center of Manchester.

One out of three students who applied for free community college through Tennessee Promise are no longer eligible because of a problem with their applications.
According to WPLN, a third of students did not complete the mandatory steps to get the scholarship.
Another 11 percent of students did not apply for federal aid, which is mandatory to get any scholarship.
The state had posted reminders online, in schools and on social media to remind students to complete the necessary steps.
Tennessee Promise allows every Tennessee high school graduate to receive two years of free community college.

A group of Tennessee college students wants a federal court to require the state to accept their school identification cards as valid voter identification. The out-of-state students attending Fisk University and Tennessee State University say in the lawsuit filed on Wednesday they would like to vote in Tennessee, but they lack proper ID. Tennessee will not accept identification cards from other states, nor will the state accept student ID cards from Tennessee colleges and universities. The students say the law is unconstitutional. They note Tennessee does accept college and university ID cards issued by the state to workers, just not to students.

After nearly 70 years in Chattanooga’s Highland Park, Tennessee Temple University is closing its doors. University board members voted unanimously Tuesday to move campuses and merge with Piedmont International University, a private Christian college in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The merger will be finalized April 30th, giving students, faculty and staff a few months to decide on what to do next. The roughly 700 students (265 on-campus and the rest online students) now have a few options. They can move with the school to PIU with the promise that no student will have to pay any more in tuition than they already are. But not all TTU majors will be offered at Piedmont, and not all student-athletes will be able to continue their sport. They only offer men’s basketball and women’s volleyball. Two former Coffee County High School students play baseball for Tennessee Temple, John Reese Gilmer and Tyler Cavender. Students have the option to stay local and finish their degrees at Shorter University in Rome, GA or Bryan College in Dayton, TN and promises an unaffected graduation date if relocated.” New plans for the TTU campus space have already been finalized. All buildings were sold to the ministry organization Redemption to the Nations, with plans to establish a Bible college next year.

Coffee County Sheriff’s Department is investigating an incident that occurred on Tuesday. A 3-year-old boy somehow got a hold of a gun at an A Street home in Hillsboro and the weapon discharged shooting his little 18-month-old brother behind his ear.
The infant was shot with a .25 caliber handgun and transported to Vanderbilt University Medical Center as a precaution, but officials said he was awake and alert when first responders arrived on the scene.
Neither of the boys’ identities were released by the Coffee County Sheriff’s Department.

A resident of South Collins Street in Tullahoma was transported Sunday morning to Harton Regional Medical Center after being injured in a two vehicle crash at the intersection of South Jackson and Highway 130.
According to a report by Officer Rocky Ruehling, Matthew Grenier, 27, was injured when a vehicle operated by Shawn Creighton Stewart, 39, of Chestnut Ridge Road, Winchester collided with his.
According to the police report, Stewart was traveling westbound on State Highway 130 when Grenier proceeded on to the highway and crashed. He according to the police report, told the officer that he failed to see the approach of the Stewart vehicle. Grenier was extricated from the vehicle by the Tullahoma Fire Department and transported to the hospital.
Witnesses told the officer that Grenier appeared to swerve in the roadway before the crash. He told the officer that he was not intoxicated but was legally blind.