Oak Ridge Today

Kentucky sheriff’s office investigating death of Oak Ridge woman

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The Laurel County Sheriff's Office in Kentucky is investigating the death of an Oak Ridge woman, Tearsha Laws, 28, who was found in a wooded area over an embankment on Monday evening, June 26, 2017. Pictured above photographing the scene is Deputy Travis Napier. (Photo by Laurel County Sheriff's Office)

The Laurel County Sheriff’s Office in Kentucky is investigating the death of an Oak Ridge woman, Tearsha Laws, 28, who was found in a wooded area over an embankment on Monday evening, June 26, 2017. Pictured above photographing the scene is Deputy Travis Napier. (Photo by Laurel County Sheriff’s Office)

 

The Laurel County Sheriff’s Office in Kentucky is investigating the death of an Oak Ridge woman, authorities said.

Tearsha Laws, 28, was found in a wooded area over an embankment on Monday evening, authorities said. Her body was found about six miles north of London, Kentucky, at 4:58 p.m. Monday, the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office said.

Laws was identified Tuesday morning.

London, Kentucky, is near Interstate 75, north of the Kentucky-Tennessee border and south of Lexington.

More information will be added as it becomes available.

Feinstein: President’s budget request could lead to 1,600 layoffs at ORNL

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory Sign

Photo by ORNL

 

Note: This story was updated at 12:20 p.m. June 28.

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein on Wednesday said the president’s budget request for the next fiscal year could lead to a 33 percent workforce reduction at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. About 1,600 of the lab’s roughly 4,800 employees could be laid off, the senator’s office said.

Feinstein, a Democrat from California, and other members of the Senate Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, including Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a Republican who is chair of the subcommittee, had a budget hearing with new Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Wednesday afternoon, June 21.

Across the U.S. Department of Energy, a workforce of 29,000 employees could be reduced by 23 percent at labs such as ORNL that are managed for DOE and not for the National Nuclear Security Administration, Feinstein said. (The NNSA is a semi-autonomous agency within DOE.) That would be a reduction of 6,700 employees at the non-NNSA, non-weapons labs, the senator said.

“Every non-NNSA lab would see drastic employment cuts under this proposed budget,” said Feinstein, the ranking Democratic member of the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee. “We must change this budget.”

The potential layoffs at DOE labs would be the result of a budget request submitted by President Donald Trump to Congress on Tuesday, May 23. But the president’s budget request has not yet been approved by Congress, and it has run into bipartisan opposition. Some legislators have declared the budget request “dead on arrival,” and others have said they won’t even review some proposed cuts such as a 30 percent funding reduction for the State Department. [Read more…]

Butch Jones, UT football coach, to be special guest at Blankenship Field fundraiser

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Martin McDonald and Butch Jones at Blankenship Field on Sept. 18, 2015

University of Tennessee Volunteers Coach Butch Jones, right, is pictured above with Oak Ridge High School Principal Martin McDonald at Blankenship Field on Friday, Sept. 18, 2015. (File photo courtesy Martin McDonald)

 

University of Tennessee football coach Butch Jones will be the special guest at a July 11 fundraiser for Blankenship Field.

Tennessee Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally will also be there. So will board members of the Blankenship Field Revitalization Foundation.

The fundraiser will start at 11:30 a.m. July 11 in the banquet room of the DoubleTree Hotel on South Illinois Avenue in Oak Ridge. Tickets are $100 per person for this buffet lunch, and they include an opportunity to hear from Jones, an event notice said. [Read more…]

Oak Ridge Today has taken few days off for brief vacation

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West Yellowstone June 24 2017

Oak Ridge Today has taken a few days off in order to attend a family reunion, and for the most part, we haven’t been able to post stories for the past few days.

We resume our regular posting today (Monday, June 26).

The family reunion was in West Yellowstone, Montana.

It’s the first vacation we’ve had since we started more than five years ago.

We will try to provide more information later. Thank you for your support and for reading Oak Ridge Today.

Bridge inspection to temporarily close one lane over Norris Dam

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A routine bridge inspection will require a single lane closure on U.S. Highway 441 across Norris Dam near Norris on Wednesday, June 28. The closure should begin by 11 a.m. and be complete no later than 5 p.m., a press release said.

Law enforcement officers will be on hand to direct traffic, but motorists should expect delays, said the press release from the Tennessee Valley Authority.

“Bridge inspections are a necessary part of ensuring these pieces of vital transportation infrastructure continue to operate safely,” the press release said. “We apologize for this temporary inconvenience of visitors to Norris Dam.”

Cromwell sentenced to 12 years in fatal July 4 parking lot crash

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Lee Harold Cromwell, 67, the Oak Ridge man convicted of vehicular homicide in a fatal parking lot crash at Midtown Community Center after July 4 fireworks two years ago, was sentenced to 12 years in prison during a hearing in Anderson County Criminal Court on Monday, June 19, 2017. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today

Lee Harold Cromwell, 67, the Oak Ridge man convicted of vehicular homicide in a fatal parking lot crash at Midtown Community Center after July 4 fireworks two years ago, was sentenced to 12 years in prison during a hearing in Anderson County Criminal Court on Monday, June 19, 2017. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)

 

Note: This story was last updated at 8:20 p.m.

CLINTON—Lee Harold Cromwell, 67, the Oak Ridge man convicted of vehicular homicide in a fatal parking lot crash at Midtown Community Center after July 4 fireworks two years ago, was sentenced to 12 years in prison on Monday.

Cromwell—a self-proclaimed sovereign citizen driving on a suspended license, according to court records and testimony—was actually sentenced in nine separate cases. He had been convicted on all nine counts at the end of a three-day trial in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton in February. Besides reckless vehicular homicide, the nine convictions included eight counts of aggravated assault.

Senior Judge Paul Summers of Nashville announced the effective 12-year sentence at the end of a roughly four-hour sentencing hearing in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton on Monday afternoon.

The convictions had been split into three groups. The first group included the reckless vehicular homicide conviction, which was filed over the death of James Robinson, who died pushing his two young daughters to safety as Cromwell backed his Dodge Ram pickup truck through the crowded parking lot of Midtown Community Center on July 4, 2015. Witnesses said Cromwell backed up at a high rate of speed. That first group of convictions also included three aggravated assault convictions for injuries to James Robinson’s wife, Julia Robinson, and their two young daughters, now 11 and nine. Cromwell received an effective five-year sentence for those first four convictions.

Cromwell received an effective four-year sentence for aggravated assault convictions for injuries to two other victims (the second group) and an effective three-year sentence for aggravated assault convictions for injuries to three other victims (the third group).

The three groups of sentences are to be served consecutively for a total of 12 years (five years for the first group of convictions, four years for the second, and three years for the third).

[Read more…]

ORNL’s Titan drops to number four on list of world’s most powerful supercomputers

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Titan Supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

The Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was once ranked as the world’s most powerful supercomputer, but it is now ranked number four. (Photo courtesy of ORNL)

 

Note: This story was updated at 10:40 a.m.

Once the world’s most powerful supercomputer, Titan at Oak Ridge National Laboratory dropped to number four on a list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers released Monday.

Titan, a Cray XK7 system, was bumped from the number three spot by the upgraded Piz Daint, a Cray XC50 system installed at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre.

China continues to have the world’s two most powerful supercomputers.

The TOP50 List of the world’s most powerful supercomputers is based on a benchmark test known as Linpack. The list is released twice each year, once in June and again in November. The 49th edition of the TOP500 List was released Monday in conjunction with the opening session of the ISC High Performance conference, which is taking place this week in Frankfurt, Germany. [Read more…]

Updated: Three missing boys found, safe

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Note: This story was updated at 9:25 a.m. June 18.

Updated: The three boys reported missing on Saturday have been found, and they are safe, the Oak Ridge Police Department said early Sunday.

The three boys had been reported missing from west Oak Ridge around 4 p.m. Saturday. They had been reported to have left on foot.

The ORPD reported they had been found safe in a Nixle alert at 2:14 a.m. Sunday.

More information will be added as it becomes available.

Defense asks for three-year suspended sentence for Cromwell

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Lee Harold Cromwell, 68, of Oak Ridge, has been charged with vehicular homicide and eight counts of aggravated assault in a fatal parking lot crash at the Midtown Community Center in Oak Ridge after fireworks on July 4, 2015. Cromwell has been on trial in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton, starting Monday, Feb. 13, 2017, and continuing through Wednesday, Feb. 15. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)

Prosecutors have asked for an 11-year sentence for Lee Harold Cromwell, 67, of Oak Ridge, for his one vehicular homicide conviction and eight aggravated assault convictions in a fatal parking lot crash at the Midtown Community Center in Oak Ridge after fireworks on July 4, 2015. His defense attorney has asked for a three-year suspended sentence. Cromwell is pictured above during a three-day trial from Feb. 13-15, 2017, in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton. He has a sentencing hearing scheduled for Monday, June 19. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)

 

Note: This story was updated at 5:20 p.m.

CLINTON—A public defender has asked for a three-year suspended sentence for Lee Cromwell, the Oak Ridge man convicted of one count of vehicular homicide and eight counts of aggravated assault in the fatal parking lot crash at Midtown Community Center after fireworks on July 4, 2015.

The three-year suspended sentence would be much less than what prosecutors have requested, an effective 11-year sentence.

Cromwell, 67, has a sentencing hearing scheduled with Senior Judge Paul Summers in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton at 1 p.m. Monday, June 19.

The July 4 fireworks crash killed James Robinson of Knoxville, a 37-year-old husband and father who was trying to push his two daughters to safety. The crash injured eight others. It’s one of the worst crashes anyone can remember in Oak Ridge.

Cromwell was convicted of the vehicular homicide and aggravated assault charges after a three-day trial in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton in February. His initial sentencing hearing was postponed because Cromwell did not want private attorney James Scott representing him anymore. Anderson County Public Defender Tom Marshall has been appointed instead. Scott had previously filed a motion to withdraw from the case and then renewed it during an April 11 hearing, citing irreconcilable differences with Cromwell, according to court records.

In April, Deputy District Attorney General Anthony J. Craighead of the Seventh Judicial District in Anderson County asked for the effective 11-year sentence to be served in a state prison. Craighead asked for that sentence in a notice of enhancement factors that was filed in Anderson County Criminal Court. [Read more…]

Ticket prices could increase for football, basketball games starting July 1

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Ticket prices for Oak Ridge Wildcats football and basketball games could increase a dollar or two, although not for students at basketball games, starting July 1.

The price increases will be considered by the Oak Ridge Board of Education during a meeting that starts at 6 p.m. Monday, June 19, at the Robert J. Smallridge School Administration Building at 304 New York Avenue.

If approved, the changes would go into effect July 1.

Ticket prices have not increased since the 2007-2008 school year, according to the school board agenda. Meanwhile, expenses for transportation, officials, equipment, security, emergency services, and other required items for athletics have increased significantly. [Read more…]

Panda Express now open in Oak Ridge

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Panda Express opened on South Illinois Avenue in Oak Ridge in May 2017. (Photo by Mike Mahathy)

Panda Express opened on South Illinois Avenue in Oak Ridge on May 18, 2017. (Photo by Mike Mahathy)

 

Panda Express opened in Oak Ridge in May. Here are a few photos of the new restaurant by Mike Mahathy.

The Panda Express restaurant is in the area where Ruby Tuesday used to be on South Illinois Avenue. The area also includes space for a few retail shops.

The former Ruby Tuesday restaurant was demolished in October.

Panda Express, a fast casual Chinese restaurant, is on the one-third of the subdivided Ruby Tuesday property that is closest to the Subway on South Illinois Avenue. The developer is Rudd Seeley Wallis LLC. That’s the Nashville company that developed the shopping center on South Illinois Avenue that includes Chipotle and Aspen Dental. [Read more…]

rue21 now open in Oak Ridge

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The new rue21, a teen fashion retailer, opened at Main Street Oak Ridge on Thursday, June 15, 2017. (Photo by Parker Hardy)

The new rue21 store, a teen fashion retailer, opened at Main Street Oak Ridge on Thursday, June 15, 2017. (Photo by Parker Hardy)

 

The first new store is open at Main Street Oak Ridge.

rue21, a teen speciality apparel retailer, had its grand opening on Thursday. The grand opening of the store was scheduled to include free giveaways to the first 100 customers.

rue21 is near Belk at Main Street Oak Ridge. That’s the 58-acre project to redevelop the former Oak Ridge Mall.

There are seven other new stores also expected to open soon. maurices has announced it will have a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its women’s clothing store at Main Street Oak Ridge on Friday, June 23. maurices is next to rue21. [Read more…]