November 28, 2013

Man shoots, kills elderly man with Alzheimer’s at Walker County, Ga., home

Source: Chattanooga Times Free Press


A 34-year-old Chattanooga man shot and killed a 72-year-old man who rang the doorbell around 4 a.m. today at a home in a new subdivision off North Marble Top Road in rural Walker County, Ga., Sheriff Steve Wilson said.

At a news conference this afternoon, Wilson identified the shooter at the house on Cottage Crest Court as Joe Hendrix of Ooltewah and the victim as Ronald Westbrook of Walker County.

Wilson said the victim, who had advanced Alzheimer’s disease, had been walking around for about four hours and almost three miles before the incident occurred. He said Westbrook was lost and rang the doorbell and turned the door handle at the home, where Hendrix was visiting his fiancee.

The woman, who was not identified, called a 911 dispatcher and was on the phone with that person when Hendrix took a 40-caliber handgun outside and confronted the victim in the yard behind the home, the sheriff said.

Read more: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/nov/27/homeowner-allegedly-shoots-and-kills-prowler-outsi/

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The man who was killed had his dog with him. He was shot three times. The dog wouldn't leave him for an hour while the police investigated and animal services finally took him away.

No charges have been filed.

November 16, 2013

Video of UTC student arrested near evangelist goes viral, sparks controversy

Source: Chattanooga Times Free Press

Controversy has arisen over the arrest Thursday afternoon of a 24-year-old student near a female Christian evangelist who's reportedly been haranguing students at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

A 3:58-minute video, apparently shot with a cell phone, titled "Police brutality on UTC campus," had close to 2,500 views on Youtube this morning.

UTC Police Sgt. Willie Trueitt arrested Cole Montalvo for disorderly conduct. According to Trueitt's incident report, Montalvo tried to get past a perimeter of cones set up around the evangelist.

"Due to some mishaps of the last visit from the evangelist, a perimeter was set up … to keep students from bothering or getting in the evangelist face/space," Trueitt wrote in the report.

Read more: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/nov/15/utc-arrest-bicyclist-near-evangelist-sparks-contro/

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The headline should have been "college student beat up by police after calmly telling crazy woman to stop screaming at people."

I don't know if you have seen this sort of thing on college campuses in other parts of the country. Basically crazy people come on campus and yell to students about what sinners they are. This is right in the middle of campus on the main cross road.

Here is the video clip that the "evangelist" herself put on youtube:

November 11, 2013

Study makes a case against paddling, finds link between corporal punishment, failure to graduat

Source: Chattanooga Times Free Press

Kids who are paddled at school are more likely to be black, more likely to be poor and more likely to be boys. And that's why a UTC professor studying the issue says schools should rethink their policies on corporal punishment.

Poor and minority children already face an uphill educational battle, with lower overall academic achievement and lower graduation rates.

And Darrell Meece, an education professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, says paddling only makes things worse. His dive into data on corporal punishment found that kids who are paddled are three times more likely not to graduate high school.

"Children who are living in poverty, children who are in minority groups are less likely to graduate in the first place. We know that," he said. "Corporal punishment exacerbates that, it makes it even less likely that they graduate. These are vulnerable kids already."

Read more: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/nov/11/long-term-study-makes-a-case-against/

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19 states still allow corporal punishment in schools. Many will argue that this is one "tool" among many that educators can use, and so they should have access to it. Others will argue that they were paddled and turned out "OK" (I was paddled as a child in school, but I also never sat in a car seat, never wore a bike helmet, and rode in the back of my Dad's pickup truck). My response is that if someone developed a "tool" that made building houses less expensive, but 20 years later half of the houses that were built with that tool had fallen down, we wouldn't want to use that tool. There would be many people who could say "my house was built with that tool and it is still standing fine." but I wouldn't want to build my house with it. My take is that today the children with the least social capital are the most likely to experience paddling in school. We know that these also are the children who are least likely to graduate. We can show them that school is a predictable, safe place for them to be, or we can show them that it is scary place where people will hit you to get you do what you want and you probably don't want to be here in the first place.