Top Stories

By Kay S.Pedrotti

When Leighton Jordan of Suwannee, Miss Georgia 2012, comes to Barnesville on prom day next month, she will be following her philosophy that “any time I have a chance to mentor young people, I’m very happy doing that.”

The 20-year-old will be at Lamar County Comprehensive High School when a group of girls will be getting pampered at a spa day by local hairdressers, makeup artists and others. [Full Story »] 

By Walter Geiger

One of two men charged here last year with possession of explosive devices, multiple weapons and a quantity of marijuana has been indicted in federal court while the other has been cleared. [Full Story »] 

By Sherri Ellington

The local Emergency Planning Committee is out of money – but the zero balance in its checkbook is not as dire as it sounds. [Full Story »] 

Southern Rivers Energy crews are continuing restoration efforts with the help of additional crews from Harper's Tree Service, Snapping Shoals EMC, Sumter EMC and Walton EMC. The weather center confirmed that the severe weather system that ripped through Meriwether county produced an EF-2 tornado packing winds up to 120 mph that touched down in Pike county Monday night. [Full Story »] 

Monday night's storms wreaked havoc across Lamar and surrounding counties. A local man was killed in a crash in Talbot County while a Griffin woman died in a Pike wreck.

Many are still without power and a Southern Rivers lineman was injured while restoring power.

SRE EVENING UPDATE:

Crews are still working, with additional help to restore power to the remaining 1835 members without power this afternoon.

5:15 p.m.., Tuesday, March 19: SRE crews have been working non-stop throughout the night and additional crews from Harper's Tree Service, Snapping Shoals EMC, Sumter EMC and Walton EMC joined our restoration efforts and have been working hard all day.

We are making progress and the number of outages has been reduced from around 8000 at the peak of the outage to over 1800. Everyone is working diligently to get power restored as quickly and safely as possible. The phone lines are open but due to the volume of calls coming in, members may still experience some busy signals. [Full Story »] 

Two tractor-trailer rigs collided at the intersection of Gordon Road and MLK Parkway in Barnesville about 10 a.m. Monday. [Full Story »] 

A police officer shot and killed a possibly rabid coyote on campus earlier this week. [Full Story »] 

The cases against alleged killer Jamarris Latuan Wiliams and the man charged with burning down his family's restaurant are on the pre-trial calendar for Lamar superior court next month. [Full Story »] 

The head football coaching vacancy at Camden County high is reportedly attracting a lot of attention with about 160 applicants for the plum job in Kingsland. A hiring decision at Camden is expected this week [Full Story »] 

Griffin renewed its contract with Lamar County to house the city’s convicted and pre-trial detainees of the Griffin police department. [Full Story »] 

By Ken K. Green

The Lamar County Schools athletic facilities will be a hub of activities this weekend with four events on campus Friday and Saturday. [Full Story »] 

A full calendar of criminal allegations awaits the March term Lamar County grand jury when it convenes this month.

The cases before it include that of alleged serial arsonist Travis Leroy Ball who is free on a total of $170,00 worth of cash bonds on arson counts here and in Upson County. The grand jury will consider one count of first degree arson against Ball.

Also on the calendar are allegations of first degree vehicular homicide, hit and run and failure to maintain lane against Thomas Edward Lenhart III. The allegations stem from the hit and run death of Thomas Norman Anderson, whose body was found alongside Hwy. 36 West nearly a year ago.

Other notable cases on the docket include: [Full Story »]