Stars and Stripes is coming to our area soon Sumter Item will launch free paper for military news starting in January D1
Look for obituaries and opinion pages in today’s D section.
SERVING SOUTH CAROLINA SINCE OCTOBER 15, 1894
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2014
$1.50
Sumter earns ‘work ready’ status BY JIM HILLEY jim@theitem.com Sumter County has joined the list of counties in South Carolina certified as “work ready,” Lt. Gov. Yancey McGill and Lt. Gov.-Elect Henry
McMaster announced. Sumter and 17 other counties were recognized for achieving certification through the South Carolina Work Ready Communities initiative, a South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce news release said.
The newly certified counties have met specified criteria, including having a certain number of residents with a National Career Readiness Certificate, taking steps to show business support, achieving a 73.1 percent graduation rate based on a three-
year average and a 1 to 2 percent increase of the threeyear average baseline aligned with the S.C. Department of Education annual improvement goals. Twenty-five percent of workers who receive an NCRC must also take the WorkKeys
Atop a mountain of generosity
talent assessment, according to www.scwworkready.org. The other counties listed in the release are Abbeville, Allendale, Anderson, Bamberg, Beaufort, Berkeley, Cherokee, Dorchester,
SEE WORK, PAGE A11
N.Y. officers ‘assassinated’ in patrol car Suspected gunman reportedly angry after man was choked
KEITH GEDAMKE / THE SUMTER ITEM
Crystal Kirlis and Allen Jones sit atop a pile of shoes to unload them for Soles 4 Souls on Thursday afternoon. The organization collected 17,000 pairs of shoes from across the area to be distributed locally and internationally.
NEW YORK (AP) — A gunman who announced online that he was planning to shoot two “pigs” in retaliation for the chokehold death of Eric Garner ambushed two police officers in a patrol car and shot them to death in broad daylight Saturday before running to a subway station and killing himself, authorities said. The suspect, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, wrote on an Instagram account: “I’m putting wings on pigs today. They take 1 of ours, let’s take 2 of theirs,” officials said. He used the hashtags Shootthepolice, RIPErivGardner (sic), RIPMikeBrown. Police said he approached the passenger window of a marked police car and opened fire, striking Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in the head. The officers were on special patrol in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. “They were, quite simply, assassinated — targeted for their uniform. ... They were ambushed and murdered,” said Police Commissioner William Bratton, who looked pale and shaken at a hospital news conference. Brinsley took off running and went down to a nearby subway station, where he shot himself. A silver handgun was recovered at the scene. “This may be my final post,” he wrote in the Instagram post that included an image of a silver handgun. Bratton confirmed that Brinsley made very serious “anti-cop” statements online but did not get into specifics of the posts. He said they were looking at
SEE VIOLENCE, PAGE A11
Today’s solstice brings longest night of the year BY IVY MOORE ivy@theitem.com Have you noticed the shadows getting longer as the days grow shorter? That’s because
VISIT US ONLINE AT
the
.com
winter is approaching. In fact, it will arrive at precisely 6:03 p.m. today for those of us in the eastern U.S. This day will be the shortest day and longest night of the year.
The winter solstice is not a visible phenomenon for those of us on earth, but unlike the ancients, we do know what astronomical event causes it. Scientist Deborah Byrd, who
DEATHS, D5 Novalene D. Austin John R. Hobbs Pearlene Reese Barbara Ann Roundtree Joseph R. Mitchell
Rebecca Lawyer Carolyn Martin Gregory Georgia Charlie Johnson Kenneth E. Crowder Sr.
has been educating radio listeners and readers of her blog about astronomy since 1991, explains it well: “The solstice is ... caused by Earth’s tilt on its axis, and its motion in
orbit around the sun.” The Earth’s distance from the sun, which changes throughout the year, has
SEE SOLSTICE, PAGE A11
WEATHER, A12
INSIDE
RAIN IS HERE AGAIN
5 SECTIONS, 40 PAGES VOL. 120, NO. 57
Mostly cloudy with a shower; periods of rain this evening HIGH 53, LOW 42
Business D1 Classifieds D6 Comics E1
Lotteries A12 Opinion D4 Television E3