A Tullahoma woman is being held in the Coffee County Jail under a $10,000 bond after being arrested on meth charges. Amanda Faye Gifford, 25, of West Grundy Street is charged with initiation of the process intended to result in the manufacture of methamphetamines and shoplifting. Gifford was arrested by Tullahoma Police Officer Christopher Coe Thursday after she allegedly was seen in Kroger attempting to leave without paying for a pack of lithium batteries. When the officer talked with Gifford, she told him that she was taking the batteries for a male who intended to use the items in...

A Hillsboro woman faces several theft and burglary charges in connection with the theft of items from a vehicle at Old Stone Fort Park. Brittney Nicole Cargile, 18, of Andy Lane Hillsboro, was arrested last week on charges of three counts of burglary and three counts of theft of property. She is held under a bond of $25,000. According to warrants, Cargile and a male juvenile entered three vehicles parked in the parking lot of the museum at Old Stone Fort State Park and took iPods, wallets, cash clothing, suitcases, GPS systems, knives, a wedding ring, an external hard...

An eighteen wheeler crashed Saturday morning (June 16) before six o’clock with no injuries. As that crash was being cleaned up, another crash occurred. At approximately 1:30 pm on I-24 east bound at mile marker 116 a 2002 Nissan Frontier, driven by Christie Bowman, 40, of Ooltewah, TN, and her female passenger suffered non-life threatening injuries and were flown to Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga. It appears the vehicle ran off the right side of the road and hit a wrecker that was on the shoulder due to the earlier incident. The Nissan spun back onto the interstate and a...

State regulators have taken possession of the Farmers Bank of Lynchburg, Tenn., and appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as its receiver. The Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions announced the action late Friday afternoon, citing the bank’s “impaired capital, unsound condition and inability to continue normal operations.” Deposit accounts of the bank have been transferred to Clayton Bank and Trust of Knoxville and will be available immediately. Clayton Bank and Trust is the owner of American City Bank, with branches in Tullahoma and Manchester. Depositors will be able to access their accounts at the former main office and branch...

Sales tax collections in May were up in Manchester and Tullahoma and down slightly in the county. In Tullahoma, May collections in 2011 were $742,056, last month Tullahoma collected $822,189, increasing $80,132. The county tax collection went down by $1,197 compared to May 2011. The City of Manchester saw another month with sales tax collections going up, this time $27,827 over May of 2011 with just over $631,000 collected. Overall county collections were $1.6(M) for May...

Animal rights activists from Coffee and surrounding counties were in Manchester on Friday to protest. The group first protested in the lane that leads to the Coffee County Animal Control building, then moved to the Coffee County Administrative Plaza. Vera Lund, a Manchester resident, told WMSR Radio that she did NOT blame the animal control officer that shot and killed Bryan Pennington’s dog, “Toby”, on Monday. She says the problem is not enough funding and needed policy changes. Lund added that animal control officers should be better trained and facilities need upgrading. Funding to animal control in Coffee County...

A Summitville man died Wednesday night when his motorcycle crashed on Rock Road. According to a report by Tennessee Highway Patrolman Jason Boles, a 1985 Yamaha motorcycle operated by Thomas Rutenkroger, 49, of Hillcrest Villa Circle in Summitville, was traveling on Rock Road when he approached a curve and kept traveling onto private property. According to the trooper’s report, Rutenkroger’s cycle left the roadway striking a small tree and went into a barbed wire fence. When ambulance personnel arrived at the crash scene, they called for a medical helicopter but later cancelled the request. Rutenkroger was pronounced dead on...

Tullahoma Airport manager Jon Glass informs that the airport is in the same position as Coffee County. He said that the installation of replacement lights at the end of one runway has been put on hold. Glass said that it looks like we have the same problem as the county, and the consulting engineers have told us that there could be Indiana bats in the wetlands located at the end of the runway. He said that no work can be done in the area until further...