A good chance we’ll see showers today and off and on into the weekend, I know that’s not what you want to hear, but this memorial day weekend will not be a washout, follow the forecast and plan accordingly to keep your weekend plans up to date and as dry as possible.
Yesterday while out, I encountered several Prestonsburg Police officers across the city that were conducting traffic safety checkpoints enforcing the click it or ticket campaign which is going on throughout the Memorial Day weekend. Polite and courteous, but with a mission at hand, that mission is the same as agencies across the commonwealth, to bring awareness of the positive impact safety belts can have on life. While a vehicle is traveling at a speed of fifty-five miles per hour, many people fail to realize that anything in the vehicle is traveling at that same speed, and if the vehicle stops suddenly for any reason, the contents of that vehicle are still traveling at that speed, and will impact at that same speed, something as simple as wearing a seat belt stops you or your children’s bodies before they can impact a steering wheel or other part of the interior of the vehicle. Bottom line, generally speaking, seat belts can and do save lives in many cases.
A former Leslie County sheriff’s deputy was found guilty of murder on Tuesday.
Jeremy Lewis was found guilty of first-degree murder, abuse of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence. The ruling comes after a trial that lasted more than a week in the Clay County Circuit Court. Lewis was accused of murdering Tyler North in 2018 in Leslie County. Officials said the sentencing for Lewis will be in the Leslie County Courthouse. A date and time have not yet been scheduled. Jury members recommended that Lewis spend 50 years in prison.
The David School is a nonprofit, tuition free school in Floyd County. And now, with a large donation from out of state, its mission will continue for years to come. The school relies on donations and grants to provide nontraditional education- with workforce-focused, hands-on learning- for high school students in the area. This week, the school received a donation of $250,000. Ned Pillersdorf, who is the Executive Director of the school, said the donation came from “friends in Connecticut” who wanted the children of Appalachia to keep pouring through the halls of the high school.
The Letcher County Coroner confirmed to WYMT an 11-year-old boy is dead after an incident in Blackey. The coroner said Curtis Halcomb is believed to have drowned in the North Fork of the Kentucky River. The boy was pulled from the river and taken to the hospital, but he was pronounced dead around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday. An autopsy is scheduled.
A Floyd County man faces a long list of charges, after what began as an attempted stop for minor traffic violations resulted in a lengthy chase. A state trooper attempted to pull over Steven Chad Castle, 40, of Printer, Monday afternoon as he turned onto Main Street at Stanville, for speeding and failing to signal. Instead of stopping, the police report alleges he sped away to Mare Creek.
Police say Castle used a dirt road to circle around to head back out of Mare Creek, but another officer blocked his exit, forcing him onto Shop Branch instead. He is accused of driving through yards, narrowly missing a man working in his garden, then circling behind a house to head back out of Shop Branch. The police report says that as he tried to ride an embankment to pass another car, he collided with the other vehicle. That brought the car chase to an end, but police say he then tried to run away but was quickly apprehended. Castle is now charged with two counts of fleeing police, three counts of wanton endangerment, one count of wanton endangerment of a police officer, and a number of traffic violations.
(Steven Chad Castle)