An evaluation was scheduled Wednesday for an Anderson County teenager who allegedly shot and killed his mother while she was sleeping after she punished him by taking away his cell phone, according to court records.
The evaluation for Shawn Tyler Willis, 19, of Rocky Top, had previously been ordered by Anderson County Criminal Court Judge Ryan Spitzer at the request of defense attorney Brennan Lenihan.
Des Mahoney, the teaching professional at Centennial Golf Academy at the Centennial Golf Club in Oak Ridge, was awarded the 2022 PGA Teacher and Coach of the Year by the Knoxville Chapter of the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) at their event on Monday, Dec. 12, 2022. (Submitted photo)
Des Mahoney, the teaching professional at Centennial Golf Academy at the Centennial Golf Club in Oak Ridge, was awarded the 2022 PGA Teacher and Coach of the Year by the Knoxville Chapter of the Professional Golfers Association at their event on Monday, December 12.
This is not Mahoney’s first recognition, a press release said. He has achieved Top 10 PGA Teacher in Tennessee multiple times.
Mahoney said he has a passion for continually improving his teaching skills by talking to other golf instructors in the country to share and implement some of the newest insights in golf instruction. [Read more…]
The Tennessee Valley Authority said it delivered a record amount of power on Friday and set a winter record for peak power demand.
TVA supplied 740 gigawatt-hours, or 740 million kilowatt-hours, during a 24-hour period on Friday, December 23. That’s more energy supplied than at any other time in its 89-year history, TVA said.
The cold also produced a winter record for peak power demand of 33,425 megawatts at 7 p.m. Central time, when the region-wide average temperature was 9 degrees, TVA said.
“Record-setting temperatures across the region continue to put intense pressure on the power system,” TVA said in a press release. “The Tennessee Valley Authority and local power companies (worked) around the clock in difficult conditions to meet this extreme demand.”
[Read more…]Note: This story was last updated at 12 p.m.
Mandatory rolling power blackouts continued in Oak Ridge and across the region Saturday morning. The City of Oak Ridge announced at about 11:40 a.m. Saturday that the power outages had been terminated.
Here is the previous story:
The blackouts will affect 10 percent of customers at a time, and power outages will last about 30 minutes, the City of Oak Ridge said in a press release. That’s a larger percentage of customers who will be affected by the Saturday outages than the ones on Friday, when about 2 percent of Oak Ridge customers were affected.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, which provides power to the City of Oak Ridge, said the blackouts are necessary because of the extreme weather conditions, according to the press release. The power demand is high as temperatures have dropped into the single digits in what has been called a “once-in-a-generation” storm.
TVA said the power demand is among its highest in its nearly 90-year history. Typical power demands for December are around 24,000 megawatts. On Friday, power demands surpassed 33,000 megawatts, TVA said.
[Read more…]
The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency has tested birds after black vultures were reported dead between Edgemoor Road and Haw Ridge, but the state agency does not have test results yet.
On Thursday, Oak Ridge Today counted at least a dozen dead birds in the brush and submerged near the shoreline along the concrete portion of the trail across from the Bull Run Fossil Plant. There were also at least four dozen live vultures perched nearby in trees close to the high-voltage power lines from Bull Run.
Oak Ridge has won two awards for promoting tourism in middle East Tennessee, an area that includes the Knoxville metropolitan area.
The Oak Ridge Lavender Festival was awarded the 2022 Best Annual Festival or Event Award, a press release said.
Explore Oak Ridge was awarded the Excellence in Tourism Award for Best Advertising or Marketing Campaign for the “Katie the Calutron Girl” marketing promotion.
The 2022 awards were presented by the Middle East Tennessee Tourism Council in a December 1 ceremony. The METTC promotes tourism activities and represents a 16-county region including Anderson, Blount, Campbell, Claiborne, Cooke, Grainger, Hamblen, Jefferson, Knox, Loudon, Monroe, Morgan, Roane, Scott, Sevier, and Union counties.
[Read more…]
Already charged with money laundering and retail crime, an Oak Ridge business manager has been accused by the state of filing false tax returns and not paying sales taxes.
John McGuire Packard, 38, was indicted on nine counts by the Anderson County Grand Jury in June. The indictment charged him with one count of evade/defeat use tax for each month from September 2017 to May 2018. Those are Class E felonies.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced Friday that it will prepare an environmental impact statement for a proposed nuclear fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge that could help power advanced reactors for electrical and chemical use, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The project could partially benefit from last year’s federal infrastructure law, specifically about $1.1 billion appropriated for a clean energy supply.
A 42-year-old man was sentenced to 11 years on Monday after being convicted of attempted aggravated rape in Anderson County during a jury trial in June.
It was the same sentence the prosecution had asked for, with the time to be served in prison.
A lawsuit was filed this year against a federal contractor in Oak Ridge that terminated an employee after she refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
In her lawsuit, the former employee argued that it is illegal under state law to compel her to provide proof of vaccination if she objects to the vaccine.
A federal safety board has asked for a report and briefing after 15 exothermic (heat-producing) reactions of uranium materials were reported at the Y-12 National Security Complex between 2016 and 2021.
The report and briefing have been requested by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which wants a response from the National Nuclear Safety Administration. The NNSA is part of the U.S. Department of Energy and oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons work, including at Y-12.
