Tennessee counties may be reconsidering their use of solitary confinement for juveniles after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting Rutherford County from subjecting youths to isolation cells. The ruling comes as a result of a lawsuit filed on behalf of a 15-year-old detainee who was held in confinement for five days. His attorney, Mark Downton, questioned what would happen if a parent inflicted a similar punishment. “I believe if a parent did anything like this to a child, DCS would remove that child from a parent’s care; they would consider it barbaric and abusive,” Dawnton said. “And...

Al White Motors and WMSR (Thunder Radio) are teaming up to honor those who serve that thin blue line, our local law enforcement. Each month someone in law enforcement will be honored as a Hometown Hero. Our hero this month is Manchester Officer Dustan Foster. Officer Foster began his career at Franklin County Sheriff’s Department in 1998. He worked there for 8 years until 2006. He served with numerous ranks and ultimately became a Captain with Franklin County Sheriff’s Department. Officer Foster became employed with Manchester Police Department in 2007. He is a very dedicated officer. He has a...

A Tullahoma Firefighter has been suspended following his arrest on sex charges in Moore County. James David Huskey, 39, a firefighter with Tullahoma Fire Department was arrested Monday March 27 on charges of rape of a child. He was arrested by the Moore County Sheriff’s Department on the charges. Sheriff Mark Logan said Tuesday that Investigator Mike Rainey had been investigating the allegations but the sheriff did not release further information. The age of the girl was not available. Huskey is being held in the Moore County Jail under a bond of $100,000 pending an appearance in the Moore...

The man who allegedly led authorities on a high speed pursuit from Coffee County to Rutherford County, which ended in a fatal crash, has a new court date. Twenty-nine year old Garieon Simmons of Decherd was arraigned earlier this week on charges of vehicular homicide, two counts of aggravated assault, evading arrest, driving on a revoked license, violation of probation and being a habitual motor vehicle offender. He will return to Judge David Bragg’s courtroom as attorneys continue to discuss his case on April 7th. Simmons is accused of leading a high speed pursuit that began in Manchester and...

The Coffee County official 2010 Census population, as of April 1 that year, was 52,796, while the Census Bureau estimates that as of July 1, 2016, the county’s population was 54,681 a difference of 3.57 percent. Over the most-recent one-year period for which estimates are available, from 2015 to 2016, the county grew by 0.74 percent. The census estimates have Tennessee’s 2016 population at 6.65 million in 2016, which was nearly 1 percent more than...

In a unanimous opinion, the state’s highest court said that using the drug pentobarbital to execute condemned prisoners is constitutional. The drug is often used by veterinarians to euthanize animals. The Tennessean reported earlier this month that the state currently does not have access to the drug. Drugs used in lethal injections have become harder for states to secure because manufacturers have refused to sell them to prisons for executions. Tennessee has passed a law that allows for death by electrocution in the event that drugs used for lethal injection are unavailable. The Supreme Court decision stems from a...

A man from Cedar Lane in Tullahoma was arrested March 27 on charges of aggravated assault and aggravated kidnapping. Arrested was Randy Lee Hatfield, 51 of Cedar Lane. According to warrants obtained by Tullahoma Police Officer Phillip Smith, Hatfield assaulted a female and each time she tried to get away from him he would grab her and prevent her from leaving. The warrant alleges that he assaulted her with a ball bat and a chair. He is also accused of striking the woman with a chair and banging her on the floor and beat her with his fist. The...

A Riley Creek Road woman reported that her debit card had been used without her approval late last week. The woman told Tullahoma Police Officer Derrick Derlien on March 25 that she had made a purchase at Wal-Mart on March 21. She then noticed on March 23 that a charge of $199.99 had been taken from her account at the store, but that she didn’t make it. When she contacted an employee of the store on North Jackson Street she was told that an unknown person had “hacked” into the self-checkout register and used it the night before and...