Donkey
baseball
coming to
Grover
GROVER - No foolin!
Donkey baseball is coming
to Grover Municipal Park
Saturday at 6 p.m. for the
benefit of a woman suffering
with cancer:
A'S
ball played while ding a
-donkey and a dozen or more
donkeys will be supplied by
Southeastern Rodeo Associ-
ation.
The game will be hard to
predict but should evoke fun
for spectators as players run
or attempt to run the bases
and play ball on the backs of
donkeys who could care less
about “rounding third”.
“It’s a fun event,” says
’$
|
Joey Guffey, who rides for
‘the rodeo group. He is spon-
soring the benefit for his
mother-in-law, Connie Wil-
son, and all proceeds will
help defray her medical
costs. Tickets are $6 for
adults and $5 for children.
Guffey said the games
will start promptly at 6 p.m.
on the baseball field at the
park.
GROVER
Mayor to
file for 0
re-election
ws ELIZABETH STEWART
lib.kmherald@gmail.com
GROVER - Before filing
ends Friday at noon for
county
offices,
Mayor J.
D. Led-
Proired
plans to
file for
election
for a
first four
year term.
"I'm running," said the
former councilman who was
appointed several months
ago to fill Robert Sides’ un-
expired term.
Three seats on the board
are up for grabs on election
day in Noyember but incum-
bents. Jackie Bennett and
Cobia
indicated, Monday at a
work session that they may
offer as write-in candidates.
The third seat open is Led-
ford's former council seat.
No wannabes were men-
tioned.
Four years ago no one
filed for office in Grover
with the county board of
LEDFORD °
elections. But voters turned .
out at the polls at Grover
Town Hall and wrote the
names of their choices on the
ballot.
Why do candidates take
the risk of a write-in?
See LEDFORD, 5A
AEN Les
© arawvevARAVSAREL A
Volume 123 ¢ Issue 28 * Wednesday, July 13, 2011
; © 108 8. Piedmont Av
“Kings Mountain, NC uy
739-2591
‘Brown seeks to turn abandoned
‘mill into recreational campground
a
This 57.52-acre tract of land on S. Battleground Ave., where Park Yarn Mill once stood, may one day
he the site of a campground.
Less hang for audience,
BIG bang for technicians
EMILY WEAVER
Editor
The grand finale at this year's fire-
works show fell a little short for the
crowds watching below, but for the py-
rotechnicians shooting the fireworks from
a YMCA ball field the last fuse they lit
went off with a bang...a BIG bang.
A combination of the evening's earlier
torrential rains and a different than old
school arrangement of the fireworks in
launch position resulted in a massive ex-
plosion on the launch pad.
Mortars, tubes and wooden two-by-
fours used as props were reduced to
shards of rubble and shrapnel that littered
the fields and the YMCA's swimming
pool several hundred yards away. A cou-
ple of small craters were found on the
baseball diamond and smoke filled the air.
"The best thing is that nobody got
hurt," said Scott Neisler, who puts on the
fireworks show each year with his team
of pyrotechnicians.
This year his son Garrett Neisler led
the show. Garrett has been a part of his fa-
ther's fireworks production team for
years. When gigs fall on the same night
or around the same time the Neislers will
often split up with Garrett and company
handling one event and Scott and com-
pany the other.
Scott was putting on a fireworks show
Photo hy KYRA
A. TURNER
in Banner Elk on the night of July 4th
when he heard what happened. Oddly
enough, for the first time in Scott's. 22
years of shooting fireworks, a mortar had
exploded on him too that very same night.
"The sobering thing is you always got
to really be careful with fireworks," Scott
said.
He guessed that rain probably played a
factor in both explosions. Only one shell
exploded pre-flight on Scott and his team.
There were no injuries.
Their finale went off without a hitch -
100 big bangs in a spectacular salute to
American independence. The sky over the
Banner Elk golf club was painted with
beautiful streaks of red, white, blue and
other hues#But in Kings Mountain the
100 big bangs happened all at once...on
the ball field. To some in the crowd below
it was a puzzling end. No more fireworks,
just music.
To those on the ball field it was a close
escape. The shell-shocked technicians ob-
served the "war zone".
Rain in one of the tubes had saturated
a lift charge on the bottom of the shell.
Once lit, the shell refused to leave its rack
even when the timing fuse started to burn.
It exploded pre-flight and set off a chain
reaction among the other shells tucked be-
side it.
See FIREWORKS, 5A
gu ELIZABETH STEWART
{ _ lib.kmherald@gmail.com
Kings Mountain developer Michael Brown
and his wife, Cynthia G. Brown, have pur-
chased 57.522 acres at 114 Raven Drive, com-
monly called the old Park Yarn Mill (Glen
Raven Mills, Inc.) property, from the Kings
Mountain Consortium for Progress.
The Kings Mountain Planning & Zoning
Board was meeting Tuesday night to consider
Brown's request to rezone the back portion of
- the property from residential to conditional use
R-20 to construct a campground. The camp-
ground would have 25 initial sites with the
possibility of a total of 143 and may border the
Gateway Trails.
The Consortium was founded some years
ago by the the late former mayor John Henry
Moss as president with its goal fo draw new
industry and business to the area. Officers of
the Consortium are vice-presidents Tony
Ruppe and Jim Childers and M.C. Pruette,
See CAMPGROUND, 5A
s
Deputies seize
nearly 7 lbs. of
cocaine on I-85
= = EMILY WEAVER
a Editor
Deputies of the Cleve-
land County Sheriff's De-
partment seized 6.6 1bs. of
cocaine and $3,000 in U.S.
currency from a "suspi-
cious! Chrysler traveling
down I-85 around
lunchtime Monday. -
Sheriff Alan Norman
said that Dep. Dwight
Fitch spotted -the vehicle
and noticed the passengers
were acting "in a’ suspi-
cious manner". In a traffic
stop on I-85 North,
deputies discovered co-
caine in a modified secret
compartment inside the ve-
hicle.
Norman said that the
cocaine was in its purest
form worth about
$100,000.
"Once divided among
dealers," he said, its value
would have grown. "Each
time it passes thru a
dealer's hands a substance
like baking powder is usu-
ally added to it to give
more weight."
The street value of this
amount of cocaine, he said,
can exceed $250,000.
Deputies also seized cur-
rency and the vehicle the
suspects were using to
"transport the narcotics".
Sheriff Norman sus-
pects this seizure will have
a far-reaching, even if it's
only temporary, impact on
the war on drugs in the
areas this substance was
destined for. Whether this
drug would have ended up
on the streets of New York
or in Cleveland County its
existence is no longer a
threat, he added.
Deputies arrested Elvis
Peguero Pena, 23, of Al-
lentown, Penn., for two
counts of trafficking a
See DEPUTIES, 5A
Mead found
not guilty in
murder of
KM nurse
JOHNSON
Monday morning.
A Mecklenburg County jury
Tuesday at 3:40 p.m. found Micheal
Mead, 42, of Gastonia, not guilty of
first degree murder and arson in the
July 2008 death of Kings Mountain
Hospital Emergency Room nurse
Lucy Dye Johnson.
The jury began its deliberations
. The 31-year-old mother of two was found dead in
her burning home on the morning of July 16, 2008. She
was nearly four months pregnant when she was mur-
Sored Aa autopsy report revealed that she had been shot
Banks Trust
209 S.
n the back of her
vi at the
scene also noticed her en-
gagement ring was missing.
See MEAD, 5A 8™98525"00200'"
THAN
Building Trust, Building Smiles,
Battleground Ave., Kings Mountain * 704.739.5411
www.alliancebanknc.com « memser ric
|
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