Other days
CAMDEN — John Jackson, a negro, was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death by the Ouachita Circuit Court yesterday. Jackson killed a negro woman named Lilly Mitchell near Reader last August. Jackson said that he shot the woman in self-defense. He said he was entering the woman’s house, expecting to meet his common-law wife there. The woman met him at the door, cursed him, and ordered him away, he said. He claims that he turned to leave the door, then heard a gun click, faced the door again in time to see a shotgun pointed at him from the woman’s hands, and that he fired to save his own life.
100 YEARS AGO Dec. 20, 1917
50 YEARS AGO Dec. 20, 1967
What would a serviceman in Vietnam like for Christmas? Short of stateside rotation, it’s probably somewhere in a 20,000 pound shipment mailed recently by Chester Kirk. Included in the massive “gift lift” are such items as chewing tobacco, Bibles, candy, toothpaste, hair cream, razors and razor blades. Kirk is the father of Lt. Alstin Kirk, U.S. Navy chaplain serving in Vietnam. Kirk received a letter from his son pointing out servicemen along the DMZ line have little access to stateside type PX’s. The chaplain asked his father if he could round up some used paperback books and personal items to help fill the gap. He called on North Little Rock Mayor William F. Laman, who offered the use of North Side fire stations and the water department as book drops.
Crowds of shoppers converging on Arkansas’ shopping meccas during the holiday season also attract opportunistic thieves, but area mall administrators say they have the upper hand. Little Rock police also offered tips this week to discourage criminals both at home and on the road. “There’s definitely an increase just due to the number of shoppers,” Park Plaza mall director Randy Powell said this week of holiday season shoplifting. “But I wouldn’t say there’s a significant increase.”
25 YEARS AGO Dec. 20, 1992
10 YEARS AGO Dec. 20, 2007
Sending a racially hostile letter threatening the black family next door was the “biggest mistake” of her life, a weeping Maumelle woman told a Little Rock federal judge Wednesday, explaining her intentions were to protect her daughter. “I was scared my little girl was going to be harmed,” 43-year-old Shawn Simone Hardin told U.S. District Judge James Moody. Hardin pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor hate-crime charge of interference with housing because of race in September.