Oak Ridge Today

For members: Woman pleads guilty to homicide in death of son

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Ashley Marie Ann Braden

CLINTON—A Clinton woman pleaded guilty Thursday to a homicide charge in the death of her three-year-old son in a crash in Oak Ridge in January 2017.

Ashley Marie Braden, 24, pleaded guilty to a single charge of criminally negligent homicide in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton during a 15-minute hearing Thursday morning.

Ashley Marie Ann Braden

CLINTON—A Clinton woman pleaded guilty Thursday to a homicide charge in the death of her three-year-old son in a two-vehicle crash in Oak Ridge in January 2017.

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Commission to discuss county budget, possible 18-cent tax rate increase

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Anderson County Courthouse
The Anderson County Courthouse on Main Street in Clinton is pictured above. (File photo)

The Anderson County Commission will discuss the budget for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1, and a possible 18.25-cent increase in the property tax rate on Thursday.

The special meeting is scheduled to start at 4 p.m. Thursday, June 27, in Room 312 of the Anderson County Courthouse in Clinton.

The meeting will focus on the budget proposal, and it will include time for elected and appointed officials, as well as department heads and citizens, to address the Commission with comments and concerns about the proposed budget.

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Reminder: Roads closed for national championship cycling event

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The USA Cycling Para-cycling and Professional Road National Championship Time Trials are being held in Oak Ridge on Thursday, June 27, 2019. (Photo courtesy City of Oak Ridge)

A reminder: The City of Oak Ridge and the Oak Ridge Police Department have issued a notice for drivers regarding the planned closure of a large portion of Melton Lake Drive on Thursday, June 27. The road closure is necessary to provide a safe, closed-loop course for athletes, volunteers, and spectators at the USA Cycling Para-cycling and Professional Road National Championship Time Trials being held in Oak Ridge, a press release said.

Beginning at 6 a.m. Thursday, Emory Valley Road was closed from the Artesia Drive intersection to Melton Lake Drive. There will be no access onto Melton Lake Drive from Emory Valley Road. Residents who live off of Amanda Drive or Emory Valley Road will need to take Antioch Drive, Baylor Drive, or Baltimore Drive to exit the neighborhood, the press release said.

Melton Lake Drive will also be closed from Palisades Parkway to Edgemoor Road for course set-up. At this time, drivers will be able to turn left from Palisades Pkwy onto Melton Lake Drive. The Rivers Run Boulevard entrance to Melton Lake Drive will be closed, the press release said. Residents entering and exiting the Rivers Run, Royal Troon, or Rockbridge neighborhoods were allowed to use the Rolling Links Boulevard entrance to turn right onto Melton Lake Drive until 10 a.m. Thursday.

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Clinton man charged with attempted murder

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Terry Lee Crawford

The Clinton man who allegedly shot at two people before one of them, his son, shot back, has been charged with attempted murder, according to court records.

The Anderson County Grand Jury indicted Terry Lee Crawford, 62, on two counts of attempted second-degree murder on June 4. Those charges allege that Crawford tried to kill Joshua Crawford and Ashlee Crawford. The alleged shooting was reported at a home adjacent to Crawford’s on Lee Lane in Clinton on December 26.

Crawford was also charged with two counts of aggravated assault and two counts of reckless endangerment. The aggravated assault charges allege that Crawford caused Joshua and Ashlee Crawford to fear imminent bodily injury because of the gun, and the reckless endangerment charges allege that Terry Crawford engaged in reckless conduct that placed Joshua and Ashlee Crawford in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury through the use of a deadly weapon.

Crawford faces two other charges as well: being a convicted felon who possessed a handgun and vandalism between $1,000 and $2,500. The vandalism charge alleges that Crawford damaged the exterior of Joshua and Ashlee Crawford’s home, causing more than $1,000 in damage.

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Jupiter Entertainment filming ‘Homicide Hunter’ at Grove Market

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Jupiter Entertainment was filming for the television show “Homicide Hunter” at Grove Market in Oak Ridge on Wednesday night.

The scene appeared to include police officers and a police car and an ambulance and emergency medical workers, and that prompted some Oak Ridge residents to wonder what was happening. There were also camera and sound crews, lights, and a photographer.

The filming was under way at about 11 p.m. Wednesday, and it wasn’t clear how long it might last.

The episode being filmed Wednesday night could reportedly air in late September or early October.

Jupiter Entertainment has filmed in Oak Ridge before, including at Dean’s Restaurant recently and at the former Oak Ridge Mall several years ago.

More information will be added as it becomes available.

World’s two fastest supercomputers at DOE labs

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The new Summit supercomputer, a 200-petaflop IBM system that is the world’s most powerful, is pictured above at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo courtesy Katie Bethea/ORNL)

The United States has the two fastest supercomputers in the world, and they are both at U.S. Department of Energy laboratories.

DOE and its National Nuclear Security Administration have two other supercomputers in the top 10.

“DOE’s national labs have some of the brightest minds in the world, which have made America a worldwide leader in high-performance computing hardware, software, and applications,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry said in a press release Monday. “We are well-positioned to maintain this leadership as we enter the era of exascale computing, which holds enormous promise for our country and will transform our leadership in science, our economy, and our nation’s security.”

As reported by Oak Ridge Today on Monday, the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is still the fastest supercomputer in the world.

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USA Cycling championships in Oak Ridge next week

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The USA Cycling National Pro Road, Crit, Time Trial, and Para-Cycling Championships will be held in Knoxville and Oak Ridge next week, from June 27-30.

In partnership with Visit Knoxville, the City of Oak Ridge will host the ITT National Championships for the second year in a row, a press release said.

“Watching the national championship events last summer during USA Cycling’s first visit to Oak Ridge was an incredible experience,” Oak Ridge Mayor Warren Gooch said. “Obviously our community made an impact because these top-notch cycling teams are returning to our beautiful waterfront venue. We thank our residents and visitors for their patience with the traffic impacts and hope that everyone is able to come out and enjoy the time trials.”

Here is information about traffic impacts:

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Small reactors can be safely located on Clinch River site, NRC says

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Two or more small modular nuclear reactors could be built on a 935-acre area of the Clinch River Nuclear Site in west Oak Ridge, south of Heritage Center near Highway 58. (Image from the “Final Safety Evaluation Report for the Early Site Permit Application for the Clinch River Nuclear Site” published by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in June 2019.)

Two or more small nuclear reactors could be safely located on a site in west Oak Ridge, a federal agency said this month.

The reactors could be built on the Clinch River Nuclear Site. That’s a 935-acre site south of Heritage Center (the former K-25 site) in the Roane County portion of Oak Ridge. The plant would be off Bear Creek Road near Highway 58 on a peninsula surrounded by the Clinch River on the east, south, and west.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has completed a final safety evaluation report for an early site permit application for the site.

“The report concludes there are no safety aspects that would preclude issuing the permit for the site,” the NRC said in a press release Tuesday. The report, which is about 600 pages, had been expected this month.

The Tennessee Valley Authority applied for the early site permit in May 2016. The NRC’s final safety evaluation report for the site was published Friday, June 14.

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Atomic Rowing pair finishes 11th in USRowing Youth National Championships

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An Atomic Rowing team finished 11th in the USRowing Youth National Championships in Sarasota, Florida, from June 6-9, 2019. The women’s lightweight double consisted of Sara Kate White, a sophomore at Maryville High School, and Veda Seay, a senior at Oak Ridge High School. (Photo courtesy Rachel Seay)

An Atomic Rowing team finished 11th in the nation at youth championships in Florida this month.

The women’s lightweight double consisted of Veda Seay, a senior at Oak Ridge High School, and Sara Kate White, a sophomore at Maryville High School. They competed in the USRowing Youth National Championships in Sarasota, Florida, from June 6-9.

Seay and White had a fantastic weekend of racing, a press release said. Their boat placed 12th in time trials on Thursday, June 6, with a time of 7:29.200. Only the top nine teams advanced to semifinals, and the rest competed in a second-chance repechage.

Seay and White went on to win their repechage race on Friday, June 7, to advance to semifinals with a time of 7:47.576, beating a PNRA/Mercer team by about two seconds.

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Regions Bank robbed; ORPD searching for suspect

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Regions Bank in Oak Ridge was robbed on Wednesday, June 19, 2019, and the Oak Ridge Police Department is searching for a suspect.

Regions Bank in Oak Ridge was robbed on Wednesday, and the Oak Ridge Police Department is searching for a suspect.

The bank on Rutgers Avenue was robbed at about 1:34 p.m. Wednesday, the ORPD said. A white man handed a note to a teller stating it was a robbery, police said. The man fled on foot toward Vermont Avenue, according to the ORPD.

The man is described as having a slim build, and he was last seen wearing glasses and a green flannel shirt, blue ball cap (white tag right side), blue jeans, and dark running shoes. There is no vehicle description.

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ORNL’s Summit remains world’s most powerful supercomputer

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The Summit supercomputer, a 200-petaflop IBM system that is the world’s most powerful, is pictured above at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo courtesy Katie Bethea/ORNL)

The Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory remains the world’s most powerful, according to a ranking list released Monday.

It’s the third time that Summit, a IBM-built supercomputer, has been number one on the semiannual TOP500 list of of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. Summit debuted at number one in June 2018. That was the first time since 2012 that the United States had the most powerful supercomputer in the world. Summit retained the top spot in November.

The Sierra supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, remained at number two on the list released Monday, after climbing there from number three in November. The United States continues to have the top two systems in the world, a position that China held a year and a half ago.

Officials celebrated the launch of Summit in a ceremony attended by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry on June 8, 2018. The supercomputer is capable of 200 petaflops, or 200,000 trillion calculations per second. That makes it about eight times more powerful than Titan, its predecessor, which was once the world’s fastest.

Summit delivered a record 148.6 petaflops on a benchmark test called High Performance Linpack, or HPL, a TOP500 press release said Monday. That was a slight improvement from six months ago, when Summit scored 143.5 petaflops. Summit debuted at 122.3 petaflops in June 2018.

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Atomic Rowing competing in USRowing Youth National Championships

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Sara Kate White and Veda Seay racing the lightweight double in the USRowing Southeast Regional Championships in Oak Ridge in May 2019. (Photo courtesy Rachel Seay)

Atomic Rowing has two boats competing in the USRowing Youth National Championships in Sarasota, Florida, this weekend, from June 6-9.

The boats earned their spots in the national championships by finishing in the top three in the finals of the 2019 US Rowing Southeast Regional Championships from May 11-12 in Oak Ridge.

Atomic Rowing had several boats advance into the finals of the regional championships, and two boats placed in the top three in the finals, advancing to the national championships.

Sara Kate White, a freshman at Maryville Junior High, and Veda Seay, a junior at Oak Ridge High School, finished an undefeated season by taking first place in the women’s lightweight double, a press release said.

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