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‘You can feel the spirit …’
Drone pilot gets 15 years for prison flight BY MEG KINNARD The Associated Press COLUMBIA — A man has been sentenced to 15 years behind bars for trying to use a drone to smuggle contraband into a maximum security South Carolina prison, officials said Tuesday. Department of Corrections spokeswoman Stephanie Givens told The Associated Press that Brenton Lee Doyle has been sentenced to 10 years for trying to bring contraband into prison and five years for marijuana possession. She said he pleaded guilty in a Lee County court. In April, officials found a crashed drone in bushes outside the walls of Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville. Officers also found materials that inmates are not supposed to have, including phones, tobacco products, marijuana and synthetic marijuana. The drone never made it inside the 12-foot-high, razor-wire fence. At the time, officials said they weren’t sure exactly where the drone would have gone if it made it over the wall. Corrections officials have long said that the use of banned cellphones behind bars is a security threat to correctional officers and the public. In 2010, then-Corrections Capt. Robert Johnson was shot six times at his Sumter home in a hit police said was orchestrated by an inmate using a cellphone smuggled into prison. Johnson, who worked at Lee, survived and has since retired. The department has been trying to take measures to stop future drones from infiltrating the state’s correctional facilities. In December, Corrections officials began installing new surveillance towers and thermal imaging cameras to cut down on contraband at Lee. Officials have said most attempts to throw items over the fence for the inmates occur at night, so the thermal technology cameras should help detect such incidents. “Smuggling drugs and cellphones into our prisons jeop-
HAMLET FORT / THE SUMTER ITEM
Customers at Summerton Diner look over the menu on Tuesday at the Church Street landmark.
Summerton restaurant a Church Street pilgrimage BY HAMLET FORT hamlet@theitem.com
O
n Church Street in Summerton sits the Summerton Diner, and anyone involved with the
community mainstay says its address helps to define the diner’s soul.
“Our intent was for it to be more of a ministry opportunity,” says Shannon Allan, who owns the diner with her husband, Troy, and lifelong friends Ken and Bridget Wells, all four Summerton natives. “Our interests were bigger than just a business.” And the diner is truly more than a business — local regulars, visitors and employees all say that, more than anything, it’s a home. Not long after the foursome bought the diner, they changed the day off from the traditional Thursday to Sunday, despite Sunday being their busiest day of the week. They made the switch to give their employees the opportunity
to go to church, if they wished. Allan says it felt “hypocritical” attending church each Sunday but having employees work. Diane Etheredge, a waitress for 29 years, says that was the best thing the new owners could have done. Christian values are important to them and to the diner. “You just feel the love in the atmosphere,” she said. “You can feel the spirit. It comes from God and goes down to all of us — that’s how we look at it. God is what makes this place.” Prayer is an important part of the
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Obama barrels into final act of presidency BY NANCY BENAC The Associated Press WASHINGTON — It’s not just the State of the Union speech that President Obama is turning on its head. It’s the whole notion of a lame-duck president. The president is barreling into the final two years of his presidency determined to hold his own and then some against resurgent Republicans.
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He’s rejecting any notion that he should be cowed by the midterm election results that gave the GOP a resounding victory. And while Obama has spoken of the need to find common OBAMA ground with Republicans, in the 11 weeks since the November elections he’s dished out seven veto threats — two of them
on Tuesday, just before the speech — and has shown little sign of moving closer to the Republicans on specific policy proposals. Breaking with tradition, the president dispensed with suspense and released the details of his State of the Union proposals well in advance of Tuesday night’s speech to a joint session of Congress and millions of television viewers. With TV audiences for the annual speech shrinking, the White
House decided to reinvent the State of the Union as weekslong campaign rather than cede the spotlight for much of January to the Republicans. Obama’s proposals include higher taxes on the wealthy, making community college free for many students, expanding paid leave for workers and more — measures unlikely to find much Republican support.
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Shiite rebels shell Yemen president’s home, take over palace BY AHMED AL-HAJ The Associated Press SANAA, Yemen — Yemen’s powerful Shiite Houthi rebels shelled the residence of the country’s embattled president Tuesday and simultaneously swept into the presidential palace in the capital, Sanaa, as a top military commander warned that a full-fledged “coup” was underway. President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi was inside the residence as it came under “heavy shelling” for half an hour, but he was unharmed and protected by guards, officials said. In New York, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting over the chaos in Sanaa. The shelling was a dramatic development that put the U.S.-backed Hadi into a precarious position and represented the starkest challenge to his authority since the Houthis swept into Sanaa from their northern stronghold
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Houthi Shiite rebels sit in a military truck while patrolling a street in Sanaa, Yemen in 2014. and seized the capital in September. Information Minister Nadia alSakkaf posted on her Twitter account that the shelling started at 3 p.m. local
time “by armed forces positioned over rooftops facing” the president’s house. At the same time, Houthi rebels also raided the president’s offices, sweep-
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ing into the presidential palace and looting the grounds’ arms depots, according to Col. Saleh al-Jamalani, the commander of the Presidential Protection Force that guards the palace. “This is a coup. There is no other word to describe what is happening but a coup,” al-Jamalani told The Associated Press, adding that the rebels were likely aided by insiders. In a starkly different narrative, the Houthis’ TV network al-Masseria claimed the rebels intercepted and foiled attempts by an unspecified group to loot weapons from the presidential palace. The escalation shattered a tense ceasefire that had held overnight and throughout the morning, following Monday’s heavy clashes that engulfed the city, leaving ordinary Yemenis stunned and fearing for their country. The U.N. Secretary-General Ban
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