Jacksonville Police apprehended a man wanted in relation to previous burglaries in town this week last night.
Jacksonville Police were on patrol for a wanted subject in the 800 block Hackett Avenue shortly after 8:15 last night. Police later located the subject in question, 30 year old David Z.K. Morris of the 900 block of Allen Avenue at a residence in that area at 8:24PM.
According to a police report, Morris fled on foot after being sighted by police. A brief foot chase occurred and Morris was taken into custody without further incident. During a person search, police say they found purported drug paraphernalia on Morris’ person.
Police arrest records say that Morris was wanted in connection to a residential burglary that occurred overnight on Monday after a caller reported that their residence in the 800 block of Nottingham Lane had been burglarized and all their tools for their home repair business had been taken.
Morris was also wanted in connection to an non-referenced burglary from Tuesday, as well.
Morris was cited for residential burglary, burglary, possession of drug paraphernalia, and resisting a peace officer.
The MacMurray Foundation & Alumni Association has announced the opening of its Scholarship program for the 2023 – 2024 academic year.
In its first two years the Foundation awarded 70 scholarships worth more than $70,000. The Foundation is increasing the minimum amount of each award to $1,500 this year. For all but two of the scholarships, eligibility is limited to members of the MacMurray College community that has relationship to alumni, former faculty, staff, and trustees. This year the Foundation is expanding eligibility to students who are sponsored by a member of the MacMurray community. Priority will again be given this year to those students whose MacMurray education was disrupted by the closing of MacMurray College in May 2020.
The Foundation will accept applications for its scholarships until March 15th for assistance for the 2023-2024 school year. For more information about the scholarships and to access an application, visit MacAlumFoundation.org/scholarships.
Jacksonville has lost its local connection to Congress.
Jacksonville has been home to an office of the local member of Congress dating back to the tenure of 18th District Congressman Bob Michel.
The office at the corner of Morgan & Sandy was recently occupied by 18th District Congressman Darin LaHood. With the recent re-map, LaHood was pushed north into the 17th District and Congresswoman Mary Miller and the 15th District currently represent Jacksonville. The district stretches from the far east side of the state towards the Mississippi River, encompassing most of Central Illinois.
According to Muddy River News, Miller is fulfilling a campaign promise by placing her West Central Illinois office in Quincy. It will be the first time an active member of Congress has had an office in Quincy since the late 1980s when Dick Durbin was still a member of the House of Representatives.
The Quincy City Council is currently working on an agreement with Miller’s Office for a lease for space in Quincy City Hall. The temporary agreement will give Miller’s Office more time to find privately-held office space to lease.
The school announced yesterday afternoon it’s adding an organizational and strategic communication major. The college says the new, interdisciplinary major takes the traditional communication discipline and focuses it on the workplace. Students will be required to take courses in marketing as well as English and/or art to hone writing or graphic design skills.
The college says the major is meant to prepare students for careers in employee relations, public relations, human resources, recruiting, political communication, sales, customer service, social media management, training and development, and project management.
Additionally, members of the college faculty say the major is being designed to graduate students in four years with the possibility of a double major in marketing.
The Village of South Jacksonville appears like it will not be signing an exclusive residential waste hauler contract with GFL Environmental.
Trustee Todd Warrick presented his fellow board members with a comparison sheet of trash service costs between the City of Jacksonville and the village’s current trash rates. The City of Jacksonville’s 7-year exclusive residential waste hauler contract went into effect on January 1st.
Village customers are currently paying nearly $75 more per quarter for the same service. In the cross comparison, village residents are currently charged an equipment use fee for a container, fuel surcharges, and environmental surcharges whereas Jacksonville residents do not pay those fees due to the exclusive residential waste hauler contract.
Despite the large difference, Warrick says he’s all for some competition to come to the village and offer better rates to residents: “I would never sign any type of contract stating that every [South Jacksonville] resident would have to have trash service. We’ve got elderly people here that may have one bag of trash a week and somebody else takes it for them. However, the price is so high, there is no way that I would be able to say that I would give all of our service to GFL when somebody else could come in town with a lot cheaper rate.”
Warrick concluded that he believes competition is good for the economy and that he looks forward to any other offers for trash service to come to town. He says that village residents may be getting charged an exorbitant rate: “Based on 1,000 residential customers, which I was close [when I came up with this comparison sheet] – we’ve got 1,066 – that’s $74,000 a quarter difference with the city [with GFL’s rates]. That’s almost $300,000 a year more that the village is being charged than the City of Jacksonville, which I understand. You’re getting a lot more customers in Jacksonville than you are in the village, but that’s a lot. I’m not saying I would never recommend who anybody needs to go to for trash service. I’m just saying that there are options out there.”
Josh Allen of J&J Disposal of Pittsfield along with representatives from GFL were in attendance to hear Warrick’s comments. Allen spoke up saying that he was worried about how non-residential, mostly rural customers as well as dumpster and commercial businesses would be treated in the village under an exclusive contract with GFL. He said that free enterprise would make for good business and give everyone a choice on their service.
Other than information on the contract with Jacksonville, GFL’s representatives stayed silent last night and left immediately after Warrick’s presentation. Back in November, GFL had presented to the board in November a preliminary contract agreement that required every residence in South Jacksonville sign up to receive the exclusive lower rate like in Jacksonville. They also asked to place those on a list who do not get the service to be fined by the village. The Village Board and Village Chief of Police Eric Hansell said they would not require village residents to sign up to an exclusive trash service nor would they be “the trash police.”
The South Jacksonville Police Department is now on the cutting edge of digital evidence technology.
Chief of Police Eric Hansell told the South Jacksonville Village Board of Trustees last Thursday that they are the first department in Morgan County that can now transmit digital footage from police-worn body cameras to the State’s Attorney’s Office and to a defendant’s counsel in a criminal case.
Hansell says he’s amazed at how far technology has come in photographic and video evidence during his time as an officer: “When I started in law enforcement over 22 years ago, I was still taking photographs with a Polaroid camera that I carried with me. Then, of course, we transitioned to 35mm film cameras and now digital cameras. Anytime we do reports that have evidence where photographs are taken or we have video, typically we would put that on a disc or a thumb drive and transfer those up to the State’s Attorney’s Office. With the new body cameras and the squad car cameras, we are recovering so much digital data that it won’t fit on discs or it will have to be put on multiple thumb drives.”
Hansell says by transferring data over the Internet through a specially encrypted program that the State’s Attorney’s Office has access to, they can save time, money, and manpower: “We are not manually having to burn a disc. We’re not having to pay for a disc. We are not having to manually put [videos] on a thumb drive. We don’t have to pay for a thumb drive and then take it up to the State’s Attorney’s Office. Now, I can sit at my desk, send it in an email to the State’s Attorney’s Office, and they get it in their system. They can process it there, and then they can, in turn, send that data on their side to the Public Defender’s Office or defense counsel. They don’t have to buy a disc or a thumb drive. They don’t have to physically take anything anywhere or mail it. It’s just done all digitally and electronically. So, it’s making things easier to move for us and costing us less man hours and money to do it.”
Hansell says it’s great that his agency is the first to pioneer transferring digital data directly to the local court system. He told the village board that it makes everything easier and faster as far as administrative work on the back end of a criminal case.
Pittsfield High School sophomore Molly Gerard can now be called royalty.
The 15-year old Gerard was crowned Miss Quincy’s Outstanding Teen 2023 on Saturday at the Oakley-Lindsay Center in Quincy.
Gerard was the top contestant in a field of 6. She will receive a $1,000 scholarship. The Miss Quincy Outstanding Teen pageant is open annually to those at least 13 years of age but not older than 18 by December 31st of the current year. The pageant is open to residents of Adams, Brown, Pike, Schuyler, or Scott counties. The competition includes talent, an interview, on-stage questions, and fitness and evening wear.
Gerard is the daughter of Brandon and Miranda Gerard of Pittsfield. Gerard edge out fellow Pike County teen Kadee Rennecker of Barry, who was first runner-up.
In the Miss Quincy pageant, Ashley Miller of Griggsville was first runner-up and Lauren Woodward of Hull was third runner-up and was recognized for Best Social Impact Platform.
Gerard will take over the crown from 2022 Miss Quincy Outstanding Teen Ali Peterson of Winchester.
Gerard will spend much of the next year with 2023 Miss Quincy Shelby Rose during their reign advocating for their social impact initiatives and making dozens of community appearances. The contests serve as preliminaries for the Miss Illinois and Miss America contests.
The Illinois Prison Review Board was in Chicago yesterday morning to discuss a prisoner’s fate in relation to a 1985 Macoupin County rape & murder conviction.
The board along with prison clemency advocates and members of the family of Bridget Drobney were present for a clemency hearing at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s Sadie Forum out of the public purview, hearing the case for executive clemency for Robert Turner.
Turner was originally slated to be executed in the State of Illinois for raping and killing 16 year old Bridget Drobney along a back road in rural Gillespie in southern Macoupin County. Turner impersonated a police officer along a back road and pulled over the teen who was traveling to a family wedding. The now 63-year old Turner along with two other men were sentenced for the crime. Turner was given life imprisonment after the death penalty was abolished in the state in 2003.
Drobney’s family says the clemency hearing has reopened wounds from the case and that Turner is undeserving of being let out of prison saying he’s shown no remorse for his crime over the years.
Current Macoupin County State’s Attorney Jordan Garrison along with former Macoupin County State’s Attorneys Ed Rees and Vince Moreth filed documents in November opposing Turner’s release. All three attorneys recounted the heinous details of the crime, reverberations of which they say can still be felt in Macoupin County today.
Drobney’s murder has also had a lasting effect on the state. Late State Senator Vince DeMuzio of Carlinville would lead the charge in passing a bill in the General Assembly making it illegal for the public to possess flashing red lights that impersonate police, which ultimately became law in July 1986.
The Illinois Prison Review Board will deliberate and share their opinion with Governor J.B. Pritzker, who will ultimately decide Turner’s future. No timeline on when the governor will make a decision on the case has been given.
Two LifeStar EMS workers in Springfield have been charged with first-degree murder of a person in their care.
In a press conference today, Sangamon County State’s Attorney Dan Wright said that 35 year old Earl L. Moore was in the care of two Lifestar EMS workers after they were called to a home in Springfield last month. 50 year old Peter Cadigan and 44 year old Peggy J. Finley have each been arrested and charged with first-degree murder in Moore’s death. The citations for Finley and Cadigan were filed by the Illinois State Police.
According to WAND-TV, both EMS workers arrived to the home last month where Moore was allegedly detoxing from either drugs or alcohol. Wright explained in the press conference that Cadigan and Finley placed Moore face down on a gurney and tightened the straps. Moore later died at an area hospital on December 18th at 3:14PM.
An autopsy was performed and found that Moore died of compressional and positional asphyxia due to prone face-down restraint on a paramedic transpiration stretcher due to tightened straps across the back.
Wright says that police body camera footage will be released later today of the incident. WAND says that LifeStar has refused comment.
Both Cadigan and Finley are being held in the Sangamon County Jail on $1,000,000 bond.
A store name that’s been in Jacksonville for years will be closing its doors.
The Journal Courier reports that Sears Hometown Store in Jacksonville, located in Lincoln Square, will be going out of business. Often confused with the larger Sears, Roebuck stores; the Hometown stores mainly operated as a hardware-style store that focused on home, lawn, and garden equipment.
Co-owner of the Jacksonville store Chris Jacques told the Journal Courier that he doesn’t yet have a timetable on when the store will close.
The company has said in a press release last month that supply chain disruptions and inflation were part of the reason for the closures. The company is currently liquidating all assets with discounts on merchandise and selling of store fixtures. Tiger Capital Group is handling the liquidation of the company’s over $40 million in inventory across 36 states.
