Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 752
June 11, 2016
2 killed when driver crashes barricade at music festival
SELMER, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Highway Patrol says two people are dead after a vehicle drove through a barricade at the Rockabilly Highway Revival Festival in Selmer, Tennessee.
Lt. Brad Wilbanks said in an email that one person was also airlifted to a local hospital.
No other details were given about the crash or the victims.
A post on the festival’s Facebook page says there will be a community-wide prayer meeting this evening. Selmer is about 40 miles south of Jackson.
June 10, 2016
Westbrook says he won’t play for US basketball in Olympics
The U.S. Olympic basketball team has lost an All-NBA backcourt this week.
Russell Westbrook said Friday he wouldn’t play for the Americans in Rio, just days after Stephen Curry also withdrew from consideration.
Westbrook decided not to play after talking with his family. He didn’t give a reason for pulling out in his statement released through the Oklahoma City Thunder.
“This was not an easy decision, as representing my country at the World Championships in 2010 and the Olympics in 2012 were career highlights for me,” Westbrook said. “I look forward to future opportunities as a member of USA Basketball.”
Curry, the unanimous NBA MVP, pulled out Monday, saying he wanted to rest recent knee and ankle injuries.
Curry and Westbrook were the first-team guards on the All-NBA team, and among the reasons the point guard position was considered a strength for the Americans.
But with their absences after Chris Paul declined to play and John Wall was injured, the two-time defending gold medalists are down to just Cleveland’s Kyrie Irving, Portland’s Damian Lillard and Memphis’ Mike Conley at that position.
Lillard was cut before the 2014 Basketball World Cup and was the last player added to USA Basketball’s 31-player roster pool for Rio. Neither he nor Conley have played for the Americans.
Irving was the MVP when the Americans won gold in Spain two years ago.
The Americans plan to announce their 12-player roster on June 27. USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo said earlier this week that he was considering 14 or 15 players from the original pool.
Police: Rancher lassos bike thief outside Oregon Walmart
EAGLE POINT, Ore. (AP) — Police say a rancher jumped on his horse and lassoed a man who was trying to steal a bicycle in the parking lot of an Oregon Walmart.
The Medford Mail Tribune reports (http://goo.gl/L5PTLm ) 28-year-old Robert Borba was at the Eagle Point store getting dog food Friday when he heard a woman screaming that someone was trying to steal her bike.
The rancher says he quickly got his horse out of its trailer, grabbed a rope, rode over and lassoed the man and bicycle.
Eagle Point police Sgt. Darin May says officers arrived and found a lassoed man and bike on the ground in the parking lot.
Police arrested Victorino Arellano-Sanchez, whom they described as a transient from the Seattle area, on a theft charge.
Arellano-Sanchez is jailed in Jackson County. Staff members at the jail say they don’t think he has an attorney.
Daniel Berger shoots 64 to take 2nd-round lead in Memphis
Daniel Berger shot a season-best 6-under 64 on Friday to take a three-stroke lead in the FedEx St. Jude Classic in Memphis, Tennessee.
Berger had six birdies in his bogey-free morning round to reach 9-under 131 at TPC Southwind, and nobody caught him atop the leaderboard. Berger has started well, despite breaking in a new driver and 3-wood after his old clubs finally cracked last week from age.
“It was a pretty easy adjustment,” Berger said. “The TaylorMade guys have been great and they found me a quick replacement, and I just got up there and started whacking it and right down the middle. I think that’s all you can ask for when you get a new driver in your hands.”
Tom Hoge, part of a three-way tie for the lead after the first round, was second after a 69. He birdied the final two holes in the next to last group.
Dustin Johnson, the 2012 champion, had a chance to catch Berger until dropping three strokes on the final two holes. Johnson finished with a 69 after wiping out four birdies and an eagle with three bogeys and a double bogey on No. 18 with what he called bad swings at the end.
“You’re going to make some bogies out here,” Johnson said. “But from the fairway you shouldn’t be making bogies. You know, just need to get a little bit better tomorrow …, but I feel like I’m driving it really well and swinging my irons really good. Got to get rid of the couple misses.”
That finish left Johnson tied with Phil Mickelson (65) and Brooks Koepka (65) at 5 under. Shawn Stefani, one of the first-round leaders, shot a 71 and was tied with eight others at 4 under, including Brian Gay (70).
Mickelson, winless since the 2013 British Open, matched his low round this year with six birdies and one bogey. He’s here fine-tuning his game for the U.S. Open next week, the one major that has eluded him in his career.
“I’m very excited that I’m in contention, that I have a good opportunity heading into the weekend,” Mickelson said. “I get to feel the pressure and excitement of having a chance to win, especially a week before the U.S. Open.”
Mickelson had his putter working with his first birdie on No. 2 the shortest on a putt of 6 feet, and he rolled in a 10-footer on No. 6. The highlight of his round came on a 31-foot birdie putt on the par-3 11th on the island green.
“It’s been a great, great year with the putter,” Mickelson said. “My critical putts from 10 feet and in are really the putts that you need to make to keep rounds going, to get up into contention. Those are the ones that can go either way, and I’ve made a lot of them this year. So, that gives me a lot of confidence heading into the treacherous greens at Oakmont.”
Seung-yul Noh, the other first-round leader, shot a 72. Defending champion Fabian Gomez (2 over) missed the cut at 1 over.
Berger’s father is the director of men’s tennis for the USTA and was head coach of the 2012 U.S. Olympic team. Berger chose golf over tennis and spent only two years at Florida State before turning pro in 2013. Now 23, the Florida native already has three top 10s this season after having six last season with this event his 15th cut made in 18 events.
He rolled in a 15-footer for birdie on No. 3, then birdied the par-3 No. 8 after hitting his tee shot from 167 yards to 4 feet. On the par-4 ninth, Berger put his second shot within 9 feet for birdie, and he birdied his third straight hole on No. 10 with a 10-footer.
He took the lead to himself with back-to-back birdies on Nos. 15 and 16. Berger hit his approach over the green at the par-5 16th but rolled in a 5-footer to become the first to go 9 under.
“Just excited to see what happens this weekend and get ready for next week,” said Berger, who will be playing at Oakmont next week.
A remarkable day filled with tales of The Greatest
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Larry Holmes gave Muhammad Ali the beating that sent him toward retirement, even though it was the last thing he wanted to do. Later that night he went to Ali’s darkened room, and told his idol that he loved him.
That love never faded, only on Friday the man who began as a sparring partner for Ali had to share it with the world. He was an honorary pallbearer as the champ was sent off for the final time before adoring crowds that couldn’t stop chanting “Ali, Ali, Ali.”
The remarkable day came alive with tales of The Greatest told by presidents and paupers alike. They were told in speeches and conversations, in letters and prayers, all with the hope that in telling them, Ali would never truly be gone.
Holmes was the heavyweight champion and should have gotten the biggest money for the fight outdoors at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, but asked promoter Don King to pay Ali more because Ali needed the money.
“It was hard fighting my idol, fighting a guy who gave me a job,” Holmes said “But how was he going to turn down $10 million? I told him, just don’t get hurt, that’s all.”
Holmes made $3.5 million that night, beating an Ali that was a shell of the magnificent champion of earlier years. He pleaded with the referee to stop the fight, pleaded with Ali’s corner to throw in the towel as Ali stood there taking his punishment in the form of jab after jab from Holmes.
This was, after all, the man who gave him a job as a sparring partner. The man who took him to Africa to get him ready for George Foreman.
The man who gave him a black eye the first time they sparred.
“They wanted to put ice on it, and I said no,” Holmes said. “I wanted to show it off. Nobody back in Easton (Pa.) would have believed I actually sparred with Ali unless I showed it to him.”
A lot of people in Louisville surely had their own Ali stories to tell. Not just from the jam-packed arena, where President Bill Clinton and comedian Billy Crystal moved the crowd to laughter and a few tears, but all around the town Ali loved, too.
There was Yvonne Ford Wilson and her two friends, who graduated with Ali from Central High, and who arrived in the heat five hours before the ceremony. Wilson wasn’t going to cross the street to the arena until she reached deep into her purse and pulled out an oversized plastic butterfly and a stuffed animal bee she brought for the occasion.
Her favorite memory of a young Cassius Clay? Watching him stand on a street corner making loud siren sounds to startle drivers into thinking they were being pulled over by the police.
“We thought we were hip and we called him a square,” Wilson said. “But he was generous, he was nice. He is what the world sees today, the same man he was then.”
Most of the thousands of others who lined Ali’s procession route, some running alongside to throw flowers on the windshield or kiss his hearse, had never met Ali. But that didn’t stop them from giving their love, too.
They talked about where they were when Ali fought, how they felt when he took a stand. The younger ones told how they grew up listening to their fathers spin Ali tales themselves.
That’s how it was with Ali. Everyone felt some kind of connection.
“If I had a dollar for every story about my father, I could paper the sky,” daughter Maryum Ali said.
It’s tempting to over romanticize it now, but the outpouring of love over the last week is testament to what Ali meant to people. He made everyone feel like they were the most important person in the room, whether they were leaders or a country or children with terrible medical problems who smiled for the first time in the hospital when he sat down to play with them.
Their love was on display as his funeral procession wound its way through his old neighborhood, stopping briefly at the tiny pink house where he grew up. Across the street was 82-year-old Lawrence Montgomery, who used to employ Ali on occasion to watch his children.
The youth he knew ran neighborhood streets in heavy boots, chasing the bus to school, and talked about nothing but boxing. Instead of asking to be paid to babysit, he wanted nothing more than bologna sandwiches.
“He told me ‘I’m going to be the heavyweight champion of the world,'” Montgomery said. “I said, boy, you’re crazy. You can never do something like that. But he proved me wrong.”
The full force of Ali’s mark on the world is still being measured, but the way the world changed in his lifetime is easier to measure. This was a man, remember, who came home from the 1960 Olympics with a gold medal he threw into the river after being refused food at a Woolworths’s lunch counter.
As the motorcade made its way downtown in front of the historic Brown Hotel, crowds hoping to get a glimpse of the coffin, the family or actor Will Smith swarmed into the streets. It was there in 1961 protesters staged a sit-in to demand that public facilities be open to blacks like the brash young boxing champion who had just embarked on his pro career.
Standing on the sidewalk there was Sarah Hunsberger, a young white teacher from Atlanta with two young black children. The children were those of a friend, and Hunsberger to drive the twin 9-year-olds seven hours to witness history in a way that would have seemed unimaginable 55 years earlier.
“I can’t comprehend it, the stories people have been telling about those days,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine as a country we allowed people to be treated like that.”
There were some funny stories, too, and not all of them came from Crystal, who had the crowd roaring at his impression of Ali and Howard Cosell.
Like the time Robert Shannon, a 119-pounder training for the Olympics, almost became a member of Ali’s family. Shannon lived with Ali and his third wife, Veronica, for several months and they always came to his amateur matches.
“His wife wanted to adopt me,” the curly haired Shannon said. “I was 17, but looked like I was 12.”
Shannon would go on to have the ignominious distinction of being the only U.S. boxer in the 1984 Olympics not to win a medal. He cuts hair now in the Seattle area and money is tight, but he flew across the country for one last chance to be close to Ali again.
“My wife said go, and I did,” he said. “I had to come and say goodbye.”
On a glorious day the likes of which Louisville — and the world — will never see again, he had a lot of company.
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Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg@ap.org or http://twitter.com/timdahlberg
Ex-con sentenced to life for deadly Arizona shooting rampage
PHOENIX (AP) — An ex-con was sentenced to life in prison without parole Friday after pleading guilty to killing one person and wounding five others during a crime rampage in Arizona last year.
Ryan Elliott Giroux, 42, was sentenced after pleading guilty in April to first-degree murder, aggravated assault, armed robbery, kidnapping and other charges stemming from the March 2015 shootings in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Margaret Mahoney described Giroux’s admission of guilt as practically unheard of for the nearly two dozen charges he faced and sentenced him to 81 years in addition to natural life in prison for committing first-degree murder.
Giroux appeared in court clean shaven with wire-rimmed glasses. He looked on with a stoic expression while his son sat in the benches behind him.
Across the aisle, family of Giroux’s victims quietly waited to hear the fate of the man who killed 29-year-old David James Williams.
Giroux declined to speak on his own behalf during the sentencing. His defense attorneys asked the judge to consider that Giroux had mental health issues including bi-polar and schizoaffective disorder, which he was trying to treat in the days before committing the crimes.
“Ryan is not a mean person, he’s not a bad person, he’s a sick person, who is seriously mentally ill,” defense attorney Marci Kratter said.
Prosecuting attorney Stephanie Low said Giroux’s remorse and admission of guilt was a “drop in the bucket” compared to the damage he did to the community.
“Your honor the defendant terrorized the west side of Mesa that morning and although these shootings were over in less than half an hour, this community had no way to know it was going to end,” Low said.
Prosecutors previously decided not to pursue the death penalty.
The rampage began last March with a multiple shooting inside a motel that left Williams dead and two women wounded. The violence then spilled out into the street where Giroux shot Isaac Martinez, 20, who was working at a nearby restaurant.
Giroux fled the restaurant, carjacked a school instructor’s car and drove two miles to a nearby apartment complex. He went inside and shot Donavon Worker, 24. An officer then found Marcus Butler, 25, in a neighboring apartment building with multiple gunshot wounds.
Police swarmed the city in a massive response. The search ended several hours later with Giroux’s arrest in a vacant apartment.
Giroux has criminal convictions in three states dating back to 1993. He was convicted in metro Phoenix on theft, burglary and marijuana possession charges. He also was convicted of burglary, theft assault and theft in California and for robbery in Washington.
Judge rules that the Wares remain unable to parent children
CHICAGO (AP) — A judge has ruled three Illinois children placed in state custody in 2014 after a doctor pointed out their mother was a parent of three other children who drowned more than a decade earlier will remain in foster care.
Department of Children and Family Services spokeswoman Veronica Resa said Friday that Amanda and Leo Ware were found by Cook County Circuit Judge Demetrios Kottaras to be unable to care for the children.
Amanda Ware, then known as Amanda Hamm, was convicted of child endangerment and served five years in prison for watching then-boyfriend Maurice LaGrone Jr. drown her three children from a previous relationship in 2003 in Clinton Lake, south of Bloomington.
Prosecutors said LaGrone, who is serving a life sentence, wanted to kill the children because they interfered with the couple’s relationship.
Police in Florida identify body found in alligator’s mouth
LAKELAND, Fla. (AP) — Authorities say they’ve identified the man being eaten by a 9-foot alligator near a Florida lake.
Lakeland police spokesman Gary Gross told local media Friday that 72-year-old Richard Zachary Taylor was identified through fingerprints.
Police recovered Taylor’s body Tuesday afternoon after a report of an alligator with a body in its mouth near Lake Hunter. A trapper responded a short time later and eventually caught the gator.
Gross says detectives still don’t know if Taylor drowned or was killed by the reptile. They’re waiting for additional test results from the Medical Examiner’s Office.
Taylor’s body was decomposed, indicating he had been in the water a couple of days or longer. Remains found inside the alligator during a necropsy were a match to Taylor.
Parmelee becomes 4th Yankees first baseman on disabled list
NEW YORK (AP) — Chris Parmelee is expected to miss at least a month after becoming the latest New York Yankees first baseman to get injured.
Parmelee was put on the 15-day disabled list Friday, a day after he strained his right hamstring stretching for a throw. He joined Mark Teixeira, Greg Bird and Dustin Ackley as Yankees first basemen on the DL.
“Not a lot of options,” manager Joe Girardi said.
Rob Refsnyder started at first as the Yankees opened a series against Detroit. Mostly a second baseman during his pro career, he’s been getting some work at first lately.
“He’s going to be our everyday first baseman. That’s the plan right now,” Girardi said.
Backup catcher Austin Romine also can fill-in at the spot.
The Yankees recently signed Nick Swisher after he was cut by Atlanta. The former slugger is playing at Triple-A and asked whether Swisher would be a candidate, Girardi said team officials who have been evaluating the 35-year-old said he wasn’t hitting especially well.
“Not the right time,” Girardi said.
Parmelee was injured when reached to grab shortstop Didi Gregorius’ throw in a 6-3 win over the Los Angeles Angels. Parmelee, who had homered twice Wednesday in his first Yankees start, fell into a split while catching the ball for an inning-ending out.
New York filled his roster spot by recalling right-hander Chad Green from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Girardi said the Yankees wanted an extra arm in the bullpen at this point.
Teixeira, a three-time All-Star, went on the DL on June 4 because of torn cartilage in his right knee. Bird, projected as his backup, is out for the season following surgery Feb. 2 to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder. Ackley tore the labrum in his right shoulder on May 29 while diving back to first base on a pickoff attempt and needed season-ending surgery.
US Attorney General Lynch meets with Alaska Native leaders
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has met with Alaska Native leaders during her first trip to Alaska, discussing public safety, voting rights and other issues facing indigenous communities in the vast state.
Those meeting with Lynch on Friday included Native rights advocates and representatives of Native organizations.
Before their short round-table discussion in Anchorage, Native American Rights Fund attorney Natalie Landreth said she planned to address what she called inadequacies in the U.S. census.
She says the agency’s American Community Survey conducted every five years woefully undercounts Native communities in rural areas.
Landreth says that translates to less voting protections for Native communities and less funding across the board.
Other issues listed for the closed meeting included heroin use and criminal justice reform.
