Sunday, February 20, 2011
EKB Capsule News...Kentucky...2-21-'11
- Authorities reached out to the public for help Saturday night as "America's Most Wanted: America Fights Back" took a second glance at the cold case murder of Vicki Heath, a Hardin County mother who lived in Radcliff. The story of Vicki Heath's death aired just two days shy of the 24th anniversary of her death. Heath’s body was found February 21, 1987, near a trash bin behind a Super 8 Motel on North Mulberry Street where she worked as a desk clerk. She had been sexually assaulted and shot twice in the head with a .38 caliber handgun. Investigators think her killer may be a serial rapist-killer police have linked to three similar assaults at motels along I-65.
- Kentucky State Police say James B. Combs was pronounced dead at the scene Friday afternoon after he lost control of his vehicle on Kentucky Highway 1087 in the Softshell community of Knott County hitting a vehicle head on. Four people were taken to a local hospital for minor injuries.
- After about 3 weeks of searching, 26 year old Jerry Rowe Jr. of Magoffin County is still missing. On Saturday, investigators, along with dogs and additional manpower searched the area where Rowe was supposedly last seen. Crews also used sonar on a pond to see if he was in it, but they found nothing.
- Dr. Lee Boyd, the pastor at Destination Community Church in Prestonsburg, says a poster at the church announcing "pure sex" is meant to draw interest to his four-part sermon series on "what God says about sex." However, it is raising some eyebrows. The series includes a bed in the middle of the church and a website with a video, leaving some calling the series both inspiring and scary, but saying the church has been called to bring the message. Church leaders hope the attention will bring more people in. The second installment in the series was this Sunday. Pastor Boyd says, so far, the reaction he's heard from his congregation is positive.
- A $2,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest of an armed robber who entered Thompson's Drug on US 25 South in London Saturday afternoon with a knife and stole a large amount of controlled medicine before fleeing with more than 5,000 pills. The robber is described as a white man, around 5'9" or 5'10", between 130 and 150 pounds. He also has a bruised left eye and was wearing a dark-colored shirt and dark green hat.
- The owners of Lying Lee's Used Cars near Morehead say, when employees showed up for work Saturday morning, they immediately noticed thieves had stolen a maroon 2008 Toyota Scion, but they believe the thieves' original getaway car was a white truck from the lot. That's where they found a guitar from the office and the keys to just about every car on the lot.
- Governor Steve Beshear has directed that flags at all state office buildings be lowered to half-staff Monday in honor of 58 year old Donald R. Lam, a state forestry ranger who passed away Thursday. Lam, who served the Caldwell County community, the state and volunteered for wildfire assignments across the nation for nearly 12 years, was injured September 7, 2010 while working the Scotts Chapel Road Fire, a 12-acre wildfire in Livingston County. Lam was clearing a fire break at the base of a bluff when a burning snag broke loose and struck him from behind. The impact left Lam unconscious with second degree burns and he remained in critical condition until his passing.
- According to the state director of MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), an organization that investigates UFO sightings, Kentucky is considered a "hotbed" for UFO sightings. David MacDonald, a commercial pilot and the state director of the Mutual UFO network, a group of about 1,000 trained investigators who look into reported UFO sightings, says they cover hundreds of cases in Kentucky every year, and, while ninety percent of the sightings are easily explained as an aircraft, a satellite, a little alcohol, 10 percent will "knock your socks off." There were ten UFO sightings reported to MUFON in Lexington alone last year, though a bulk of the reports his organization investigates originate in eastern parts of the sate.
- For the sixth year in a row, nearly 700 students from more than 100 different student organizations participated in the 2011 DanceBlue marathon at Memorial Coliseum in Lexington to raise money for children's cancer research. University of Kentucky students danced for 24 hours at the no-sit, no-sleep dance marathon which started at 8:00 P.M. Friday and wrapped up at 8:00 P.M. Saturday, raising $673,976.60 for the UK Pediatric Oncology Clinic.
- A Todd County grand jury indicted 17 year old Garrett Thomas Dye late Friday morning in the beating death of his adopted sister, 9 year old Amy Dye, who was found February 4th, in a field near Trenton just hours after being reported missing. Dye, who will turn 18 in October and has been charged as an adult, admitted to beating Amy with a jack handle and told police where to find the weapon after being arrested February 6th. He remains at the Warren County Juvenile Detention Center in Bowling Green, without bond.
- Twenty year old Joseph E. Snyder, a Fort Knox soldier charged with first-degree rape pleaded not guilty Friday in Hardin District Court. Police say a woman, older than 18, reported on November 17, 2009, that Snyder forced her to have sexual intercourse against her will, but detectives waited for DNA testing on evidence before making an arrest. Snyder's bond is set at $50,000 while he awaits a preliminary hearing Wednesday in Hardin District Court.
# posted by Homer Owens @ 2:13 AM 
