An Ashburn shooting incident has resulted in the arrests of three suspects; the victim is identified as Montes Jackson. Law enforcement officers took into custody Deandre High and Ontario Hall; another suspect, Marquis Knight has a record that shows that he had been arrested before on the charges of street criminal gang activity and for aggravated assault. The search continues for suspect Markeal Knight in connection with the March shooting.
Violence erupted in the City of Dawson and police are asking for the public’s assistance in bringing the person or persons responsible for firing weapons in the Church Street area. Witnesses reported that it sounded as if two different groups were firing at each other and that they saw teenagers and adults scrambling to find cover. So far no suspects have been named.
The defendants in the Peanut Corporation of America salmonella outbreak case will not have to pay restitution to the victims or to the families of persons that died nor to the companies that were impacted as a result of the outbreak. That ruling was handed down in Federal Court in Albany by Judge Louis Sands. The president of Peanut Corporation of America, Stewart Parnell and other defendants were sentenced to prison last fall for their part in the shipping of contaminated products.
Some Lanier County bridges have been closed for an extended period of time while replacement work takes place. The Department of Transportation reports detours for highway 64 which runs over Five Mile and Ten Mile creeks. Officials say that travel over Ten Mile Creek will only be accessed by local traffic. The work is scheduled to get underway April 11th.
The Department of Transportation has announced that major road work is set to take place in Brooks County on Highway 133. The 26.7 million dollar contract was awarded to the Scruggs Company of Hahira and the work is expected to be completed in late October of 2018. The work will extend the highway to four lanes and the work is now in the final stages of widening the road between Moultrie and Valdosta. The DOT announced on Wednesday that 31 contracts totaling more than $146.6 million for statewide construction projects had been awarded.
Liz Fabian of the Macon Telegraph reports that the mourning continues for the three members of a Macon family who were killed after their SUV hydroplaned on a wet roadway last weekend and overturning into a rain-soaked ditch in South Georgia on Highway 91. Tina Marie Butler, 30, and her two children, 7-year-old Zhia Franklin and 1-year-old Marcus Oates Jr., were strapped in their safety seats and trapped upside down in several feet of water near Colquitt in Miller County. Butler and the toddler drowned at the scene, but rescuers revived Zhia, who was airlifted to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital but later died. The father, 39-year-old Marcus Leon Oates, was behind the wheel of the 2003 Lincoln Navigator as they approached the “water over roadway” signs on the rural highway. He also was trapped but was not injured. Zhia’s school had already planned a fund raiser to help them deal with medical expenses before she died.
A second weekend of work is scheduled on Interstate 75 South near the weigh station for a statewide Georgia Department of Transportation project called Weigh In Motion. The work should impact only the outside (right) lane of I-75 south in Lowndes County, weather permitting. The Weigh in Motion project involves installing weigh scales in outside interstate lanes approximately 3,000 feet upstream of each of the existing 19 weigh stations to prescreen commercial vehicles. It is expected to minimize the time that commercial vehicles have to wait at inspection stations.
The southbound outside lane is scheduled to be closed from 9 p.m. Thursday, April 7, to 5 a.m.Friday, April 8, between mileposts 24 and 25. The lane will then reopen and the same section of I-75 south will close again at 9 p.m. Friday, April 8, and remain closed until 5 a.m. Monday, April 11. The impacted areas include I-75 south between mileposts 24 and 25 in Lowndes County.
