Montgomery neighborhood on lookout for dog thieves

MONTGOMERY, Al.
Residents of one Alabama neighborhood say they suspect thieves have been sneaking into back yards and stealing their dogs.
Wanda Smith of Montgomery says she came home from running errands recently and found two of her three dogs missing — a dachshund named Sisqo and her son's Chinese pug, Rocky. She had to break the news to her son, who is serving with the U.S. Navy in Afghanistan.
Smith says she's talked to others in the Carriage Hills subdivision who say they've also got missing dogs. Neighbor Chris Knox says he saw a car slow down and watched the driver try unsuccessfully to coax his dog inside.
 Montgomery police say they're investigating a case nearby involving five stolen pit bull puppies.

Though feared, illegal "spice" a little-studied substance

Montgomery, Al.
Public officials working to ban “legal pot” products know the drugs are dangerous. They’re just not all in agreement on how dangerous the substances are.

With an ordinance banning chemical compounds found in products sold under names like “spice” and “k2,” Oxford on Friday became the latest city to outlaw “synthetic marijuana.” Banning the substances is a growing trend in Alabama, as the drugs have been blamed for teen suicides and countless calls to local poison control centers.

Two weeks ago, Heflin issued a similar ban on the products and an ordinance is also scheduled to be discussed at Anniston’s next council meeting.

Last month, after holding a public forum on the dangers of synthetic marijuana products, Alabama State Health Officer Don Williamson said testimony from the District Attorneys Association of Alabama claims these products are anywhere from 40 to 100 times more potent than regular marijuana. Lt. Mike Reese of the Alabama Beverage Control Board pegs the number at 80, while Jessica Cornwell, also on the Beverage Control Board, said the figure can be as high as 800 percent.

In other words, a lot of numbers are floating around yet very little data actually backs up any of them.

In March, five chemical compounds commonly found in synthetic marijuana products — CP 47,497, HU-210, HU-211, JWH-018 and JWH-073 — were listed as Schedule 1 controlled substances by the DEA. On its website, the Drug Enforcement Agency lists these compounds as aiming to produce effects similar to THC.

None of the banned substances, however, had any research or tests done on human subjects, and none mentioned any effects being more or less potent than regular types of marijuana.

In a phone interview on Friday, Williamson said the discrepancy in numbers comes from the difference in available products. Because the drugs are unregulated, it’s impossible to know how much of, and what kinds of, the chemical compounds are in the products. Citing a study from 2010 in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Williamson said the relative potency of the drug has more to do with the amount of compounds contained within the product.

But there’s another problem with these studies, too. The chemical compounds researched are already illegal. In fact, most of the substances banned in the Heflin and Oxford ordinances and others similar to those are already listed as controlled substances.

In an email citing an article written by Glenn Duncan, executive director of the Hunterdon Drug Awareness Program, Cornwell wrote “potency is increased dramatically when one single compound is changed.” Despite this claim, nothing in Duncan’s article provides basis for this.

“The evidence is more anecdotal,” Duncan said in a phone interview, noting he has heard the products described as anywhere between 4 and 800 times more potent than regular marijuana, depending on the compounds found in the drug.

“It’s like a burst,” he said, referring to the quick high he said patients experience from synthetic marijuana compounds. “It’s like a sprint as compared to a long run.”

Outside of observations from users, though, there’s little evidence of the supposed concentration they have in comparison with regular marijuana. Even more problematic, according to Michael Frost, a physician and addiction expert who runs a clinic in Conshohocken, Penn., is the meaning behind the word “potent.”

“Potency is hard to measure,” he said, citing the lack of studies on the drug stem from how recent the phenomenon of these products has taken off. “These were research compounds, and so much of the information we have comes from when they were developed and tested, and they have a much higher affinity in the brain than regular marijuana.”

Frost said potency has the implication of a higher concentration, but studies on the affinity of the drug to reactors in the brain don’t imply the drug’s concentration is higher than its organic counterpart.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to have stronger effects,” he said.

Man wanted in Columbus, Ga. arrested in Phenix City, Al.

Brannon Lee Avery

PHENIX CITY, AL.
A Columbus man who has been on the police wanted list has been arrested for several charges.
Brannon Lee Avery, 29, was arrested in Phenix City by the Phenix City Police Department on Friday afternoon.
Avery is charged with aggravated stalking and making terroristic threats.
Police had been looking for Avery for more than a week. 
He is being held in the Russell County Jail pending extradition to Muscogee County.

Suspect in Leesburg robbery arrested; wife faces unrelated charges

Leesburg, Al.
A man wanted for a September bank robbery in Leesburg is awaiting extradition to Alabama after he was taken into custody about noon Friday in Charleston, S.C., Leesburg Police Chief Lanny Ransum said.

Steven Thornberry, 32, and his wife, Melissa, were arrested by U.S. Marshals after officers received a tip of their whereabouts.
A warrant for Thornberry for first-degree robbery was obtained just hours after the robbery at First Southern State Bank on Sept. 19. His wife is being held on warrant for failure to appear on an unrelated theft charge, Ransum said.
It is believed the Thornberrys left the area soon after the robbery and had been in the Carolinas since then, Ransum said.
Steven Thornberry was identified in a bank surveillance video.
A man believed to be Thornberry went in the bank on Alabama Highway 68 and handed the teller a note. It is unclear if he had any type of weapon, but employees did not see one.
The robber got away with an undisclosed amount of cash and left in a late-model, dark gray Mitsubishi Eclipse. That car was found later.

Hispanics may stay away from work at poultry plants this week

ALBERTVILLE, Al.
Hispanics upset about Alabama's new immigration law may take a page from civil rights and union pioneers this week and stay home a day to demonstrate their economic impact. "They don't believe they are the ones running the economy, but if they don't show up for work, those big companies are going to lose a lot of money, and maybe they will pressure lawmakers to change the law." Elia Ortega of Albertville said Friday, referring to the area's big poultry plants.

Ortega's job keeps her in close touch with the Hispanic community, which numbers an estimated 8,000 in this Sand Mountain city of 24,000. She asked her employer not be identified because she was speaking for only herself.
Wednesday is the day Ortega said Hispanics may stay home from Albertville's three major poultry plants: Tyson, Pilgrim's Pride and Wayne Farms. Together, they employ several thousand people in processing millions of chickens each year.
The impact on the Sand Mountain poultry business has been mixed since a federal judge upheld much of the law. Wayne Farms reported more absences last week. Tyson Foods reported no abnormal absenteeism, and Pilgrim's Pride reported a "slight" increase early in the week, but "back to normal" by Friday.
"We have had some increase in absences," Wayne Farms spokesman Frank Singleton said Thursday. "We had a job fair (Tuesday) and made about 120 job offers. About 350 people showed up." That was a large turnout, Singleton said.
At least one poultry company is seeking workers another way, according to Anna Smith, manager of an Albertville rental agency. Smith said she was called a month ago, when the new law was becoming big news, by a job placement agency seeking apartments for foreign workers coming to Albertville on temporary visas to work in the poultry plants.
John Weathers, who owns the apartments being sought, said at least some of them are from Ethiopia. Weathers' company did not rent to the agency. Attempts to confirm the presence of the workers were unsuccessful last week.
"We know the race (e.g. White, Black, Hispanic, Asian) of the people we employ, but we don't specifically track" how many of our workers are from other countries, Tyson spokesman Worth Sparkman said Thursday.
Albertville is the most integrated of the small Alabama towns transformed by years of Hispanic immigration. Arriving first to work for the area's poultry mills and farms, Hispanics, mostly from Mexico, later opened restaurants, stores and other businesses. Last year, Mayor Lindsey Lyons estimated the Hispanic population at 8,000, or a full third of Albertville's population.
Five years ago, when crowds, largely Hispanic, gathered across the country to protest a pending crackdown on illegal immigration, an estimated 5,000 marched in Albertville. It was the largest turnout in the state, and about as big as the same-day protest in Oakland, Calif.
Three years later, the Albertville city council made English the town's official language.
While some immigrants are considering another protest this week, others are simply leaving or making plans to leave. "A few have left, and many others are doing whatever they can to get ready to leave," Ortega said Friday.  "They are living in mortal fear right now that their families are going to be split apart," rental property owner Weathers said Wednesday.
"Most of the people have someone in the house who's documented," said Weathers, who requires documentation before renting. But many households have one or more members who are not documented, Weathers said, and it is the fear of what will happen to them that is driving reaction to the law.
"The kids are worrying about the parents," agreed Marjorie Centeno, manager of the Hispanic grocery Tienda el Sol on Albertville's main street. Centeno spoke Wednesday standing in an empty store that she said soon could be forced to close due to lack of business. "No customers today," she said shortly before noon.
Albertville city schools had 107 of its 1,100 Hispanic students withdraw in the days after the judge's decision, said Superintendent Dr. Ric Ayer on Wednesday.
Absences among Hispanic students also reached 107 the Thursday after the law was upheld on Wednesday, but dropped to 58 Monday and 38 Tuesday as early fears subsided. Late week numbers were not available Friday.
Those withdrawals will not affect the system's state funding, Ayer said. They happened after the yearly funding enrollment was taken, and they are scattered across classes and won't mean a need for fewer teachers. The system has 4,100 students in all.
Across the street from Ayer's office, Marshall County license and tag clerk Taye Langley said Wednesday that the new law was affecting everyone but the Hispanic community, which stayed away last week. On Wednesday, she saw "two or three" Hispanics and turned one away for inadequate documentation. That was down from "30 to 40" Hispanics on a normal day.
The Anglo community in Albertville is finding the same problems with the law cited across the state, Langley said. Without proper documentation, new tags cannot be issued. That's delayed divorced couples who haven't retitled their vehicles after the breakup and people with spouses serving overseas whose documentation is with them.
Prisoners eligible for work-release will help blunt any job shortage caused by the law, according to politicians who support it, but the benefit is limited in North Alabama.
The state placed 283 North Alabama prisoners in work-release jobs in June, 316 in July, 230 in August, and 239 in September, according to Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett.
But the state has only 400 eligible inmates at its work-release center in Decatur, Corbett said, meaning there is a limit to how many jobs prisoners can take.
Despite reports that Hispanics have been afraid to go to the hospital since the judge ruled, North Alabama's major trauma center said it was business as usual in its emergency room over last weekend.
"We don't do a citizenship check when somebody comes to us for care," Huntsville Hospital spokesman Burr Ingram said.
Some businesses do expect to benefit if the law succeeds in scaring off Hispanic workers. Ricky Frazier, owner of R&S Roofing in Madison County, does not hire undocumented Hispanics but said he has competed successfully with companies that do.  Frazier does expect to get more work now. Without their Hispanic workers, he said, "The big roofing companies won't be able to get to all of (the jobs)."
Still others say the financial impact will continue to "trickle up" from workers to business owners if Hispanics do leave in large numbers. "Anything that needs to be cleaned is cleaned by Mexicans," Latin American history professor Dr. Sandra Mendiola told an immigration conference in Huntsville last week. "No restaurant is going to survive without them."
Mendiola said the minimum wage in Mexico is $5.25 a day. "How are you going to support a family on that?" she asked. "It's impossible. That's the (immigrants') motivation."
Whether the motivation is strong enough could be determined by how aggressively police enforce the law. Marshall County deputies arrested one of the first men charged with violating it Wednesday morning. They picked up Juan Vargas, 28, on a charge of sexual abuse of a child under 12 and added a charge of willful failure to carry alien registration, according to a report in The Gadsden Times.
Vargas, facing a serious criminal charge, is a poster child for supporters of the new law, but Hispanic advocates say he doesn't represent the majority of the Hispanic community. And federal attorneys have argued in court that the federal government already places a priority on deporting violent criminals.
In Madison County and other counties across the state, attorneys and law enforcement officials spent much of last week discussing the details of training officers to enforce the law without prohibited racial profiling. In one statewide teleconference, they viewed a Powerpoint presentation on the law of 101 slides, an HPD captain told the Huntsville immigration conference.
The City of Huntsville, Madison and Madison County are coordinating training and enforcement, officials say, but they were not ready to begin Friday. "Right now, we're going to do nothing," the HPD captain told the conference.

Who is Jane 'Sally' Doe? Ashville nursing home resident remains a mystery

ASHVILLE, Alabama -- Jane "Sally" Doe spends most of her days at a Blount County nursing home tenderly cuddling her baby doll.
Sometimes she lifts the doll to her breast, gently covering her with a blanket, as if to nurse her.
It is an indication, along with what appears to be a Cesarean section scar, that Sally may be someone's mother. Or was at some point.
It's just a guess, because no one knows for sure. In fact, no one knows anything about Sally, at least not those who have cared for her over the past 14 months.
On Aug. 8, 2010, Sally -- named by the hospital staff -- was found in the waiting area of St. Vincent's East Hospital. She was wearing a hospital gown, an adult diaper and slipper socks. She had no identification with her, and she couldn't speak.
Not then, and not now.
There are few pieces to the puzzle of Sally, and those charged with taking care of her say they are no closer to the big picture than they were within days of her discovery.
"I never thought we would be here a year later," said Alabama Bureau of Investigation Sgt. Scott Bartle. "We have a lot of cold cases, and unidentified bodies, but she's got a face, and skin, and a beating heart. I ask myself all the time, 'Where have I failed?'"
"People aren't disposable. She belongs to somebody," Bartle said. "It eats at you. It really does."

Mystery woman
Sally was found wandering the waiting area at St. Vincent's East. There were no witnesses to her arrival at the hospital, and security tapes yielded no clues.
At 5 feet 3 inches tall, she weighed less than 90 pounds. She is believed to be between 55 and 60 years old.
Initially it appeared she was a man. Authorities say her short-cropped hair had been recently colored a dark brown or black, and she was wearing large, black-rimmed glasses, possibly in an attempt to disguise her.
She had dentures with the imprint "000 E Allen" but no other clues to a possible identity.
Doctors and nurses in the emergency room diagnosed her with a urinary tract infection and prescribed an antibiotic. She was dehydrated, malnourished and a choking risk, so she was prescribed liquid meals to be the consistency of honey.
The nursing staff quickly grew fond of her and gave her the name Sally. Jane Doe, after all, is usually a name given to dead women, and Sally was alive.
Nurses there said she was withdrawn, but after a month in their care began to laugh and play and dole out hugs. She would dance and wave at passing cars through the window. Someone even tried to teach her how to say, "Roll Tide."
St. Vincent's officials notified the police and social services, and the search for Sally's identity, and next of kin, began. Throughout September, a series of newspaper articles and television spots ran, but to no avail.
Seeking clues
The Alabama Bureau of Investigation got involved and since then, several agents have spent hundreds of man-hours trying to unravel the mystery of Sally.
They took Sally's fingerprints and DNA and compared them with nationwide police and missing persons databases. They performed facial recognition screenings with age progression and compared those to the National Database of Unidentified Adults.
Bartle and Laura Fulbright, a social worker and program director for the Jefferson-Blount-St. Clair Mental Health Authority, have worked tirelessly. "We talk almost daily," Bartle said.
Investigators and mental health experts have tried various ways to glean information from her, such as giving her a pen and paper to write on. Suggested names given to her yielded few hints, nor did maps placed in front of her. Her own writing was just lines on paper.
Her appointed guardian, attorney Sid Summey, said they have some reason to believe her name may begin with an E and her last name might begin with a W. He said she has made some response to Evelyn Wade or Evelyn Weaver.
Tips to lawmen led nowhere.
In October 2010, an examiner with the Department of Mental Health evaluated Sally and deemed she appeared to be functioning in the "severe to profound" range of mental retardation. Without an identity, however, the examiner couldn't formally diagnose her.
The Social Security Administration reviewed all of the information but could not match Sally to any of their known cases.
By the end of October, those taking care of Sally started to look for longer-term options.
The hospital staff said Sally was a risk for wandering off and initiated a petition for her commitment to a mental hospital. Instead, though, she was placed in the Olive Home -- an assisted living facility in Oneonta -- under the sponsorship of the Department of Mental Health.
Summey has also reached out to his friends through Facebook, and his colleagues in the National Guardianship Association and the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys.
"I have never seen anything like it," Summey said. "It completely tugs at my heart. We have 400 wards, and they all have a story. It just makes your heart cry out to find hers."
"You've got lost people, and lists of lost people, but no list of found people," he said.
The National Criminal Information Center's Unidentified Persons File started in 1983 and contains records of unidentified dead people, people of any age who are living and unable to determine their identity, and unidentified catastrophe victims.
In 2010, 216 records were entered into the "unidentified and living" database -- including Sally--and 207 were cleared by the entering agency.
Those close to the case have their theories.
Bartle and Fulbright believe that because of her handicaps, Sally was cared for most of her adult life by her parents, who eventually died. The person left to take care of her -- perhaps a sister, a brother, a distant cousin -- didn't want to do it, or couldn't.
"Whoever stepped in to take care of her is not doing their job," Fulbright said.
"Somebody, somewhere, is getting her (Social Security) checks," Bartle said.

Fleur de lis
The hospital gown she was wearing when she arrived at St. Vincent's East didn't match any used in the Birmingham area.
The gown was gray with red trim and a fleur-de-lis print, which is a cultural emblem of the state of Louisiana. Summey didn't know that until this week, and said they are now checking with Louisiana medical facilities that may have the design on their gowns.
There is also a belief that she may have come from Georgia, or beyond, and simply dropped off at the hospital.
"It's an amazing mystery to speculate what may have happened to her," Summey said.
Amazing, and maddening.
"I get fired up over this case," Bartle said.
"Social workers are into life stories, and she has a life story somewhere," Fulbright said. "I know how to coordinate her care, but as for everything else about her, I don't know what I'm doing. It's alien."
In May 2011, Sally's health took a turn for the worse. She experienced a rapid, steady decline in her ability to walk and complete her daily living skills. She is now confined to a wheelchair and has stopped making any attempts to speak.
Doctors have diagnosed her with degenerative dementia, and she has been moved to a nursing home in Ashville.
With no identity, Sally doesn't qualify for Medicaid. Mental health agencies have been footing the bill.
Most of her doctors have been treating her for free, and social services is providing her with her clothes.
Jefferson-Blount-St. Clair Mental Health Authority supports her and oversees her care.
"But for that," her attorney said, "she would be in acute care and the bill would be $2 million."
Fulbright said Sally has never shown any behavioral problems, though she seems to be uncomfortable with, or even agitated by, some men. She isn't disruptive or challenging in any way.
She has made a new friend at the nursing home and, in the afternoons, they pass their dolls back and forth to each other.
"She is very endearing," she said. "Sweet as pie."
Last week she was admitted again to St. Vincent's East, possibly suffering from pneumonia.
Bartle, Summey, Fulbright and a team of others are undeniably committed to Sally, but they said they know in their hearts there should be more for her.
"She looks at you with those blue eyes, and she's holding that baby doll, and it gets to you," Bartle said. "We've got a person here starving for love, but we can't find the family that's supposed to love her."

If you have any information on "Sally", please contact:

JBS Mental Health Authority
940 Montclair Rd. Suite 200
Birmingham AL 35213
(205)595-4555

Ala. tornado survivor killed moving to new home

PHIL CAMPBELL, Al.
A 65-year-old Alabama man moving into a new home after being displaced by April's tornadoes was killed when the truck he was driving plunged into a ravine.
James Kenneth Howard Sr, died when he apparently lost control of the truck and trailer about 10 miles south of Russellville on Friday
Franklin County Coroner Elize Malone said he was pronounced dead at the scene. Malone said he died from blunt force trauma. He was ejected from the truck.
Phil Campbell Police Chief Merrell Potter said Howard, a retired truck driver, was moving into a new home after being displaced by the April 27 tornadoes. He died the day before what would have been his birthday.