The body of a 27 year old Tullahoma man was recovered from Center Hill Lake Sunday afternoon almost twenty four hours after he jumped off a pontoon boat and drowned on Saturday.
Dead is William Bates.
TWRA Officer Tony Cross told WJLE that Bates’ body was recovered in about 90 feet of water near where the incident occurred about a mile from Floating Mill Recreation area.
According to Officer Cross, Bates was with five other men on a pontoon boat going upstream Saturday afternoon when Bates jumped in the water to take a swim as the boat came to a stop. When Bates didn’t come back up after going under the water, the others jumped in but were unable to rescue him.
911 was notified and members of the TWRA, DeKalb County Rescue Squad, and U.S Army Corps of Engineers Rangers came to the scene. The search continued non-stop throughout the rest of the day on Saturday, all night, and during the day on Sunday until the body was found. Others participating in the search were members of the White, Putnam, Coffee, and Franklin County Rescue Squads. The DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department and local Emergency Management Agency Coordinator Charlie Parker assisted in the effort.
In addition to dragging operations, divers and sonar equipment aided in the search. In fact, the body was detected by the Franklin County Rescue Squad’s tow fish sonar. Divers of the White County Rescue Squad then went down and recovered it.
The body was brought by boat to the Hurricane Bridge Recreation Area and then loaded onto a DeKalb EMS ambulance for transport to the hospital.
Captain Dustin Johnson of the DeKalb County Rescue Squad said he wished to thank all those who supported them in the search and to the Caney Fork Chapter of the American Red Cross, who set up at the Floating Mill Recreation area to provide food and drinks to the emergency personnel and volunteers. Johnson also expressed his thanks to DeKalb Market and Pizza Hut for their donation of food.

A 61 year old man was found dead Saturday in an automobile accident on Four Seasons Road. 911 received the call around 11:30 am.
Dead is Michael J. Dean of Smithville.
Trooper Jeremy Wilhite of the Tennessee Highway Patrol told WJLE that Dean, of Burton Ridge Lane, was operating a 1999 Toyota Rav4 heading south on Four Seasons Road when he went off the right side of the road , struck a tree stump, and a telephone substation box. The SUV overturned in tall weeds coming to rest upright off the right side of the roadway facing south. Dean, who not wearing a seatbelt, was ejected. His body was found on the ground near the vehicle
The exact time of the accident is not known. A passerby spotted the wreck and reported it.
Members of DeKalb EMS, Sheriff’s Department, and the DeKalb County Volunteer Fire Department were also on the scene.

Local attorney Brad Hannah is joining the office of Vester Parsley, Jr. Attorney at Law.
Parsley made the announcement in his downtown Smithville office Friday afternoon. Other members of the local bar were present for the occasion.
Hannah is a graduate of DeKalb County High School, Tennessee Tech University, and the Nashville School of Law.
He has been in practice for two years working with the Morrison Law Firm in Tullahoma.
Hannah and his wife Jennifer reside in Smithville. Their five year old son Isaac has just started kindergarten.
Born and raised in DeKalb County, Hannah is the son of Pam Dolan and the late Cliff Hannah. His grandfather was the late Edd Poss, affectionately known for many years as the “Suit Man”.
Hannah, who plans to begin working with Parsley around the middle of September, said he is very appreciative of this opportunity.
“I’m proud to have him here,” said Parsley. “I’m anxious to get him to work so I can take it a little easier and he can take over some of that load that I’ve been having to do at nine and ten o’clock at night,” he said.
Parsley, a former DeKalb County General Sessions and Juvenile Court Judge, has been in practice here for almost 37 years. Over the years he has partnered with attorneys including the late George LeFevre, Hilton Conger, the late McAllen Foutch, Mike Corley, and more recently Jeremy Trapp.
Parsley currently serves as city attorney for both the Cities of Smithville and Alexandria.
(Bottom Picture: left to right- Jennifer and Brad Hannah, Vester Parsley, Jim Judkins, Tecia Pryor, Sarah Cripps, Jon Slager, and Gayla Hendrix)

A 53 year old Smithville man escaped serious injury Friday morning after his car crashed into a utility pole on Braswell Lane.
Captain Steven Leffew of the Smithville Police Department told WJLE that Darrell Pack was driving east on Braswell Lane in a 2010 Nissan Altima when he failed to negotiate a curve. The right tires dropped off the road and Pack lost control of the car. The vehicle struck a utility pole.
Pack refused transport to the hospital by DeKalb EMS. He was cited for violation of the financial responsibility law for no insurance.
A Smithville Electric System crew is shown above setting a new utility pole after the crash.
Meanwhile, three other people were involved in an earlier accident Friday at the intersection of Bryant Street and South Congress Boulevard near Rite Aid Pharmacy.
Captain Leffew told WJLE that 87 year old James Hill of Smithville was driving south on Congress Boulevard (Highway 56) in a 1994 Crown Victoria when he collided with a 1997 Ford Thunderbird, driven by 29 year old Amanda Moss of Smithville. According to Captain Leffew, Moss was attempting to make a left turn from Bryant Street to go north on Congress Boulevard and was in the intersection when Hill’s vehicle struck her car in the driver’s side door. 37 year old Donna Thompson of Smithville was a passenger of the Moss vehicle.
No one was injured.
Hill was cited for violation of the financial responsibility law for no insurance.
In addition to the Smithville Police Department, members of DeKalb EMS and the Smithville Volunteer Fire Department were on the scenes of both accidents

A Classroom Hunter Education Course starts Monday, September 9 at the Elizabeth Chapel Baptist Church on Highway 83 or Allen Ferry Road.
Classes will be held each night from 6:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. The course is offered free of charge.
Participants must attend each night in order to complete the course. “There are actually three classroom nights and on the last day, that afternoon we do the test and the LIVE fire. You do have to attend all of those,” said TWRA Officer Tony Cross.
“You must be at least nine years old by the first night of the class to participate,” he said. “We will take up to fifty persons in the class. You do have to go on-line to register now for any of our Hunter Education classes. Go to the www.tnwildlife.org website. You click on the button “For Hunters”. Click on the section “Hunter Education”. A button will come up in the middle of the page “Find A Class”. Click on that and go to the classroom portion of the Hunter Education Course. Look on the left hand side of the page. It’ll bring up the dates. Just look until you find the one that says Elizabeth Chapel Baptist Church. It will then have another button that will allow you to register now,” said Officer Cross.
For more information, call Officer Cross at 597-9625

Fifteen votes is all it took to elect a new mayor of Alexandria Thursday.
Jim H. York, Jr. ran unopposed in the Alexandria Municipal Election and received fifteen votes to become the town’s next mayor. He succeeds incumbent Mayor Ria Baker, who chose not to seek re-election.
Only nineteen people voted in the election including sixteen in person and three by absentee. Since the election was uncontested, only paper ballots were used.
In addition to the election of York as mayor, Pat Jackson received eighteen votes in his bid for alderman. He ran unopposed.
Three aldermen were to have been elected but no one else qualified to run.
It will apparently be up to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen to make an appointment to fill those two aldermen positions.
Altogether, Alexandria has a mayor and six aldermen positions.

In the United States, more than 118,000 people are awaiting a life-saving organ transplant, with 2,500 of those residing in Tennessee, according to Donate Life Tennessee.
Every 18 minutes a patient on the waiting list for a donor organ dies, and every 10 minutes a new name is added to the list.
When a driver in Tennessee renews his or her car registration, the opportunity is provided to make a donation to the “Donate-A-Dollar Program,” which benefits the Tennessee County Clerks Organ Donor Awareness Foundation. The foundation recently announced that it has raised $4 million in donations since its inception in 1996.
DeKalb County Clerk Mike Clayborn has been recognized by Donate Life Tennessee for his work to promote the “Donate-A-Dollar program.
“Thanks to the dedication of our state’s county clerks, we have been able to raise money to provide our citizens with education on the importance of organ and tissue donation,” said Janice Butler, president of the Tennessee Association of County Clerks.
The Tennessee County Clerks Association launched the foundation in 1996 to support organ donation education in Tennessee. The foundation works in cooperation with the non-profit Tennessee Donor Services and Mid-South Transplant Foundation to educate Tennesseans on the importance of becoming an organ and tissue donor.
A board comprised of physicians, donor service professionals and county clerk representatives administer the funds, which over the years have been critical to the development of the Donate Life Tennessee online registry, the creation and distribution of educational materials, school based programs and recognition programs for organ and tissue donors.
As of June 2013, over 1.85 million Tennesseans have signed up on the Donate Life Tennessee Organ & Tissue Donor Registry either online or through the Department of Safety. On average, nearly 3,500 people are added each week. While the rate falls far short of the nationwide goal to register 50 percent of each state’s licensed drivers, Tennessee’s registry is growing quickly. Tennesseans can register to be an organ donor by simply Checking YES when applying for or renewing their driver’s license or by going online at www.donatelifetn.org.
Donate Life Tennessee is a non-profit, state-authorized organ and tissue donor registry, administered by the state’s two organ procurement organizations (OPO), responsible for facilitating the donation process in Tennessee:
Tennessee Donor Services and Mid-South Transplant Foundation. The Donate Life Registry assures that all personal information is kept confidential and stored in a secure database, accessible only to authorized OPO personnel.
(Pictured Above: Leslie Tramel, Mike Clayborn, Tammy Pack, and Judy Miller McGee)

After school programs have begun and for some students that means getting home later in the day.
Jimmy Sprague, Transportation Supervisor, is asking parents of these students to be patient as bus drivers become familiar with the after school routes.

“We’re getting ready to start the second part of our After School Program,” said Sprague. “The first part is what is called the 21st Century Program. It deals with our middle school and high school students. It started off real well. We haven’t really had many issues at all. We’re getting ready now to start what is called the LEAP’s Program. That is our elementary school students from Northside and Smithville Elementary. These are young children and they often don’t know their address. They will tell us, I live in the white house. Well, every street has a white house. The schools are working with us to provide address forms on their shirts when they get on the buses. I ask the parents to be patient with us. We’ll get them home safely. Just bear with us because everybody is new and we’re learning our routes on the After School Program. Please be patient. Times will get better as we learn our routes and things (times) will be more consistent. Last year we got a lot of calls from the 911 center, people looking for their kids. I understand that. But please understand, we’re working our way to you. We will get to you and the times will get better. Just be patient with us,” said Sprague
Currently, the latest some students may arrive home is approximately 6:45 p.m. “Starting out, you’re looking at 6:45 p.m. My goal is to get them all home by 6:30 p.m. We’ll accomplish that goal buts it’s going to take trial and error in getting our routes down. We’ll get there. That’s where the patience comes in. I ask the parents to be patient with us and give us an opportunity to get them home. As we get further into it, the times will get better and be more consistent,” said Sprague

66 year old Gerald Wayne (J.B.) Bounds of McMinnville, serving a life prison sentence for the 1981 fatal shooting of Sherman Wright of Smithville will be up for another parole hearing next month.
The hearing will be held Wednesday, October 16 at the Southeast Regional Correctional Facility in Pikeville where Bounds is incarcerated.
Bounds is serving a life sentence for the first degree premeditated killing of Wright, who was shot once in the head just outside the Odyssey Arcade on West Broad Street, across from the Dairy Queen. The incident occurred on the afternoon of February 2nd, 1981, allegedly over a gambling debt. The game room no longer exists. The building now serves as the location for the Discount Tobacco Outlet.
Bounds was found guilty of first degree murder by a DeKalb County Circuit Court Jury following a trial in October 1981 and he has been in prison since, having served more than 32 years. Bounds admitted to shooting Wright but said it was unintentional.
He has been up for parole four times, in September 2002, August 2005, October 2010, and October 2011.
Following Bounds’ latest parole hearing on October 20, 2011 board member Yusuf Hakeem voted that Bounds be “put off” for two years before his next parole hearing and that in the meantime, he become involved in cognitive behavior programs including “Thinking for a Change’, “Criminal Thinking”, and “Victim Impact”. These programs, which were to be made available to him in prison, are designed to emphasize the role of altering thinking patterns in bringing about change in an offender’s life.
Three members of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles voted to concur with the vote of board member Hakeem that Bounds be denied parole due to the seriousness of the offense.

A woman who allegedly passed a forged check on the account of a family member on six different occasions at Walmart since June has been arrested after an investigation by a criminal detective of the Sheriff’s Department.
29 year old Megan Ann Tramel of Midway Road, Smithville is charged with six counts of forgery. Her bond is $30,000 and she will be in court on September 12.
Sheriff Patrick Ray said that Tramel allegedly passed the forged checks in the following amounts on the following dates: $66.51 on June 13; $142.52 on June 20; $131.60 on August 18; $109.62 on August 20; $87.75 on August 21; and $197.83 on August 28.
32 year old Steven Levan Gandy of Old West Point Road, Smithville is charged with initiation of a process used in the manufacture of methamphetamine. His bond is $50,000 and he will be in court on September 12.
Sheriff Ray said that on Thursday, August 29 a caretaker at a residence on Short Mountain Highway entered the home and found components used in the manufacture of methamphetamine. Gandy then arrived at the home, went inside, and attempted to hide the components. A drug detective of the sheriff’s department made an investigation. The homeowner gave the detective consent to search and found were items used in the manufacture of methamphetamine including 2- one pot cook bottles, mason jars containing a bi-layered liquid; two gasser bottles, two funnels, coffee filters, plastic tubing, two bottles of crystal drain cleaner, along with other items associated with the manufacture of meth. Gandy was arrested and brought to the jail for booking.
29 year old Ryan Lee Walden of Dale Ridge Road, Dowelltown is charged with theft of property over $1,000. His bond is $7,500.
Sheriff Ray said that on Wednesday, July 31 the victim, who resides on Allen Ferry Road, reported that sets of Bone China plates, cups, and bowls had gone missing from the home. Walden was found to have sold these items to an auction house in DeKalb County. The value of the stolen items was more than $1,000.
38 year old Allison Sheree Turner of Lower Helton Road, Alexandria is charged with felony reckless endangerment, felony evading arrest, and driving on a suspended license.
Sheriff Ray said that on Tuesday, August 27 Turner was driving on Highway 70 west when she was involved in an accident with another vehicle. After the wreck, Turner left the scene. When the deputy spotted Turner, he got behind her vehicle and activated his lights and siren. She initially refused to stop, traveling at a high rate of speed for about a half a mile before pulling over. A check of Turner’s license revealed that she was driving on a suspended license.
32 year old Cynthia Diane Carter of Tramel Branch Road, Alexandria is charged with a third offense of driving on a revoked license. She was also issued a citation for failure to maintain her lane of travel. Her bond is $5,000 and she will be in court on September 12.
Sheriff Ray said that on Friday, August 30 Carter was operating a motor vehicle on Highway 70 when she was stopped by a deputy for failure to maintain her lane of travel. She had an ID only license. A computer check revealed that her license were revoked for driving on a revoked license on December 11, 2012 in Wilson County and January 2, 2013 in Putnam County. She was arrested and brought to the jail for booking.
Last week, WJLE first reported that thirty three persons had been named in sealed indictments handed down by a special called session of the DeKalb County Grand Jury on Monday, August 19 and all but one were the result of a lengthy investigation by the Sheriff’s Department into the illegal sale of narcotics and other crimes committed in DeKalb County.
Twenty six of those individuals were initially served with the indictments and arrested. Sheriff Ray now reports that two others have been picked up by the sheriff’s department.
36 year old Sharon Roseann Barnwell of Sparta is indicted for sale and delivery of a schedule II drug (Dilaudid). Her bond is $50,000. She was arrested on Wednesday, August 28.
35 year old Andrew Wesley Wilbert of Vandergriff Hollow Road, Dowelltown is indicted for sale and delivery of a schedule II drug (Roxycodone). His bond is $30,000. He was picked up on Friday, August 30.
All those indicted will appear in DeKalb County Criminal Court for arraignment on Monday, September 16 at 9:00 a.m.