JACKSON
Services today for boys killed in shootings
Funeral services are today for two southern Ohio boys who died at home when the 12-year-old fatally shot his 9-year-old half brother and then turned the gun on himself.
A visitation this afternoon will be followed by the funeral at Lewis & Gillum Funeral Home in Jackson for Austin Kidd Wiseman, 12, and Blake Allan Campbell, age 9.
Jackson authorities say they don’t know yet what preceded the shootings. Authorities say each boy had a single gunshot wound to the head when found in their maternal grandparents’ home where they lived. The boys had the same mother.
Obituaries describe Austin as a Boy Scout who enjoyed outdoors activities, and Blake as a Cub Scout who loved animals and video games.
COLUMBUS
AG: nursing home complaint cases up
Ohio’s attorney general says complaints about abuse and neglect in nursing homes have risen this year.
Mike DeWine says his office’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit has opened 131 cases so far this year, compared with 74 in the same period last year.
The Columbus Dispatch reports that there have been 63 new cases just in the past month.
DeWine announced recently that his office will aggressively investigate nursing homes that provide residents with inadequate or abusive care. He had gone to a Zanesville nursing home in eastern Ohio where his investigators used surveillance cameras to uncover what he called shocking and disturbing treatment of residents.
Investigators had placed the cameras in patient rooms with the knowledge of patients and families, but not the nursing home.
“I believe that the majority of Ohio’s nursing facilities are providing excellent care, but not all of them,” DeWine said Friday. “We are going after the facilities that cause harm to their residents, and we will use in-room hidden cameras if necessary.”
More investigations are underway.
COLUMBUS
Wrong-way drivers targeted
Ohio authorities are trying new technology aimed at heading off wrong-way drivers, often the cause of the state’s deadliest highway accidents.
The state Department of Transportation will try using cameras that automatically will alert state workers when there are vehicles going the wrong direction. Details are still being worked out, but they plan to test the effort first in Columbus and Dayton. The Columbus Dispatch reports that a State Highway Patrol study just released found that 37 percent of wrong-way crashes resulted in fatalities. That’s a fatal rate of more than 100 times the rate of deaths from all crashes from January 2011 to April 2013.
Two people have been killed in central Ohio in wrong-way crashes in the past week.
AKRON
Boss reports self for illegal texting
The head of a mass transit agency in northeast Ohio knows the risks of texting while driving, including for himself.
Executive Director Richard Enty with Akron’s Metro Regional Transit Authority is wrapping up a five-day suspension without pay for texting while driving his agency-provided Ford Escape.
He began the suspension Wednesday after turning himself in for texting while driving.
Enty tells the Akron Beacon Journal he realized he had a problem when a bus pulled next to him as he texted and thought one of his drivers might have seen the violation.
Enty joined the Metro agency last year after a long career at the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority. He is paid more than $117,000 a year in Akron and the suspension will cost him $2,254.
CLEVELAND
Mayor to seek third term
Cleveland’s mayor has kicked off his race for a third term at a campaign headquarters rally.
The Plain Dealer of Cleveland reports that supporters packed in Saturday to hear a succession of speakers praise Frank Jackson. The 67-year-old mayor says he is running again because he is one with the people of his city.
The former city council member first elected in 2005 has been praised for trying to turn around the Cleveland’s schools. But opponent Ken Lanci points to the district’s low grades on the state’s education report card. He runs a printing business in the city.
Both candidates are Democrats. Normally, a nonpartisan primary trims the field to two candidates, but they are the only ones running and will face off on the November ballot.
CINCINNATI
Zoo opening 3rd phase of exhibit
The Cincinnati Zoo is opening the third phase of its Africa exhibit this weekend.
Visitors will be able to view the zoo’s new African lions through a 12-foot-tall glass wall and see a giraffe herd from a newly expanded deck. The deck features a covered tree house reaching into the giraffe yard.
The exhibit’s first two phases were completed in 2010. They included an expanded giraffe yard, a flamingo exhibit, and a cheetah encounter where visitors can watch cheetahs run.
The zoo is raising money to complete the final two phases. Zoo officials say they need about $12 million for the fourth and fifth phases that will add zebras, gazelles and African birds.
The final phase will include an exhibit where visitors can view hippos above and below the water.
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