Snodgrass Bridge detour Tuesday and other news from areas around Chattanooga

Friday, January 1, 1904

Snodgrass Bridge detour Tuesday

SCOTTSBORO, Ala. - Weather permitting, the Snodgrass Bridge on state Route 117 over the Tennessee River near Stevenson will be closed Tuesday between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. CDT to remove old navigation lights.

Motorists who usually cross here should cross the river on Alabama Highway Route 35 at Scottsboro or on Tennessee Highway 156 at South Pittsburg, Tenn., according Alabama Department of Transportation officials.


Freed death row man to speak

CLEVELAND, Tenn. - Ray Krone, the 100th person in America to be exonerated on death row, will speak Tuesday at Lee University.

The event is at 7 p.m. in the Rose Lecture Hall and also will feature the Rev. Stacy Rector, director of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Krone was convicted of murder in Arizona in 1991, granted a retrial and reconvicted in 1994 based on the same circumstantial evidence. He was freed only after DNA technology pointed to another man as the killer.

Now a Tennessee resident, he is director of membership and training at Witness to Innocence, a group created by and for exonerated death row survivors and their loved ones.

This event is co-sponsored by Lee University's Sociology Club, Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and Witness to Innocence.


Court bans front yard grave

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - An appeals court is upholding a judge's order requiring a man to remove his wife's grave from his front yard in Northeast Alabama.

The Court of Civil Appeals refused James Davis' appeal in an unsigned decision released Friday.

Davis could ask the Alabama Supreme Court to intervene, but he didn't immediately return a phone call seeking comment on his next move.

Davis buried his wife, Patsy, in their front yard in Stevenson after her death in 2009. The city contends the grave is illegal and wants him to move it to a cemetery.

A Jackson County judge sided with the city in saying Davis should move his wife's body, and the appeals court declined to overturn that decision. Davis has said he won't move the grave.


8 men suspected of gang activity

ATLANTA - U.S. Marshals have arrested eight men suspected of gang activity in the Atlanta area.

U.S. Marshals spokesman Gavin Duffy said a coalition of local and federal law enforcement agencies worked together to arrest the men who are alleged members of a gang called the Pittsburgh Jack Boys. They've been charged with aggravated battery, criminal gang participation, weapons violations and possession and intent to distribute marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine.