Obama threat nets 15-year sentence and other news around the Chattanooga region

TBI eyes mother of teen in bar

NASHVILLE - The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is investigating the case of a mother who abandoned her mentally disabled teenage daughter in a bar.

The Knoxville News Sentinel reported the local district attorney general's office asked the TBI for help to determine whether charges can be brought in Tennessee against the mother, Eva Cameron, who has returned to Illinois.

Nineteen-year-old Lynn Cameron is in the custody of the Tennessee Department of Human Services' Adult Protective Services after she was abandoned in a Caryville, Tenn., bar on June 28.

Caryville Assistant Police Chief Stephanie Smith said the teenager has a limited vocabulary and couldn't provide her name or address. Smith said Eva Cameron told police that she left her daughter because "she couldn't handle her anymore."


Obama threat nets 15-year sentence

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - An Uzbek man who once worked at a shopping mall in Alabama was sentenced Friday to more than 15 years in prison for plotting to kill President Barack Obama.

U.S. District Judge Abdul K. Kallon imposed the sentence Friday on Ulugbek Kodirov, 22, who pleaded guilty. He had faced up to 30 years in prison.

Defense attorney Lance Bell argued that Kodirov had accepted responsibility for his actions and was trying to straighten out his life.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Whisonant said Kodirov would have tried to kill Obama and a foreign group would have taken credit if he had not been arrested a year ago.


Man faces sex abuse charges

GADSDEN, Ala. - Etowah County sheriff's officials say 53-year-old Cecil Lamar Benefield, of Alpharetta, Ga., was charged with first-degree sexual abuse of a child less than 12 years old and one count of first-degree sodomy. Both are felonies.

Investigator Haydyn Hedgspeth said Benefield is accused of sexually abusing a girl during the past two years.


Ohio prosecutors to retry Tennessean

STRAWBERRY PLAINS, Tenn. - A Tennesseean charged with the fatal beating of a girl in Ohio in 1985 will go on trial again after his first trial ended in a hung jury.

A new trial is set for mid-September for 45-year-old Walter Zimbeck, of Strawberry Plains, Tenn.

Zimbeck was 18 when the body of his 14-year-old former girlfriend, Lori Ann Hill, was found after a party near Toledo. Zimbeck was accused of the killing in 2009 after a detective looked into the cold case.

Jurors spent three days deliberating the case earlier this month before deciding they could not agree on a verdict.

Upcoming Events