Chief: Fatal fire
started at stove
Investigators think a fire that killed a mother and her three children on Monday started in or near an electric stove the family used for heat, Conway Fire Chief Bart Castleberry said Wednesday.
“Natural gas was not involved in that fire,” Castleberry said, noting that there was no natural gas turned on for the house. “The fire does appear to be an accident.”
Neighbors called 911 just after 8 p.m. Monday and reported that flames were coming out of the both sides and the front of the house.
Killed in the fire were Jennifer Cissell and her three children, Gwenneth, Christopher and Arley Snobgrass, ages 5, 4 and 3, respectively.
— ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Pastor cleared in child sex case
NEOSHO, Mo. — Prosecutors have dropped their case against a southwest Missouri pastor accused of sexually abusing underage members of his congregation.
The Newton County prosecutor’s office said Tuesday that it does not plan to refile charges against George Otis Johnston, 66. He was charged in 2006 with 17 counts of child molestation and statutory sodomy involving girls at Grandview Valley Baptist Church North.
Assistant prosecutor Bill Dobbs told the Neosho Daily News that some witnesses had recanted or changed their earlier stories.
Johnston was one of six people originally charged with abusing children at two small churches in Newton and McDonald counties. Charges against the other five were dismissed previously.
— THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Escapee was set
to be released
CONWAY — Prosecutors had planned to offer a jailed Greenbrier man a plea bargain that would have released him from jail. Instead, officials said Wednesday, Christopher Jordan Mc-Neely, 19, left the jail his own way — he escaped.
Police said McNeely, who was a trusty at the Faulkner County jail, pushed a food cart from the jail’s kitchen outside to a storage building Tuesday morning. He climbed onto the cart then slithered between strands of barbed wire about 10 inches apart that encircles the jail grounds, police said.
‘He literally snaked through,” said Maj. Andy Shock of the Faulkner County sheriff’s office. “I can’t imagine he’s not got a lot of cuts on him from that.”
McNeely pleaded guilty March 26 to breaking and entering, residential burglary and theft of property. He was placed on six years’ probation. A week later, he was arrested in Pulaski County on charges including fraudulent use of a credit card and four counts of theft by receiving.
He also faced a probation violation in Faulkner County, two more counts of residential burglary, three more counts of theft by receiving and another count of credit card fraud, said Prosecuting Attorney Marcus Vaden of Conway.
McNeely was being held without bond in the Conway jail, where he was a trusty serving breakfast to other prisoners.
Prosecutors had planned to offer McNeely a negotiated plea bargain where he would not have to serve any more jail time if he agreed to enter a rehabilitation clinic, Shock said.
McNeely now faces a felony charge of escape.
He is 6 feet tall and weighs 150 pounds.
Shock said police are following tips but had not located McNeely as of Wednesday evening.
“He wasn’t going to spend any time in jail,” Shock said. “But I guess he wanted out for the holidays.”
— ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Pocahontas now owns city hospital
POCAHONTAS — Five Rivers Medical Center at Pocahontas is now officially in the hands of city government.
Ownership of the only hospital in Randolph County changed hands Tuesday when it passed from the Public Building Authority, which took over the facility in 2007, to the city.
Officials obtained a 40-year loan for more than $7.5 million from the federal Department of Agriculture to allow the city to purchase the property, which has 42 beds. Voters approved a sales-tax increase in 2007 to finance the purchase.
John Tucker, chief executive officer of the hospital, said the change won’t affect the employees, patients and their families.
— THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
UAMS receives
pair of grants
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences has received two grants totaling $115,358 to help boost public-health efforts in the Arkansas Delta and among Hispanics visiting the central part of the state.
Both grants came from the Blue & You Foundation for a Healthier Arkansas, a charitable foundation of Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield that has given $1.5 million in grants to 33 health programs this year.
The first grant of $80,961 will go to the UAMS Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health to provide basic health-care services to more than 25,000 Hispanic visitors at the Mexican Consulate in Little Rock each year. The “Ventanillas de Salud,” or Health Window, program will offer services such as flu vaccinations and cholesterol screenings starting next year.
“We’re very excited to have the funds to establish this much-needed and very important relationship with the Mexican Consulate and the people it serves,” Jim Raczynski, dean of the UAMS College of Public Health, said in a statement.
The second grant of $34,397 is for the Delta Area Health Education Center in Helena-West Helena’s Help Yourself HIV/AIDS program. The program promotes HIV and AIDS awareness, and offers testing clinics expected to serve more than 800 people living in Chicot, Crittenden, Desha, Lee, Monroe, Phillips and St. Francis counties.
— ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 10 on 12/24/2009