Author: Don Fletcher

Don Fletcher

Paying their debt
By DON FLETCHER News Staff Writer Back in the days of prison “chain gangs,” inmates who swung sling blades or axes along county and municipal roadsides were said to be paying their debt to society. The days of shackled-together inmate work crews have gone, but many inmates are still paying their societal debt by working outside the razor wire of a state prison compound. Atmore, with a three-facility state prison…
by Don Fletcher access_time7 years ago
Truck sails onto tracks
Driver missed stop sign By DON FLETCHER News Staff Writer A Century, Fla. woman was seriously injured Monday, February 4, when she apparently missed a stop sign and drove her pickup across fog-shrouded U.S. 31, about four miles east of downtown Atmore, then went airborne, jumped a ravine and landed on a set of train tracks. The driver, Kimberly Kaye Clarke (reportedly “in her 50s”) was taken by ambulance to…
by Don Fletcher access_time7 years ago
Aging jail, drugs, funding new sheriff’s biggest challenges
By DON FLETCHER News Staff Writer Note: The following article is the second in a two-part series on Escambia County’s first new sheriff since 2003. The first appeared in the January 23 edition. Two weeks into his first term as Sheriff of Escambia County, Heath Jackson faces several challenges. And he has to face those challenges with budgetary resources that reflect the county’s financial struggles over recent years. “That’s another…
by Don Fletcher access_time7 years ago
Judge Bert Rice
After 40 years on bench, venerable jurist ‘retiring’ By DON FLETCHER News Staff Writer After more than 40 years of hearing cases in Atmore Municipal Court, Escambia County Circuit Court and the occasional out-of-town courtroom, Judge Bert Rice is retiring. Well, sort of. Rice, who joined the circuit court bench in 2007 after Judge Joseph B. Brogden retired, presided over his first case as Atmore’s municipal judge on November 21,…
by Don Fletcher access_time7 years ago
Davisville man killed
Shot by Fla. deputy By DON FLETCHER News Staff Writer A Davisville, Fla. man who reportedly threatened to shoot his wife was himself shot and killed, inside his home, by an Escambia County (Fla.) sheriff’s deputy who had been sent to the home to conduct a welfare check. According to a press release issued by Escambia County Sheriff’s Office officials on the agency’s Facebook page, a deputy was sent around…
by Don Fletcher access_time7 years ago