September 6, 2014

Page 1

Perot donates big bucks for Medal of Honor museum in S.C. A3

Manning eyes 2-0 season start Monarchs host Swamp Foxes in home opener B1

SERVING SOUTH CAROLINA SINCE OCTOBER 15, 1894

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2014

75 CENTS

Blood drive ‘battle’ ends BY JOE KEPLER joe@theitem.com The third-annual Battle of the Badges blood drive wrapped up its weeklong campaign in downtown Sumter on Friday, with donations accepted at the main branch of Sumter County Library. Volunteers from American Red Cross and Sumter Police Department worked well past the 4 p.m. deadline as both scheduled and unscheduled donations made for a steady stream to the eight bed stations inside the library and four outside in the Red Cross’ bloodmobile. “We’ve had a really good turnout every day, collecting 83 units,” said Red Cross account manager Chasity Humphries, referencing the total collection in the four previous days. Donors voted for their favorite group — Sumter Police Department, Sumter County Sheriff’s Office, Sumter Fire Department, Sumter County Emergency Medical Services or Sumter-Lee Regional Detention Center — by giving a pint. Humphries acknowledged that the fire at Santee-Lynches Regional Council of Governments on West Liberty Street on Friday afternoon hurt the turnout initially, as many of the donations come directly from emergency service members, but she was encouraged by the amount of walk-up donations from community members and service personnel alike. Cpl. James Sinkler, who took over a leadership role in the police department’s portion of the drive after the recent retirement of former captain Joey Duggan, was happy to see the support from the community as well as his police compatriots in the drive’s third year of existence. “Even though it’s called ‘Battle of the Badges,’ we’re all giving for a common purpose,”

SEE BLOOD DRIVE, PAGE A7

PHOTOS BY MATT WALSH / THE SUMTER ITEM

A firefighter who had recently donated blood in the Battle of the Badges competition is helped out of the burning Santee-Lynches Regional Council of Governments building in downtown Sumter on Friday.

Blaze causes $100,000 in damage downtown Fire seems to have started in old elevator shaft at Santee-Lynches BY RAYTEVIA EVANS ray@theitem.com Sumter Police Department blocked a portion of South Sumter and West Liberty streets and redirected traffic Friday afternoon after the fire department received a call about smoke coming from the Santee-Lynches Regional Council of Governments building in downtown Sumter. The department received the call after 11 a.m. Friday, and fire department Capt. Joey Duggan said it took them about 30 minutes before they were able to contain the area. Duggan said firefighters encountered the fire and smoke in the building when they entered through one of the side doors. As they performed an aggressive fire attack, smoke could be seen from Sumter Street coming from the roof of the building.

“The preliminary investigation shows that it was in an old elevator shaft in the building, and at the bottom of the elevator shaft they stored some cleaning materials,” Duggan said. While firefighters worked to contain the area, EMS was also on scene for safety purposes. Duggan said those in the building had been evacuated and no injuries were reported, but it’s protocol to have EMS available when dealing with a working structure fire. Firefighters cut power to the building while they tried to contain the fire, and Duggan explained that the employees will be able to use the building if they can isolate the power outage to the side of the building where the fire occurred. However, it was unclear Friday afternoon if employees would be able to do that in order to use

A firefighter wipes the sweat from his brow during a fire that broke out at Santee-Lynches on Friday. the building Monday. According to Duggan, the occupants of the building had just gone through a fire drill last week. “They had just performed a fire drill, so they were actually able to give us information on the situation once they evacuated and we arrived,” Duggan said. Although the preliminary

investigation shows the location of the fire being in the old elevator shaft, Duggan said investigators are still working to determine the cause of the fire. The fire department estimates the fire caused about $100,000 in damage — $60,000 in damage to the contents of the building and $40,000 in structural damage.

Plane with unresponsive pilot crashes off Jamaica Larry Glazer motions toward a building to be demolished in Rochester, New York, in 2010. Glazer, a well-known real estate developer, and his wife, Jane, were aboard their small plane when it crashed near Jamaica on Friday after a 1,700-mile flight with an incapacitated pilot.

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Shadowed by two U.S. fighter jets, a small plane with its windows frosted and its pilot slumped over flew a ghostly 1,700-mile journey down the Atlantic Coast and beyond Friday before finally crashing in the waters off Jamaica. The fate of the two or more people aboard was not immediately known. Maj. Basil Jarrett of the Jamaican Defense Force said the plane went down about 14 miles northeast of the

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DEATHS, A7 Ruth Bell Gloria G. Matlock Ella Jane Hicks Elizabeth M. Brown

Randolph O. Jackson Cecil K. Sturkie Willie Canty Barbara Wilson

coastal town of Port Antonio, and the military dispatched two aircraft and a dive team. “An oil slick indicating where the aircraft may have gone down has been spotted in the area where we suspect the crash took place,” Jarrett said at an early evening news conference in the capital of Kingston. No wreckage has been located, but

SEE PLANE CRASH, PAGE A7

WEATHER, A8

INSIDE

SUMMER STUFF

2 SECTIONS, 16 PAGES VOL. 119, NO. 277

Expect a thunderstorm this afternoon and tonight HIGH 91, LOW 71

Classifieds B7 Comics B6 Lotteries A8

Reviews A5 Television B5


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September 6, 2014 by The Sumter Item - Issuu