FHP Urges Fourth Holiday Safety
July 5, 2015
The Fourth of July is known for cookouts, fireworks, and parades. It’s also equally well known for busy travel.
AAA estimates that over 40 million people will be on the road during this long Independence Day weekend. The Florida Highway Patrol is urging everyone to use caution and not let the celebration turn to tragedy by mixing alcohol and driving.
Here are safety tips from the FHP for the long Fourth of July weekend:
- Always buckle up. A seatbelt is your vehicle’s most important safety feature.
- Designate a sober driver before the fun begins.
- Didn’t plan ahead? Call a taxi, a sober friend, or use public transportation to get home safely if you have been drinking.
- Even one drink increases the risk of a crash while driving.
- Do not let anyone who has been drinking get behind the wheel.
- Call *FHP (*347) if you see an impaired driver on the road.
The Fourth weekend continues through Sunday.
Janet “Gran” Crosby
July 5, 2015
Janet “Gran” Crosby passed away on July 3, 2015.
She is preceded in death by her parents May and Herbert Licklider and her sister Beverly Gates. She is survived by her husband Ray Crosby, sister Paula Southern (Richard), her children Kim Creamer, Scott Crosby, and grandchildren Julieanna Harmon, Nikoal Creamer, and Mayson Creamer.
Janet was born on December 10, 1947, in Cuba, MO. She grew up in Pensacola, where she met her soulmate and best friend Ray. They would have been married for 50 years on July 10th. Janet’s purpose in life was to take care of and be mother to all, especially Susan Doyle, Travis and Stephen Gates, Amanda Mims, Daniel Barnett, and Alan and Amanda Smith.
Janet had a passion for life and a love for giving and sharing her joy with others. She volunteered at Molino Park Elementary and Earnest Ward Middle School almost daily. She even received volunteer of the year more than once. She spent 35 years of her life in the insurance business. Her clients were not just clients, they were family to her. She went above and beyond to help them with not only their insurance, but their lives as well. Not only was she in the insurance business, but she was a notary public and conducted weddings for a lot of her clients. She married Travis and Susie Gates, James and Daphne Southern, her nephews.
Gran did not live her life for herself, she lived it for others. To know Gran was to love her. She will be dearly missed.
Baybears Best Wahoos
July 5, 2015
The Blue Wahoos took a 4-1 lead into the bottom of the seventh on Saturday night at Hank Aaron Stadium in Mobile, Ala., but the BayBears rallied for six runs with the help of four walks on their way to a 9-4 series-opening win over Pensacola.
Barrett Astin was outstanding in his second start for the Wahoos. He allowed just two runs/earned on only three hits over 6.1 innings. He added six strikeouts and he scattered four walks. Astin retired 10-straight from the second through the first two outs of the fifth.
After he was lifted following a one-out walk in the seventh, Mobile poured on their six-run rally. Blaine Howell (L, 1-1) faced three batters and gave up a single off the glove of second baseman Juan Perez, and two walks. The second forced in a run. Nick Christiani made his Blue Wahoos debut in back of Howell and walked in the BayBears second run of the inning and later gave up a two-run double to Rudy Flores to cap the rally.
The BayBears added two more runs against Ben Klimesh in the eighth. He threw four wild pitches with four walks in two-thirds of an inning.
Penascola looked to be in control after scoring a pair of insurance runs in the sixth inning to extend their lead to three, 4-1. Zach Vincej singled in Seth Mejias-Brean, and Juan Perez scored behind him on an errant throw from Socrates Brito at third base.
Jesse Winker paced the Blue Wahoos offense with his team-leading 21st multi-hit game of the year. He finished 2-for-4 as one of four in the Wahoos lineup with a multi-hit effort. Marquez Smith drove in the go-ahead run for Pensacola in the third as part of a 2-for-4 night. Mejias-Brean and Perez also had a pair of hits.
Will Locante picked up the win out of the BayBears bullpen after working 1.2 innings with three strikeouts.
The two teams will continue the series at Hank Aaron Stadium on Sunday evening. The Blue Wahoos will start LHP Wandy Peralta (3-7, 5.32). The BayBears have not announced a starter yet for the game. First pitch is set for 5:05 p.m.
Flemon Earnest Dale, Jr.
July 5, 2015
lemon Earnest Dale, Jr., 81 years old, passed away on June 29, 2015, in Pensacola.
He is survived by his wife, Sharon Dale; four daughters, son, eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
Funeral services will be performed at Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, 916 Booker St., Cantonment on Monday, July 6, 2015 at 1 pm.
Elizabeth Christine (Flowers) McGlothren
July 5, 2015
Elizabeth Christine (Flowers) McGlothren, 81, of Pensacola, passed away on June 29th. 2015, at Covenant Hospice Center located in West Florida Hospital after losing the battle against cancer.
She was born at home on November 8, 1933, in Atmore,to Helon Grissett Flowers and White Hugh Flowers. She enjoyed reading, watching TV, playing games on the computer, listening to country and western and gospel music, spending time with family and tending roses. She maintained the family home while married to her former spouse, Preston J. McGlothren, deceased, while he served in the Army, Air Force and the Escambia County Sheriff’s Department.
She is survived by her mother, Helon Grissett Flowers (103), children, Sharon (John) Vonderhaar, Wayne (Melanie) McGlothren, JoAnn Wolff and Martha (Harold) Buttlar; five grandchildren; several great grandchildren; two brothers, Curtis James Flowers and Bill Hush Flowers; and sister, Ella Verline Smith.
She was predeceased by her father, Hugh Flowers and granddaughter, Diane Bush.
Funeral services will be held on Monday, July 6, 2015, at Faith Chapel Funeral Home North, 1000 South Highway 29, Cantonment, 10:30 a.m.with her son, Wayne McGlothren, officiating. Family viewing will be held from 9:30 – 10:00A a.m., friends from 10:00 – 10:30 a.m.
Interment will be held in Eastern Gate Memorial Gardens Cemetery located on Nine Mile Road following the services.
Pallbearers are Carl Vonderhaar, Erik Vonderhaar, Paul Hudson, Robert Turpin, David Lewis, Shane Bramlette, John Huffman and George Marcelonis. Honorary pallbearers are John Vonderhaar, Harold Buttlar, Byron Langdon, Michael Watts, Bob Glasgow, Jim Lee, and David Lewis Scott Hutson.
In lieu of flowers, a donation to Teen Challenge USA would be greatly appreciated. The address is 5250 North Towne Center Drive, Ozark, Missouri 65721, or you can make a donation on line at teenchallengeusa.com.
Sarah Ann “Sadie” Deweese Haines
July 5, 2015
Sarah Ann “Sadie” Deweese Haines, of Cantonment, was born in Jasper, AL on December 22, 1935.
She grew up in Eldridge, AL, (Walker County), and graduated from the University of Montevallo with a degree in speech therapy. Sadie taught thousands of Escambia County’s children, and was an active member of Alpha Delta Kappa.
She is preceded in death by her mother, Sophia “Sophie” Margaret Walker DeWeese Jackson, and her father, Leo Crawford DeWeese. She is survived by her husband of 58 years, Richard Wallace Haines II; sister (cousin) Barbara Walker Jones (Raymond), her children; Richard Wallace Haines III (Toni) and Sarah Leigh Haines Steele (Matthew), five grandchildren and five great grandchildren.
Sadie had a passion for life and a love for giving and sharing her joy with others. She will be greatly missed.
Visitation will be held, Monday July 6 at Oak Lawn Funeral Home from 9-10 a.m. Service is at 10 a.m. and burial to follow at Barrancas National Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, please bring elementary school supplies to the viewing to be donated to a local elementary school in Pensacola.
FWC To Contunue Crack Down On Unsafe Holiday Boating
July 5, 2015
Boaters should expect to see extra law enforcement on the water cracking down on drunk boaters and other sea-faring safety violations over the Independence Day holiday weekend.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has launched “Operation Dry Water” to remind boaters of some requirements designed to keep everyone safe. The U.S. Coast Guard and local law enforcement officers will join the FWC in policing state waters this weekend.
FWC officer Charles Mallow said it is important that boaters be prepared when they take to the water.
“Especially if you are dealing with children, the life jackets have to be for the size of child that is on the boat,” Mallow said. “Make sure that your fire extinguisher is in good shape, if you are going to go offshore that your flares are in date, and ensure that your driver is sober.”
Last year, four alcohol- or drug-related boating accidents in Florida resulted in six deaths over the Fourth of July weekend.
Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: See You In Court
July 5, 2015
As Floridians across the state prepared to set off fireworks to celebrate Independence Day, news around state government seemed to fizzle this week.
The Legislature has been gone for almost two weeks, and Gov. Rick Scott’s list of vetoed projects is a thing of the past — except, perhaps, to some perturbed lawmakers. And with 2015 being a year free of any major elections, the campaigns did not gear up to fill the summer lull.
As a result, most of the action seemed to be taking place in the courts, which don’t take the same breaks as lawmakers and keep weighing in year-round. (Though, it should be noted, the U.S. Supreme Court was finishing up its opinions so that it could take a summer breather of its own.)
And even there, the biggest decisions of the year — the Supreme Court’s rulings upholding a key portion of the Affordable Care Act and legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide — were in the rear-view mirror. After weeks and weeks of news generated by the regular legislative session, a health-care crisis and a special legislative session, Tallahassee seemed to be quiet.
COURTS ON LIFE AND DEATH
One of the more important decisions announced this week was the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion rejecting a challenge to the lethal-injection protocol used in Oklahoma and several other states, including Florida, which uses an almost identical procedure to the one under scrutiny.
In a 5-4 majority opinion issued Monday, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that Oklahoma prisoners failed to prove that the use of the drug midazolam, the first of the three-drug lethal cocktail used also used in Florida, “entails a substantial risk of severe pain.”
The petitioners also failed to offer an alternative execution method that would be less painful, Alito wrote.
“…Because some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution, we have held that the Constitution does not require the avoidance of all risk of pain. After all, while most humans wish to die a painless death, many do not have that good fortune. Holding that the Eighth Amendment demands the elimination of essentially all risk of pain would effectively outlaw the death penalty altogether,” wrote Alito, in an opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia.
But, in a harshly-worded dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that it is essential that the first drug effectively render inmates unconscious because the following two drugs “in a tortuous manner” cause “burning, searing pain.”
Allowing the use of midazolam, Sotomayor wrote, leaves inmates “exposed to what may well be the chemical equivalent of being burned at the stake.” Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan joined Sotomayor’s dissent.
The decision quickly rippled down to the Florida Supreme Court, which in February halted the execution of convicted killer Jerry William Correll. Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a request with the Florida court on Monday, asking that the justices lift the stay on Correll’s execution.
But Correll’s attorneys pointed to another case before the U.S. Supreme Court that deals specifically with Florida’s death penalty. That case focuses heavily on Florida’s lack of a requirement that juries be unanimous in recommending imposition of the death penalty. The appeal also focuses on Florida not requiring juries to be unanimous in finding what are known as “aggravators” that justify death sentences.
“If this Court vacates the stay of execution that is in place, Correll may be executed and later found to have been sentenced under an unconstitutional death penalty sentencing scheme,” his attorneys wrote.
Meanwhile, a state law requiring women to wait at least 24 hours before undergoing an abortion was put on hold by the courts twice in two days. On Tuesday, Leon Chief Judge Charles Francis granted a request by opponents of the law for a temporary injunction, placing the law on hold. But Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office filed an appeal within hours, triggering an automatic stay and putting the law back into effect.
On Thursday, Leon Circuit Judge Charles Dodson granted a motion by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Reproductive Rights to vacate that stay and put the law back on ice.
“We are grateful that the judge blocked this dangerous intrusion by politicians into the private, medical decisions of a woman, her family and her doctor,” Jennifer Lee of the Center for Reproductive Rights said in a statement.
The state’s position is that it has a vested interest in its residents’ well-being, and that the 24-hour wait will give women more time to reflect on their decisions.
“The Attorney General’s Office is appealing the temporary injunction and is reviewing the judge’s order vacating the automatic stay,” Kylie Mason, a spokeswoman for Bondi, wrote in an email.
‘THE GAME CHANGER’
The end of the working week also brought word that Florida will receive about $3.25 billion as part of a multi-state federal settlement with BP over widespread damages caused by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.
The deal announced Thursday requires London-based BP to pay $18.5 billion in economic and natural resources damages to the five Gulf Coast states affected by the disaster, which pumped at least 3.9 million gallons of oil off the coastlines of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
Sen. Don Gaetz, who as Senate president pushed for the creation of a consortium to oversee the bulk of the settlement funds, said the money will help boost economic development throughout the Panhandle, now largely reliant on tourism and the military industry.
“This could be a game changer,” said Gaetz, R-Niceville. “Just as the Deepwater Horizon was the worst economic disaster to befall our area, this settlement could be the best economic opportunity in our times. This kind of money allows you to build out our current economy in northwest Florida, as well as being able to development entire economic sectors that don’t exist today.”
Florida stands to receive $2 billion for economic damages, the most of any Gulf Coast state, and $680 million for restoration projects. The deadly explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and ensuing massive spill affected the environment, tourism and the fishing industry along the Gulf of Mexico but its effects rippled throughout the state.
GAMBLING ON NEW RULES
Meanwhile, state regulators released a draft of their latest version of proposed rules for pari-mutuels — which kept up with the theme of the week in part because they seemed destined to end up in court. Industry insiders predict that the rules face a challenge if they aren’t revised.
After working on them for nearly two years, the Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s Division of Pari-mutuel Wagering, which oversees non-tribal gambling operations in the state, released the latest proposed rules on Tuesday. This version mirrors the 2013 plan, but with changes that give some industry representatives pause.
Portions of the proposed regulation address a controversy about barrel racing at a Panhandle facility in Gretna. State regulators initially granted a pari-mutuel license for the rodeo-style horse races — the first in the country — four years ago, but an appeals court later ruled that the license was granted in error.
Unlike a previous iteration of the rule, tracks would not have to be in an oval shape, something that would benefit the Gadsden County facility, where horses now run against each other in a straight line.
But, under the proposed rules, horse tracks would have to be a certain length, have “breakaway” rails, and require starting gates for horses. That would put an end to the “flag drop” races at tracks like Gretna Racing.
“This stuff is thrown out there as an economic barrier to keep the new tracks out,” said David Romanik, a lawyer who is also part owner of the Gretna track.
The state’s own games, meanwhile, are doing just fine. The Florida Lottery announced sales reached $5.58 billion in the fiscal year that concluded on Tuesday, the fourth consecutive year of record sales.
“We’re on our way to $6 (billion),” said Lottery Secretary Cynthia O’Connell.
STORY OF THE WEEK: The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lethal-injection protocol used by Florida and several other states, which could clear the way for the state to resume its use of capital punishment.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Under the Court’s new rule, it would not matter whether the State intended to use midazolam, or instead to have petitioners drawn and quartered, slowly tortured to death, or actually burned at the stake: because petitioners failed to prove the availability of sodium thiopental or pentobarbital, the State could execute them using whatever means it designated.”—Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, in a dissent from a ruling upholding the lethal-injection protocol used in five states, including Florida.
by Brandon Larrabee, The News Service of Floriday
Cantonment Woman Dies Week After Pine Forest Road Crash
July 4, 2015
A Cantonment woman passed away Friday morning as the result of injuries she received in wreck last Saturday evening.
Melanie Ann Clark, 42, was traveling northbound on Pine Forest Road near Highway 297A at a high rate of speed when she lost control of her 2003 Chevrolet Trailblazer and traveled into the path of a southbound Ford F150 pickup driven by 64-year old Gary Stephen Frederickson of Cantonment, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
Following the June 27, 6:20 p.m. crash, Clark was ejected from her vehicle due to not wearing a seat belt. She was transported to Sacred Heart Hospital where she passed away July 3 at 10:24 am.
A passenger in Clark’s vehicle, 35-year old Newman Jefferson Clark was transported to Sacred Heart Hospital with minor injuries. Federickson was not injured.
Reader submitted photo by Stephanie Norton for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Century, Flomaton Celebrate With A Bang (With Photo Gallery)
July 4, 2015
Fireworks lit up the night Friday with an early celebration at Flomaton’s Hurricane Park.
The fireworks show was a joint effort of both the Town of Flomaton and the Town of Century. The towns alternate hosting the festivities each year.
For a photo gallery, click here.
NorthEscambia.com photo by Ditto Gorme, click to enlarge.
