Time’s slipping away on a deal for iconic U.S. country singer Willie Nelson’s misdemeanor drug charge.
County Judge Becky Dean-Walker said on Friday she wouldn’t sign off
on a plea deal that reduced the charge to the same as a speeding ticket.
“I’m not going to be guilty of signing something because someone is a celebrity,” Dean-Walker told Reuters.
The Texan troubadour famed for hits such as “Crazy” and “Always on My
Mind” ran into trouble last November when his tour bus stopped for an
immigration checkpoint.
A Border Patrol agent smelled marijuana and summoned deputies.
Officials first reported enough marijuana was found to charge the singer
with a felony, but County Attorney C.R. Bramblett told Reuters in early
June that less than two ounces were found, making it a lesser criminal
offense.
Nelson agreed in June to plead no contest to a misdemeanor charge of
possession of drug paraphernalia, pay a $500 fine and court costs of
about $280.
Nelson’s attorney, Joe Turner, mailed in all the paperwork after
striking the deal with Bramblett and expected it to be over by the end
of June, he said.
“Normally, that’s a done deal,” Turner told Reuters on Friday.
But Dean-Walker said she considered it a more serious offense, and
would not approve the deal. She signed it, then scratched her name out
when she realized it was such a small punishment, she said.
The judge said she had nothing against the singer, but that any other
person in the same situation would face a tougher penalty. Nelson’s
case remained pending on Friday.
“Everybody should be treated the same in my court,” Dean-Walker said.
Bramblett could not be reached for comment on Friday. His office said
he would be unavailable until Tuesday, after the Fourth of July
holiday.
Turner said the issue is now in Bramblett’s hands.
It wasn’t clear Friday whether Bramblett would bring the case to another court or simply let it die.
Traumatized Joplin on edge as more storms rake Missouri
JOPLIN, Mo | Wed May 25, 2011 6:28pm EDT
(Reuters) – Traumatized residents kept a wary eye on storm clouds
hanging on Wednesday over the shredded remains of a large portion of
this city.
Chainsaws and hammering could be heard in the neighborhoods surrounding the hardest hit areas three days after a devastating tornado ripped through this town of 50,000, killing 125 and injuring at least 823.
Residents took advantage of hours of sunlight to check their property and clear debris. But as adrenaline and shock faded, residents near the damaged zone described a fear of every rumbling in the wind.
Overnight, another wave of killer tornadoes roared across the
Midwest, leaving at least nine people dead in Oklahoma, four dead in
Arkansas and two in Kansas, officials said.
And on Wednesday, several fast-moving, strong storms raked Missouri, triggering tornado warnings all across the state.
Jerry Harris rode out 200 miles-per-hour winds with his daughter in a
closet in his friend’s homes, which was all that remained of the
residence after the storm passed.
The 42-year-old had years of training as a 911 dispatcher, he said,
but felt panic the next morning when he heard the rumbling of a heavy
truck.
“It just scared me to death,” Harris said.
Now, he is obsessed with having all his children around during storm warnings to assure himself they are safe.
Rick Rice, a 57-year-old truck driver, said he would never again
dismiss the sirens he ignored Sunday. He had continued to remodel his
bathroom as the tornado approached. The storm left his home
uninhabitable.
Now he spends his day monitoring the Internet for weather updates haunted by the roaring of the wind.
“When I hear the noise, I can’t get it out of my mind,” Rice said.
Even residents who missed the worst of the storm changed habits. Greg
Salzer, a 37-year-old social worker, watched the tornado from a safe
distance. He and his wife restocked their storm shelter the next day
with shoes, important papers and dog leashes.
“We spent Monday going through the storm shelter cleaning,” he said.
On Wednesday, he was helping his uncle, 66-year-old Frederick Dalton, clean debris not far from a ruined hospital.
Dalton said he had walked for blocks after the storm to find his wife safe at a destroyed church.
The Joplin tornado on Sunday was rated an EF-5, the highest possible
on the Enhanced Fujita scale of tornado power and intensity, with winds
of at least 200 miles per hour.
A miserable sea of dry brown West Texas grass and charred scrub could
cripple ranching operations in the country’s top beef-producing state.
“Right now, it’s literally day-to-day, and Mother Nature’s holding
all the cards,” said Dennis Braden, general manager of the 130,000-acre
Swenson Land and Cattle Co.
In the state where cowboys riding the open range on horseback herding
cattle spawned a whole western culture, modern-day ranchers are
hurting.
Severe drought and millions of acres of wildfires have delivered a
potent one-two punch this year, forcing tough decisions on ranchland
across Texas.
The state’s livestock industry has lost $1.2 billion under withering
conditions, according to the Texas Agrilife Extension Service, part of
Texas A&M University.
It’s a bitter pill for Braden and the more than 120-year-old ranch located 170 miles west of Fort Worth.
In Texas and other states with large cattle herds, the beef industry
chain starts at the ranch. Farmers own a herd of beef cows, each of
which gives birth to a calf in a typical year. The mother nurses the
calf and the pair graze on grass all summer, fattening up the calf for
market. The young calves are eventually weaned from their mothers and
sent to feedlots to be fattened on grain for slaughter.
This year, ranchers should be reaping the benefits of high prices, low supplies and high demand for their beef
The demand from for calves from feedlots, where cattle add hundreds
of pounds before slaughter, seems insatiable. The Swenson ranch entered
this season planning to grow by thousands of cattle over several years.
But he and other calf growers instead spent this spring in a
desperate hunt for pastureland and contemplating selling all of their
livestock.
His ranch has seen more fire than rain since September. Wildfires
roared out of a canyon and went on a 35-mile march across his and
neighboring remote ranchland in April, consuming thousands of acres of
mesquite and pasture.
Cattle subsisted on dead grass as his cowboys worked to keep the cattle healthy enough to bear new calves.
West Texas did not have the water to irrigate hay, and thousands of acres of drought-ridden wheat fields never produced a crop.
If conditions do not improve by August, he will run out of even low-quality feed for his herds, he said.
“We don’t have the grass resources to keep those calves around,” Braden said.
Fire alone will not devastate a ranch, and managers may often use
controlled burns to improve the range. A good blaze can clear away the
tall, dead brush hiding the green grass that helps bulk up the herd.
Emerald fuzz covered scorched patches of Swenson ranch after less
than an inch of rain provided the area’s first shower in nine months.
Given a good spring storm, the tough, hilly scrub would look like
Ireland, Braden said. But the most recent shower was not near enough to
break the drought.
Without acres of green, protein-providing grass, cows will struggle
for nutrients. The herd will lose interest in breeding and cows will not
even provide enough milk to their own calves, bringing the first step
of America’s beef cycle to a halt.
The outlook for more rain looks grim. The National Weather Service’s
Climate Prediction Center forecast below-normal rainfall for Texas over
the next month at least.
The cash-green carpet that sprang up from wildfire ash could brown under the Texas sun.
“Couple of days of 40 mile-per-hour winds and 100-degree temperatures
and it will go back to buckskin,” Braden said. Ranches that could
afford it hunted for rare acres of pasture outside the state.
Joe Leathers, manager of the historic 6666 Ranch in Guthrie, about
100 miles east of Lubbock, had moved cattle to New Mexico to keep a
prized genetic line alive.
He could not consider liquidating the herd with ranch families and years of breeding programs depending on him, he said.
“If you had to sell your herd off and wait until it rains, you’re
going to have 75 families out of a job, and a home,” Leathers said.
“It sure would be nice if it rained,” said David Anderson, a livestock agronomist with the Texas Agrilife service.
Perfect strangers friends for life after Joplin tornado
By Elliott Blackburn
JOPLIN, Mo | Sun May 29, 2011 10:30am EDT
(Reuters) – Melody Dickey doesn’t remember the tornado hurling her
car the length of three football fields or calling out for her
nine-year-old daughter Autumn, who was ejected as it rolled.
But she had no trouble at all on Friday recognizing the voice of the
stranger who tied the tourniquet on Autumn’s badly cut leg and carried
her daughter to safety.
One week after a huge tornado ripped across this Missouri town of
50,000, authorities are still searching for 100 people listed as missing
or unaccounted for.
Two families conducted a different kind of search over the week,
trying to find perfect strangers brought together by one terrifying
night.
Jimmie Joe Zaccarello, 49, had just survived a record tornado
crushing like a trash compactor the Home Depot store where he worked. He
crawled to safety through spaces in the collapsed steel roof outside.
He was told to stay put, he said, and be counted. But he walked away to offer help.
“The people I kept coming across were the deceased, and it was just
horrible,” Zaccarello said. “Finally I found somebody alive, that I
could do something, to try to help.”
A destroyed home near a ruined hospital in Joplin, Missouri, 2011.
Melody Dickey and her daughter Autumn Achey left a trailer to rush to
the safety of a best friend’s house when the storm caught them.
They were stuck behind a slow moving truck. Dickey honked her horn, frustrated, when there was a sudden calm.
“There was no wind, there was no rain, there was nothing,” Dickey
said. “The last place I remember the car being was down by Home Depot.”
Autumn remembered debris bursting through the rear windows. Melody remembered rolling, but not for how long.
“I just told Autumn to hold on, I think,” before her daughter slipped
from under the seatbelt and out of the car, Dickey said. “That’s all I
could think about. Autumn was gone. There was no way she could have
lived through it.”
Autumn remembered sliding out of the car and covering her head,
protecting herself from the storm. She hefted a large piece of metal
debris off her back and called for her mother.
“I was just thinking ‘I hope Mom’s here,’” she said. Two large gashes had opened in her leg.
“Looked like a man took an ax to it,” Zaccarello said.
Autumn was covered in mud and blood. She could hear her mother call her name, and followed it, limping along.
They were the first living survivors Zaccarello found.
“He just walked right up and picked her up,” Melody said.
The short, wiry flooring specialist tore his shirt to tie a tourniquet on her leg. He could barely heft the little girl, but he struggled his way to emergency help, and angrily demanded they take her mother, too. Melody Dickey’s back was black with bruises and her shoulder dislocated.
And for nearly a week, that was the last they saw of each other.
Autumn’s father, Jim Achey, wandered the wreckage for hours that
night before Melody could send him word where they were. The next person
he wanted to find was the man named Jimmie who helped his family.
Zaccarello needed to find the family, too. His home and family passed
the storm unscathed. But he’d lost a home in a fire in 2005, and a
daughter to liver disease in 2006, he said.
He was depressed, thinking of all the death and destruction he saw
Sunday, and desperate to know the little girl he helped — just two years
older than his granddaughter — had made it through the storm.
“I’ve just lost so much,” Zaccarello said.
He called the local radio station, which has broadcast
round-the-clock calls seeking friends, family, volunteers and places to
drop donations. He choked up at times as he described his story.
A friend told Jim Achey about the call. They rushed to find a radio at the hospital. Melody knew Zaccarello’s voice instantly.
So Friday afternoon, a beaming Zaccarello and a tough, shy and
exhausted Autumn had their reunion in the pediatrics ward of the town’s
remaining hospital. She was cut and bandaged, and her leg hurt too much
to walk. But she was safe.
“I just wanted something positive to come out of it, you know?” Zaccarrello said.
“It’s definitely positive, man,” Jim Achey said, tearing up. “You’ve got a friend for life.”
(Reuters) – For some families, goodbye to victims of a powerful
tornado that crushed buildings like twigs may only be a glimpse of a
hand.
Traumatic injuries to the remains of the dead could force families to
dispense with the tradition of a public viewing in this small
Midwestern city. State officials said Saturday the temporary morgue
in Joplin included partial remains.
The grim and daunting task facing the city’s three funeral homes, and
some in surrounding communities, was preparing for memorial services
and for burial or cremation of at least 139 victims.
“All we can do is take our time,” said David Dillon, a former owner of Thornhill-Dillon Mortuary.
A ruined street corner in Joplin, Missouri. 2011.
The first funeral was in the nearby town of Galena, Kansas on Friday
for 27-year-old electrician Adam Darnaby, remembered as an avid
fisherman who liked fast cars.
The first services for victims in Joplin will begin on Monday, more
than a week after the tragedy, according to Dennis Dreyer, the director
of operations for Ozark Memorial Park, where many the dead will be
buried.
The pace of the release of the dead has frustrated families anxious
to recover loved ones and to move forward in their grief. Families of
only 73 of the victims have been notified so far, because officials are
following a painstaking process of identification to avoid mistakes.
Lindy Molina drove in from Irving, Texas to try and find her sister
and nephew. She found the nine-year-old boy safe, but neighbors said her
sister, Melissa Crossley, had died protecting him from the flying
debris. Molina brought pictures and tattoo references to the temporary
morgue in Joplin, but had no success.
“I personally do understand the process,” Molina said. “But it is frustrating.”
While the slow release of remains has been stressful for families, it
gave the funeral homes, churches and cemeteries time to prepare.
Funeral homes here have worked to pull in resources from four states
to handle services for victims. They expect the state of Missouri to
release remains to families at a rate of 14 to 16 a day.
A small army of part-time and former workers and volunteers will
help. Anything the memorial services needed — from cars to caskets to
embalming materials — were offered by the Missouri state funeral home
association and from colleagues in Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma,
funeral directors said.
Funeral homes were ready to offer private viewings, when possible,
for families still wishing to say goodbye to badly damaged remains, said
Tom Keckley, co-owner of Parker Mortuary & Crematory in Joplin.
Medical bandages and terry cloth could cover severe injuries, he said.
“It might be looking at a hand that’s exposed while other parts are
covered, but anything that will let that person know that that is their
loved one,” Keckley said. “So that they accept it and can begin to
heal.”
Even for funeral home staff accustomed to consoling grieving
families, the Joplin tragedy has been personal. Dillon recognized names
on the list of missing.
“You just hurt with them,” Dillon said. “You still have to be strong for them.”
The Ozark cemetery will be working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, said Dreyer.
His staff was still numb from the tragedy, and focused on day-to-day
tasks. They held daily meetings to prepare for the overwhelming job
ahead, he said.
Preparing a grave site and holding a service could take four hours,
he said. Many employees had pledged to donate their time for the
victims’ funerals.
“You’ll find Joplin is a close community,” Dreyer said. “From start to finish.”
