News for a Tuesday

Body found in SUV
WLOSers delivered “breaking news” at 11 last night – somebody found a dead body inside an SUV in a shopping center parking lot in Waynesville. The SUV had Massachusetts plates. Police were treating the scene as a crime scene, but they were still investigating, WLOSers said.

Gibson remembered
WLOSers did yet another story on Devin Gibson’s grave site. The 8-year-old boy died while locked inside the trunk of a car and his mother was acquitted of second degree murder charges earlier this year.

The community rallied by donating money to buy a stone for the boy’s unmarked grave. People sent in some $2,500 to Forest Lawn Cemetery. The cemetery matched that to buy the stone. On Monday, the boy’s mother, Michelle Gibson, a couple of friends, a pastor and state Rep. Bruce Goforth gathered at the grave for a little memorial. Goforth was there because he wants to work with Michelle Gibson to improve the state’s child care system.

Sex offenders banned in Macon
WLOSers said Macon County is the latest local government to ban sex offenders from public parks. At 6, WLOSers said Macon was following Woodfin, Fletcher and Canton in doing so. At 11, they mentioned only Woodfin and Fletcher.

Israeli Army volunteer
In perhaps the most intriguing story of the day, WLOSers brought us the story of a teen who had traveled to Israel and joined the frickin’ Army. Say what?

Yup. That was the story of John-Mark Searcy, a recent high school grad (in Henderson County? we werene’t sure) who spent a month in Israel as a volunteer soldier. His time came before the fighting with Hezbolla, he said. He had a bunch of photos on his computer that showed him looking like a bad-ass. He said he was stationed an hour from Haifa. “I felt like I needed to do something,” he said.

The story was light on detail about how this all works. How does the Israeli Army just let a teenager drop in for a month and volunteer? Exactly who is this kid? Is he Jewish? Guess we’ll never know.

Fading driver’s license
Cherub Charu went down to the DMV to talk to people who were getting new driver’s licenses because the photo on their current license was fading. The state issued more than 1 million driver’s license that fade quickly because of some weird chemical solution used on the id cards. The upshot was that basically everybody hates having their picture made at the DMV.

In other news…
A truck ran off the side of the road in Madison County… Riding the bus in Ashvegas is free for the next 90 days… People in Beaverdam on Wolf Cove Road are pissed off about a new development that will bring more than 100 news homes to the area… Longtime WLOSer Bill Banner died Monday. He retired in 1999 after a long career in television, and was a voice talent… And Fletcher is getting closer to dealing with 970 tons of contaminated that dirt that is just sitting in piles in a lot. The dirt is contaminated, but once it’s cleaned up, the site it’s on will be used as a new Fletcher town center, according to Sheraldo.