Officer's car hits girl on bicycle and other news from areas around Chattanooga

Friday, January 1, 1904

photo LaFayette police

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Officer's car hits girl on bicycle

LaFAYETTE, Ga. - A LaFayette police lieutenant crashed his car into a teenage girl on a bicycle Tuesday night.

Police Chief Bengie Clift said the 16-year-old rode her bike west on Simmons Street around 7 p.m. Then, at the intersection with Cherokee Street, she failed to brake and collided with a police cruiser driven by Lt. Robert Dunn, Clift said.

The girl slid up the car, rolled back down and fell onto the pavement. Clift said she went to T.C. Thompson Children's Hospital at Erlanger on Tuesday night.

Clift said that, at the time of the crash, the victim complained only of "a couple of scratches." But he said she remained in the hospital on Wednesday.

The Georgia State Patrol is investigating the case. A patrol employee said Wednesday that the report into the crash had not been approved for release.


New execution set for Warren Lee Hill

ATLANTA - The Georgia Department of Corrections has reset inmate Warren Lee Hill's execution for 7 p.m. Friday, though a judge has set a hearing today to consider whether his lawyers should be told the identity of the compounding pharmacy that made the drugs that are to be used to put him to death.

Hill was to have been executed Monday, but Fulton County Superior Court Judge Gail Tusan stopped that so she could have more time to consider a new state law that shields the identities of those who make and supply lethal injection drugs. Georgia, like other death penalty states, has found it virtually impossible to secure drugs for lethal injection from the mass manufacturers who are under pressure from death penalty opponents.

So they have opted to use compounding pharmacies. To ensure a source, a state law took effect July 1 making the identities of the providers of lethal injection drugs a state secret.

If Hill is executed for the 1990 murder of an inmate at the prison where he already was serving a life sentence for killing his 18-year-old girlfriend, it will be the first time Georgia has used a drug made specifically for a specific execution.

EUFAULA, Ala.


Man charged with taking gator

A Georgia man is facing a felony charge of illegally possessing an alligator in Alabama.

Kevin Davis, 24, of Georgetown, Ga., was arrested Monday after someone reported to police that a 3-foot-long live gator was lying in the back of a pickup truck at an apartment complex in Eufaula.

The Dothan Eagle reported Davis is charged with the felony offense of taking or possessing an alligator. He is being held on $5,000 bond.

Alabama conservation officer Joey Richardson said the albino alligator appeared to have been out of the water for too long.

Davis told police someone gave him the alligator and he wanted to show it to his son. Officers later returned it to Lake Eufaula.