Tag: alabama

Eerie mystery as Alabama woman, 25, vanishes after screaming down phone to family when she approached a toddler she found walking along the highway at night

A 25-year-old woman vanished after pulling over to check on a toddler who was wondering alone along an Alabama interstate highway.

Carlethia ‘Carlee’ Nichole Russell was on the phone with her sister-in-law when she got out of her car to check up on the child. The family member then heard a sudden scream and shortly after, lost all contact with Russell. 

When officers arrived at the location, they found Russell’s car, along with her cell phone, purse, wig and apple watch in the nearby area – but Russell and the child were nowhere to be seen. 

Hoover Police have not received any other calls of a missing child. One witness reported possibly seeing a gray vehicle and a man standing outside of Carlee’s vehicle, but police said they have no additional information. 

‘In the process at some point she got out of the car and my daughter-in-law could hear her asking the child if they were okay,’ her mother, Talitha Russell, said. ‘The child did not respond, or at least she did not hear her respond, he or she respond.’

‘And then she heard our daughter Carlee scream, and from there on all we could hear was noise … background noise in her phone, which we later found out was noise from the interstate.’

Russel left work around 8:20 PM on Thursday before stopping to pick up food for her and her mom. 

She then travelled toward Hoover and called 911 at about 9:30 PM to report the missing child wandering on the side of Interstate 459. 

After calling 911, Russell reportedly called her sister-in-law to tell her she was going to check up on the child. The family member lost contact with her at about 9:36 pm but the line remained open. 

Responding officers located Russell’s abandoned car along with her cell phone, her purse, wig and apple watch in the nearby area, but no sign of her or a child.  

Keep reading

Alabama mother and son left ‘shocked’ after his lemonade stand was reported to state labor department

An Alabama eight-year-old had his sights set on Disney World and decided to open up a lemonade stand to help him get there. However, he and his mother received a surprising call that added a wrench in their plans.

Cam and his mother Cristal Johnson were contacted by the Alabama Labor Department over a complaint that the lemonade stand violated child labor laws. 

“Needless to say, I was very shocked and saddened by the fact that anyone found wrong in what I was trying to do. I was trying to do a good thing, give back to my community and to find out that someone insinuated that I was trying to labor minors, that was…it was pretty sad,” Cristal said on “Fox & Friends First” Thursday. 

Eight-year-old Cam said he started his lemonade stand as a way to make money to go to Disney World. 

“I tried to ask my mom, ‘can I go to the Disney World?’” Cam told host Todd Piro.

After Cam started his lemonade stand, his mother Cristal put up a flyer encouraging other kids to take up a “one-day apprenticeship” at the stand to learn the value of hard work and money.

The flyer said Cristal and Cam were looking to have two kids joins as a “smiler” and “greeter.”

Keep reading

Why Does Alabama Only Let You Consume Peach-Flavored Edibles?

Alabama, which legalized medical weed back in 2021, is just now getting around to licensing cultivators, testing labs, processors, transporters, and dispensaries so qualifying patients can begin to have access. The catch? You can’t smoke it, and all the edibles you consume must be peach-flavored.

You see, if the edibles are cube-shaped (also stipulated by law) and peach-flavored, they’re somehow less likely to interest kids—at least that’s the state Senate’s logic after a heated floor debate, according to Alabama Reflector‘s Brian Lyman (and the new regulations).

“At one point the bill said it would have no taste, but (state Sen. Tim) Melson said that would cause people to gag. So the compromise was a single flavor,” Lyman told AL.com. “Maybe peach isn’t as attractive to people?”

This isn’t the first time lawmakers have used “for the children” justifications to attempt to regulate which products adults may legally buy. For over two decades, Reason‘s Jacob Sullum has documented the assaults on malt liquor, clove cigarettes, and any other vice that might possibly excite the taste buds of minors. In 2020, the Food and Drug Administration banned flavored e-cigarette cartridges to “combat the troubling epidemic of youth e-cigarette use,” ignoring the many surveys in which ex-smokers report that flavored vape cartridges actually helped them quit smoking tobacco cigarettes. And the Alabama case isn’t the first time the kid safety justification has been used to justify the regulation of edibles.

Maryland regulators, who took forever to get their medical cannabis scheme off the ground, were further delayed back in 2019 because they needed to develop rules governing the appearance of edibles “to ensure the safety of minors.” (“I don’t want to deprive anyone of their medication, but let’s treat this like medicine, not make little gummy bears out of it,” said Republican state Sen. Robert Cassilly at the time.) New York has banned the marketing and advertising of cannabis products “designed in any way to appeal to children or other minors.”

In 2014, Colorado regulators deliberated over whether to ban practically all edibles before ultimately allowing a broader variety, but disallowing those shaped like animals, people, or fruit (which are also banned in California). In 2018, Washington state regulators mulled rules that would have banned certain shapes of edibles—along with the use of icing and sprinkles—before ultimately just banning the use of bright colors; per the authorities, product colors must fall within a “standard pantone color book that sets the list of colors and specified ranges within those colors.”

“If you go through a [New York] cannabis dispensary right now,” Columbia University epidemiologist Katherine Keyes told the Associated Press, “it’s almost absurd how youth-oriented a lot of the packaging and the products are.”

Lawmakers, regulators, and public health worrywarts are aided and abetted by a willing media. “Consumption of Marijuana Edibles Surges Among Children, Study Finds,” reads a New York Times headline from earlier this year. “3,000+ young children accidentally ate weed edibles in 2021, study finds,” adds NPR. (Though any accidental ingestion that results in hospitalization is worrying, no children died in any of the thousands of cases analyzed in the study—a not-insignificant point that few journalists pointed out.)

Keep reading

No drugs, no arrest – but bounty of cash for Mobile County Sheriff’s Office

You don’t have to be convicted of a crime for law enforcement to take your money or property. You don’t even need to be charged with one.

The procedure is known as civil asset forfeiture, which allows authorities to take cash and property that they can demonstrate was used in criminal activity or was illicit profits. The latest example in Mobile County occurred April 26 on Interstate 10 in Grand Bay when deputies pulled over an 18-wheeler and seized hundreds of thousands of dollars – despite making no arrests.

The practice has drawn fierce criticism in Alabama and across the country, which some going as far as labeling it “legalized theft.”

Mobile County Sheriff Paul Burch said his agency does not seize property without substantial evidence that it is connected to criminal enterprises.

“We don’t do so lightly,” he told FOX10 News. “And we work within the laws that are provided.”

During the stop last month, Burch said the deputy – assigned to a special operations unit and specially trained to spot possible drug couriers – noticed a discrepancy in the vehicle’s Department of Transportation number.

A search did not turn up any drugs, but a K-9 dog did alert on cash inside the truck – $323,000. The Sheriff’s Office seized it as suspected drug money. Now, it is on the driver to make a claim to try to get the money back.

“He has a right to do so,” Burch said. “And there’s a process for it. But we typically don’t make those type of seizures unless, you know, there’s a strong basis to do so.”

Burch said most people do not try to get it back because if it was ill-gotten, they do not want to draw attention from law enforcement. He would not go into all of the evidence in this case but said there a joint investigation with the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Border Patrol into drug smuggling.

Both federal and state law enforcement agencies routinely seize money and cash unconnected to criminal charges. FOX10 News recently highlighted a case in which Mobile police seized a vehicle – and already had sold it by the time a judge dismissed criminal charges against the driver. The civil case is set for a hearing soon in Mobile County Circuit Court.

Keep reading

Anthony ‘Tony’ Mitchell froze to death after guards put him in walk-in freezer at Alabama jail

An Alabama man froze to death inside a county jail after he was placed inside a walk-in freezer or another cold area by guards, a recently filed lawsuit alleges.

The family of Anthony “Tony” Mitchell says that more than a dozen jail officials in Walker County abused him and then schemed to cover up the alleged mistreatment.

Mitchell dealt with “hellish” conditions inside the jail for roughly two weeks before his death following his arrest in mid-January, his grieving mother, Margaret Mitchell, argues in the suit.

“While Tony languished naked and dying of hypothermia in the early morning hours of Jan. 26 and his chances for survival trickled away, numerous corrections officers and medical staff wandered over to his open cell door to spectate and be entertained by his condition,” the bombshell complaint claims.

A Walker County sheriff’s official told a relative that Mitchell, 33, would receive help while inside the jail after his arrest, but instead he was tased by guards and housed in the jail naked, due to the facility’s suicide watch policy, the lawsuit speculates.

Mitchell suffered from drug addiction and faced both mental and physical health woes, according to his family.

Keep reading

Police “Protect” Town by Arresting Elderly Women for Feeding Stray Cats, Neutering Them, and Getting Them Adopted

Domestic cats in the United States are beloved pets but they can also be a major threat to birds and other wildlife. After the domestic cat was introduced to the United States by European colonists, the number of domestic cats has skyrocketed in the past 40 years.

Today, more than 100 million feral and outdoor cats are loose in neighborhoods and wildlife habitats nationwide. There are so many of them that they are classified as an invasive species with extinction-level impacts. According to several studies, cats kill between 1.3–4 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals in the U.S. per year; making them the largest human-influenced source of mortality for birds and mammals in the country.

Globally, domestic cats have caused the extinction of several mammals, reptiles, and at least 33 bird species.

One would think that people helping to reduce the population — humanely — by feeding, trapping, spaying and neutering as many cats as they can, that this would be a service to society and nature as a whole. Unfortunately for Beverly Roberts, 85, and Mary Alston, 61, one would be wrong.

Roberts and Alston were both found guilty of multiple criminal charges this week, fined, and sentenced to jail and probation, for carrying out this very service.

Keep reading

Cops “Protect” Town by Kidnapping and Caging 82yo Grandma Over Unpaid $70 Trash Bill

Over the years, the Free Thought Project has reported on many asinine reasons police have used to arrest entirely innocent people who have harmed no one. Frequently, long grass on one’s own property or a burnt-out license plate light can get people killed in the land of the free as officers fail to use their discretion and instead react with brute force and callousness toward their fellow humans.

Martha Menefield, an 82-year-old Black woman in Alabama — who’s never had a run-in with the law in her entire life —learned recently that police can and will arrest and kidnap you, even for the most ridiculous reasons. The two armed state agents who kidnapped Memefield used her unpaid $77 trash bill as their ridiculous reason to take her freedom last week.

“Don’t cry,” the officers told her as they kidnapped the elderly woman. “Don’t cry, Ms. Martha.”

Menefield told WIAT that she had no idea why officers pulled up at her house that day as she has never broken the law. When one of the two officers told her they were there to arrest her over her trash bill, Menefield laughed, thinking the officers were joking.

They were not joking.

Keep reading

HATE HOAX: Author of Social Media Threat Proclaiming White Power And Threatening Murder Spree Against Blacks at County Fair Identified As Black Teen

Another day, another race hoax.

In September, Alabama police began investigating a social media post that threatened violence against Black people attending the Lee County Fair in Opelika, AL.

The poster, whose Facebook page included a Confederate battle flag,  said he and friends, “Are coming to [the] Opelika Alabama fair to kill every NEGRO that we lay eye contact on so be prepared. WHITE POWER.”

The Opelika PD announced they have identified the poster as a Black teenager from Lafayette, AL.

AL.com reports:

A Black Louisiana teenager has been identified as the person who posted a social media message late last month that threatened to kill Black people at an Alabama fair and used white supremacist imagery, police said Thursday.

Pharrell Smith, 18, of Lafayette, La., was arrested by Lafayette police Thursday on unrelated charges and is expected to be extradited to Alabama to face a felony charge of making a terroristic threat once he is released from custody in Louisiana, Opelika police said.

Opelika police began investigating the Facebook post Sept. 19 where the poster, later identified as Smith, said he and his friends “are coming to [the] Opelika Alabama fair to kill every NEGRO that we lay eye contact on so be prepared. WHITE POWER.”

Keep reading

Democratic congresswoman refuses to meet with unvaccinated constituents

Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., and members of her staff will not hold in-person meetings with people yet to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

“Proof of COVID-19 vaccinations are required for every in-person or in-office meeting with the Congresswoman or with staff,” reads a disclaimer on an email sent out by Sewell’s office that was obtained by The Spectator. 

The disclaimer came attached to an email offering the staffs of other congressional offices free Alabama peanuts. 

Though trading promotional products from their respective states is a common occurrence for congressional office, staffers looking to get their hands on the Alabama peanuts may be out of luck if they have yet to receive the vaccine. Many of Sewell’s constituents hoping to meet with the lawmaker could be out of luck too, with the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers showing that only 49.5% of Alabama residents are fully vaccinated.

Keep reading