Man drops stolen booze when fleeing deputies
A man wanted for burglary was trying to run away from deputies when he dropped several bottles of stolen liquor, WIS reported.
19-year-old Gavin Wyatt James of Lexington County was arrested by deputies on Monday on two counts of burglary. He is currently being held in the Lexington County Detention Center.
According to Sheriff James Metts, James was arrested just after 3 a.m. after a homeowner on Farmdale Drive reported seeing James open a side door of the house using force, steal a cell phone and purse and run into woods near the home.
James is also accused of breaking into a Country Oak Road home only minutes later and stealing five bottles of liquor and wine. When he was fleeing the house, deputies observed James drop several of the bottles.
Metts reported that James did not follow deputies’ orders to stop, but K-9 officers and deputies were able to overtake James when he attempted to jump a fence near the Farmdale Drive crime scene.
Deputies were able to recover several of the stolen items by searching the woods. They also discovered several tablets of Xanax, for which James did not have a prescription.
Mental health patient returned to SC
An Upstate man who escaped a Columbia mental health facility on Jan. 2 has been returned to South Carolina, The State reported.
Officials at the S.C. Department of Mental Health reported that Jason Mark Carter was found in Tennessee the day after he escaped custody and has now been returned by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.
According to officials, Carter stole a van in order to commute to Columbia, and then bought a vehicle that he used to travel to central Tennessee before he was apprehended.
Carter was in the custody of the department following the murder of his mother and stepfather. He was arraigned Thursday on grand larceny charges related to the stolen van.
He remains involuntarily committed to the agency and is housed in its secure forensic hospital.
The SCDMH Office of Public Safety and SLED have not yet finalized the joint investigation into Carter’s unauthorized absence.
Oldest known Holocaust survivor dies at 110
Alice Herz-Sommer, believed to be the oldest Holocaust survivor, died at age 110 on Sunday, The Associated Press reported. Her death came only a week before her a movie about her story of surviving two years in a Nazi prison camp through devotion to music could potentially win an Oscar.
“We all came to believe that she would just never die,” said Frederic Bohbot, a producer of the documentary “The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life.” “There was no question in my mind, ‘would she ever see the Oscars.’”
Herz-Sommer was sent with her husband and son from Prague in 1943 to a concentration camp in the Czech city of Terezin. Inmates were permitted to stage concerts in which she, an accomplished pianist, frequently starred.
An estimated 140,000 Jews were sent to Terezin and 33,430 died there. Herz-Sommer and her son, Stephan, were among fewer than 20,000 who were freed when the notorious camp was liberated by the Soviet army in May 1945.
Herz-Sommer died in a hospital after being admitted Friday with health complications.