Dothan has secured millions of dollars to get to work building a new community center on the east side of town near the Wiregrass Public Safety Center.
Mayor Mark Saliba thanked Senator Tommy Tuberville for helping secure $7.7 million in Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grant funds.
The location on Ennis Road will allow local emergency response teams to hold events, and the community center will also have the opportunity to be rented out.
The city is in the design phase now, but completion is estimated to be in the next couple of years.
A Eufaula man was charged with a violation to the Endangered Species Act (ESA), his Georgia cohort receiving one of the “largest ever” fines.
Toney Jones of Eufaula was sentenced to six months of probation for the violation, but Dr. John Waldrop, a Columbus, Georgia, doctor, was ordered to pay $900,000 and serve three years probation for conspiracy to smuggle wildlife and ESA violations.
According to court documents and statements made in court, Waldrop amassed an extensive collection of 1,401 taxidermy bird mounts and 2,594 eggs which included:
Four eagles protected by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act,
179 bird and 193 egg species listed in the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and
212 bird and 32 egg species covered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). This included incredibly rare specimens like three eggs of the Nordmann’s Greenshank, an Asian shorebird with only 900 to 1,600 remaining birds in the wild; no North American museum has any Nordmann Greenshank eggs in their collection.
“Waldrop’s gigantic and rare bird collection was bolstered in part by illegal imports, where he and his enlisted co-conspirators intentionally avoided permit and declaration requirements,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD).
The DOJ says Waldrop imported birds and eggs without the required declarations and permits, eventually recruiting Jones, who worked on Waldrop’s Georgia farm, to receive the packages.
Jones also deposited about $525,000 in a bank account Waldrop used to pay for the imports and hide his involvement.
Waldrop and Jones used online sales sites such as eBay and Etsy to buy birds and eggs from around the world, including Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Uruguay.
An Ozark man is in custody with attempted murder charges after police say he fires several shots into an apartment in a fight with his ex-girlfriend.
Dale County Sheriffs responded to Jasmine Hills apartment complex Sunday morning around 1 a.m. and discovered several rounds had hit an apartment, missing the five people inside — two of whom were children.
Julius Noel McGuire, 31, was identified as a suspect. He had fled the scene to a nearby home.
Officers arrived at the home on Berkshire Road and found a weapon matching shell casings from the scene of the shooting.
McGuire is charged with attempted murder and shooting into an occupied building.
Investigation showed the incident arose from an argument with his ex-girlfriend. The incident is still under investigation.
Southeast Alabama Community Theatre invites the Wiregrass community back to Alabama, 1959, when a growing movement for civil rights met with resistance to the groundwork for the more dramatic protests and events that would follow in the early 1960s, including the Birmingham campaign and the Selma marches.
Kenneth Jones’ Alabama Story is a play inspired by true events! A controversial children’s book about a black rabbit marrying a white rabbit stirs the passions of a segregationist State Senator and a no-nonsense State Librarian. The author presents a fictional contrasting story of childhood friends—an African American man and a white woman of privilege, reunited in adulthood—providing private counterpoint to the public events swirling in the state capital. Political foes, star-crossed lovers, and one feisty children’s author inhabit the same page in a Deep South of the imagination that brims with humor, heartbreak, and hope.
Alabama Story performs Apr. 24-25 at 7:00 PM nightly, and there is a matinee on Saturday, Apr. 26, at 2:00 PM, at the Cultural Arts Center, located at 909 S. Saint Andrews Street in Dothan. Tickets are available for purchase at SEACT.com for $25 each. The in-person box office opens 60 minutes before curtain, with a cash bar available on Thursday and Friday. Seating begins 30 minutes before curtain.
