Easter Bunny, Egg Hunt At Century Library
April 2, 2010
The Easter Bunny made an early stop the Century Branch Library Thursday afternoon. Dozens of kids and kids at heart had the chance to meet Peter Cottontail himself, hear an Easter story, and take part in a big Easter Egg Hunt. For a complete photo gallery from the event, click here. NorthEscambia.com photo, click to enlarge.
Tate High Aggies Advance To Tournament Championship
April 2, 2010
The Tate Aggies are headed to the championship game of the Aggie-Gata National Baseball Classic tournament Friday night after a win over Bartow.
The Aggies beat Bartow 5-4 Thursday to advance to play Gibbs High Friday night.
Bartow jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first inning. Tate closed the gap to 3-2 with a single by Adam Mack and Tevin Padgett was hit by a pitch.
Lee Hunter moved runners over to second and third. Tino Benjamin then hit a ground ball to the third baseman who made an error, scoring both Mack and Padgett.
Bartow scored a run in the top of the fourth to go up 4-2. Then in the bottom of the fifth, Tate had a single by Brandon Blackwelder and a double by Lee Hunter.
Benjamin hit a ground ball to Bartow’s shortstop scoring Blackwelder and tagging out Hunter. After two walks and with bases loaded, David Lee hit a high chopper in front of the pitcher who threw the runner out at home.
But the catcher hit Lee running to first trying to turn the double play. Two runs score and Lee ended up at third making the score 5-4 Tate.
In the top of the seventh, after two singles for Bartow and a sacrifice bunt to move runners to second and third with one out, Bartow tried a squeeze and popped it up to the catcher who threw to second for the double play to end the game.
Zach Mcculley picked up the win with six innings of work.
The Aggie-Gata tournament is a four-day, six-team tournament. Tate, Escambia and Pine Forest from Escambia County; Coral Reef High School from Miami; Gibbs High School from Knowville, Tenn.; and Bartow High School from Bartow, Fla., are taking part in the week.
Friday’s games are:
- 1:30 Pine Forest vs. Bartow
- 4:00 Coral Reef vs. Escambia
- 6:30 Tate vs. Gibbs (Championship)
Saturday: Northview FFA Alumni Bluegrass Festival Featuring Marty Raybon
April 2, 2010
Tickets are still available for the April 3 Northview FFA Bluegrass Festival presented by the Northview FFA Alumni Scholarship Fund and NorthEscambia.com.
To purchase tickets click here to order online and print at home/work.
Tickets are also available at ticket outlets — Davisville Country Store at 10251 Highway 97, the Ann’s Hallmark & Gift Shop at 1741 E. Nine Mile Road in Pensacola, and the Ann’s Hallmark & Gift Shop at 4805 Hwy. 90 in Pace. Tickets will also be available at the door for both shows.
To learn more about the concert, click here or see the ad above. Concessions will be available from the Northview Band, click here for info.
All proceeds from the event benefit the Northview FFA Alumni Scholarship Fund. This is an indoor event.
Firefighters Respond To Molino House Fire
April 1, 2010
Firefighters responded to fire involving a vacant house on Highway 99 in Molino Thursday afternoon.
The fire was reported about 3 p.m. in the 7000 block of South Highway 99 near the intersection of Crabtree Church Road. The fire was reportedly contained to a small area of the house and was quickly extinguished.
There were no injuries reported, and the cause of the blaze was not immediately known.
The Molino, Walnut Hill, McDavid and Cantonment stations of Escambia Fire Rescue responded to the call.
Bank Robbery Suspect Caught, Also Wanted For Robbing Two Fast Food Restaurants
April 1, 2010
[Updated] The man responsible for a robbery at a Nine Mile Road bank on Wednesday and two fast food restaurant robberies earlier in the week is now behind bars.
Richard Andrew Ray, 37 of Pensacola was taken into custody in Mobile by a fugitive task force.
The latest robbery occurred just after noon Wednesday at the Bank of America at 31 East Nine Mile Road when a man walked in, handed a note to a teller, and fled with a handful of cash.
Ray acted as if he had a handgun, according to Sgt. Ted Roy, spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office. The man fled the bank with an undisclosed amount of money and was last seen eastbound from the bank on a bicycle, Roy said. No one was injured in the robbery.
Ray is also wanted for the Sunday night robbery of the McDonald’s restaurant at 123 East Nine Road and the Monday night robbery of the Arby’s Restaurant at 18 East Nine Mile Road. In both robberies, a while male entered and demanded money from the register while also displaying what appeared to be a handgun under his shirt.
All witnesses in the three cases identified Ray as the suspect from a photo lineup, according to Roy.
Anyone with information about the robberies is asked to call the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office at (850) 436-9620.
Pictured top: A bank robbery suspect receives an undetermined amount of cash during a Wednesday robbery of the Bank of America on East Nine Mile Road. Pictured inset: The man was wearing a shirt with a lizard design on the back. Pictured below: The man waits for the teller to read a note. Screen shots from surveillance video provided by the Escambia County County Sheriff’s Office for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
First Baptist Cantonment Youth Spend Their Spring Break Volunteering At Children’s Home
April 1, 2010
A dozen youth from the First Baptist Church of Cantonment spent their Spring Break Wednesday helping the youth at the Florida Baptist Children’s Home in Pensacola.
The youth worked to clean out from around an overgrown pond on the children’s home property. The pond will be used for fishing and to provide activities for the young people that live at the home.
“We had a great time serving the Lord. All of these youth are out on Spring Break this week, so they could have chosen to be doing many other things,” said Drayton Smith, associate pastor at the First Baptist Church of Cantonment.
Pictured above and below: Youth from the First Baptist Church of Cantonment helped the youth at the Florida Baptist Children’s Home clean a pond on Wednesday. Submitted photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Sheriff: Gangs Are In North Escambia; No One Is Completely Safe
April 1, 2010
No one in Escambia County is safe from gangs and gang activity, including residents of North Escambia.
That’s the word from Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan. Wednesday afternoon, NorthEscambia.com sat down for an exclusive interview with the sheriff in his office to discuss the growing gang problem in Escambia County, and specifically how gangs impact North Escambia.
There are 17 active gangs in Escambia County with about 300 members, according to the sheriff. About 80 percent of the crime in Escambia County has a gang connection, he said.
Much of the gang activity in the southern part of Escambia County is organized, while the gang activity in North Escambia is more unorganized. But that’s not a good thing, the sheriff said.
“The unorganized gangs that you have in the north part of the county can be more dangerous than the organized gangs,” Morgan said. When there is no structure to a gang’s leadership, the man with the most money or drugs tends to be in charge, and that can mean a change in leadership from day to day, he said.
“If the guy in charge today is a wacko, he might just decide it’s a good day for a drive-by (shooting),” he said. “It’s like an unguided missile.”
The sheriff termed North Escambia gangs as “hybrids” — not full-fledged gang members of well known national groups like the Bloods or Crips. The hybrid gangs, he said, are gaining more and more members but have not yet become more violent or more organized. “These hybrid gangs don’t have the rules of the national groups.”
Asked if the recent dismissal time brawl at Ernest Ward Middle School could be gang related, Morgan said “We know there are gang members in schools, but there is not gang activity in your schools. But just outside the edge of the schoolyard at every school in the county, the problem exists.”
The sheriff said the school district closely monitors any potential gang activity in school across the county, and they quickly move in to prevent an problems. So far, he said, that strategy has worked well.
It’s no secret that Cantonment and Century have gang members, Morgan said. “Molino is relatively untouched, but there are a few members there.”
Morgan said his department is actively working to curtail the gang problem in Escambia County. He said that residents of the county can take an active roll against gangs by reporting activity and by organizing neighborhood watch programs to be on the lookout for problems.
A person is labeled as a potential gang member if they meeting several criteria, including the wearing of gang colors or symbols, displaying gang signs, wearing gang tattoos, self admission, or the participation in organized crime for the gang.
The sheriff’s comments came following a “Protecting Our Children From Gangs” public forum that was held Tuesday night. The event was sponsored by the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office, Escambia County School District and Sacred Heart Hospital.
At that forum, Dr. Karanbir Gill, trauma surgeon and medical director, Sacred Heart Trauma Center, talked out the impact gangs have on the hospital system in our communities due to violent injuries.
Pictured top and top inset: Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan discusses gangs in his office Wednesday afternoon. Pictured bottom inset: A recent fight at Ernest Ward Middle School. NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Century Correctional Institution Safe; Compromise Will Prevent Prison Closures
April 1, 2010
Senate Ways and Means Chairman JD Alexander and Senate President Jeff Atwater have agreed to a compromise that will prevent the closing of prisons that had been floated earlier, and put $20 million into the Department of Corrections budget to avoid any job cuts.
The department would also retain discretion on how to fill a new private prison in Santa Rosa County under the agreement between Senate leaders and critics of the earlier plan, said a spokeswoman for Senate Democrats. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, had promoted an earlier plan to fill the newly built private prison in the Panhandle that would have meant job losses at other DOC facilities, stirring up opposition from lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, in areas with lots of prison jobs.
Alexander’s plan would have including closing two state-run prisons and laying off 639 prison guards. He also would have privatized a now-unidentified 1,350-bed prison. The prisons that would be closed, and the 1,350-bed prison to be privatized were not been named. Century Correctional Institution fits that profile, with a maximum capacity of 1,345 prisoners, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. Century CI was over capacity with 1,435 inmates as of January 31. Century is not the only prison facility in the state with an approximate capacity of 1,350.
The compromise pleased some law enforcement officials, but left some Democrats and the state’s largest labor union uneasy as the Florida Senate took up its budget Wednesday.
“We have a lot of concerns,” said Florida AFL-CIO President Mike Williams. “If this leads toward continued privatizations, I can’t stand up and support (it).”
Williams said that he was “really uncomfortable” with the entire plan to open the Blackwater River Correctional Institution, not just the compromise reached Wednesday by Democrats. He also lamented not having an opportunity for a “meaningful review” of the legislation.
Opponents have said the plan to privatize more than 5,000 prison beds could result in more than 1,000 correctional officer layoffs. But Sen. Democratic Leader Al Lawson, D-Tallahassee, said that the compromise with Alexander was the best Democrats could to with the proposal, which emerged late in the budget process in the Senate Ways and Means Committee.
“It has not been an easy situation, but right now, we have what I think is a great compromise,” Lawson said during a Senate Democratic Caucus meeting Wednesday morning. “What I’ve hammered out here is the best way for us to go into conference. We do not need to go into conference closing the facility. We do not need to go into conference having lost 1,900 jobs.”
Just as quickly, however, Lawson acknowledged that the deal was a temporary fix that would not completely eliminate privatization at state prisons.
“Right now members I certainly hope that you all will support these amendments because it…saves a lot of jobs,” he said. “Now in terms of how do you move forward in the future, we really don’t know.”
But Lawson said Wednesday’s vote on the compromise would not be the end of the conversation and pledged to make sure labor unions had “a seat at the table” as the Senate and House conference on differing budgets.
The compromise was good enough for Florida Police Benevolent Association Vice President Jim Baiardi, who agreed with Lawson that the deal was better than nothing.
“It’s not the best solution out there, but I did what I had to do, I saved my people’s jobs,” Baiardi said. “It’s not the best outcome that we like at this time, but we’re moving ahead.”
Baiardi still chastised lawmakers for even considering the prison cuts, saying “we think it’s very unfair that when these cuts came down, it went on the backs of the state correction officers.”
“It’s wrong. We’ve got a tough job out there,” he said. “Often we consider ourselves the unsung heroes of law enforcement. I don’t think we deserve every session to come up here and be treated like this for the job we do.”
Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, joined Williams in questioning the compromise, however, taking issue with what the Senate would have to not fund in order to save the prison jobs.
On the floor Wednesday, Republicans questioned the compromise too. Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, criticized both the initial plan and the deal, saying the issue wasn’t vetted by committees. Dockery, a candidate for governor, also criticized spending money to get Blackwater open.
“In this amendment, we’re coming up with nearly $23 million out of the existing budget to open a new facility,” she said. “My number one concern is this didn’t go through committees to vet a policy decision of this magnitude, but number two is what effect is this going to have on the existing facilities and the employees of those facilities. By opening this new facility, it’s not in the same geographic region as the existing facilities, so people are going to lose their jobs.”
Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, who chairs the Senate’s Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations, said that any job eliminations would take place over time, noting that about 300 of the Department of Corrections’ 30,000 employees retire or leave their positions each year.
“The way that this is set up is we will be able to transfer employees to other facilities, absorb them through the attrition process,” he said.
The architect of the original plan to close the existing prisons, Alexander, acknowledged that even with the compromise with Democrats, the deal would still increase the number of private prison beds in the state.
“That decision was made a couple years ago when we commissioned this prison to be built,” he said. “We spent $113 million or so of taxpayer dollars to put this prison there, we’ve done contracts with the provider, it was guided in an open bidding process.
“I don’t particularly care about private vs public,” Alexander said. “What I care about are the costs.”
Lawson’s amendment containing the prison was approved on a voice vote, and the budget was later unanimously approved.
Keith Lang, News Service Florida, contributed to this report.
Benefit Fund Established For Wounded Marine Corporal
April 1, 2010
A fund has been set up to raise money for an area Marine that was wounded by roadside bomb in Afghanistan.
On March 20, Marine Corporal Joseph Daniel Palmer was severely wounded in Afghanistan by the improvised explosive device. He lost his right foot and has severe damage to the other leg. Palmer, 24, has a young wife and 15-month old son. He will receive medical treatment at Bethesda Naval Hospital for an extended period of time.
“He knows that things very easily could have been much worse, and is thankful that his life was spared,” said Melissa Moye, Palmer’s sister who lives in Century. “He is in really good spirits, and does not want anyone to feel sorry for him.”
The Santa Rosa County Military Advisory Committee has worked with the family to establish a Wounded Marine Benefit account for Corporal Palmer. Contributions can be made at the Santa Rosa County Teachers Federal Credit Union.
“This young military family and the extended family will continue to go through some trying times. They certainly will incur personal expenses and will need the support of the community,” said Santa Rosa County Commissioner Don Salter.
Palmer is a 2004 graduate of Central High School. He joined the marines in October 2008 and was deployed to Afghanistan in January. He has several relatives in the North Escambia area.
For more information on the memorial fund, contact the Santa Rosa County Teachers Federal Credit Union at (850) 623-3877 or memberservices@srcfcu.org.
Deputy Randy Murph Retires After 27 Years In Law Enforcement
March 31, 2010
After 27 years in law enforcement — 22 of those in North Escambia — Byrneville resident Randy Murph has retired.
Life is a little more relaxed these days for Murph — when we caught up with him, he was working on a cedar chest for his granddaughter. He admits that when he watched a deputy responding to call past his house recently, it was hard not to grab the police radio and find out what was going on. Law enforcement is in his blood.
“I loved it; I still love it, but I’ve seen enough hurt, enough death,” he said, reflecting on his days so far without badge. “When I hung my gun belt up, that was it. It’s a job for the younger guys now.”
Murph started his law enforcement career in Escambia County, Alabama, working for then-Sheriff Tim Hawsey. He spent five years patrolling the 950 square miles of the county before moving south into Florida.
For the next 22 years, he worked for the Escambia County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office, spending all of those years in North Escambia.
“From all I know about Randy Murph, he was a very good officer, the kind you are proud to have,” Escambia County Sheriff’ David Morgan said.
“I’ll miss always seeing the people in the north end,” he said. “I was raised up here, and I got to know a lot of people. I’ll miss not seeing them as much. There’s some really good people up here, a really close knit community.”
Along with the good people in North Escambia, Murph has seen his share of the bad in the area.
Dumbest Criminal
The dumbest criminal Murph said he remembered was a group that stole candy from the Little League ballpark in Century. He admits it did not take great skills to solve the crime — as the crooks fled the ballpark, they began to eat the candy. And drop candy wrappers — all the way to their own front door.
“When I knocked at the door, they fessed up,” he said.
Excuses, Excuses
Talking to criminals means excuses. Murph’s favorite came from a speeder on Highway 29.
“Ma’am, are you trying to get to the emergency room?” he said he asked.
“Sir, there’s a state trooper on Highway 29 using radar, and I’m trying get away from him,” she replied. She did not get a ticket — at least from Murph.
The Tough Ones
Then there are the cases that Murph does not like to talk about, even after 27 years with a badge.
“One stands out that I’ll never forget, and the man we knew did it was never convicted,” he said. The case involved a woman on Mayo Street in Century left for dead with plastic bag on her head. “That was tough.”
“We knew he did it, but he never got convicted,” he said. But sometimes justice prevails. The suspect in that case is now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole in Georgia for other crimes.
“He got what was coming to him,” Murph said.
Little Words, Big Memories
The best memories come from the simple words — “thank you”.
He remembers a young man in Century that he arrested; it was not his first trip to jail. . He could see his potential. “I talked to him and told him that it was time to become a man.”
The words meant something to the man, and he did turn his life around.
“He told me ‘thank you’ the last time I saw him. He was standing there in front of his daughters when he said it. That took a big man to admit it in front of his children.”
Now that he is retired, Murph said he plans to fish, hunt and travel.
“And I want to find ways to become involved in the community,” he said. “I love the people here.”
Pictured top: (front, L-R) Senior Deputy David Poole, Lt. Carl Jones, DEA Special Agent Claude Cosey, Master Deputy Randy Murph, (back) Deputy Ingram, Senior Deputy David Preson, Lt. David Barnes, and Investigator Frank Way at Randy Murph’s recent retirement party. Pictured top inset: Randy and Mary Murph. Pictured middle inset: Former Escambia (Ala.) Sheriff Tim Hawsey and his wife. Pictured bottom inset: Randy Murph’s retirement party cake. Submitted photos by Ramona Preston for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.