Other days
100 YEARS AGO July 9, 1919
FORT SMITH — The Fire Department is fighting the longest fire on record in Fort Smith’s history. It is located on the city garbage dumping ground along the Arkansas river. The fire broke out a week ago last Thursday and is still burning. Two streams of water have been playing on it ever since.
50 YEARS AGO July 9, 1969
■ A scaffold attached to the Louisiana Street side of the new Worthen Bank and Trust Building at Louisiana and Capitol Avenue collapsed at 2 p.m. Tuesday, dumping two workmen to the sidewalk 28 feet below. One of the workers, Bill Hambrick … was admitted to Arkansas Baptist Medical Center’s intensive care unit with multiple bruises to the chest and back, rib fractures, and other undetermined injuries. The other worker, Clinton Earl Twomey … was treated for a cut right eyelid and bruises on the right elbow and leg, and released. Twomey’s father is the superintendent of masons and the son is an apprentice bricklayer. Twomey said his son and Hambrick were cleaning the precast concrete window units that form the sides of the building. A spokesman for the bank said it was not known whether a capstone from which the scaffold was suspended gave way or in its fall the scaffold pulled one of the stones loose.
25 YEARS AGO July 9, 1994
TEXARKANA — Authorities have recovered near Fouke nearly $75,000 in cash, food stamps and traveler’s checks allegedly taken during an armed robbery in Louisiana and arrested Curtis Smith, 36, of Fouke, at his home. Police on Friday also sought his brother, Mike Smith, 35, on an armed robbery warrant. Authorities said two men walked into the Belcher Bank in Belcher, La., on June 30 and made the customers lie on the floor while a clerk emptied money out of the safe into a bag. Sgt. Toby Giles of the Miller County sheriff’s office said police arrested Curtis Smith on Wednesday night. He said Smith signed extradition papers and authorities took him back to Caddo Parish, La.
10 YEARS AGO July 9, 2009
■ Federal authorities have arrested about 30 people and seized about 350 dogs in dogfighting raids Wednesday across six states including Arkansas, the Justice Department said. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which cooperated in the investigation, said the target of the raids was believed to be the largest dogfighting operation in U.S. history. The raids by task forces involving federal, state and local law enforcement agencies were conducted across Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas after a nine-month investigation. Dogfighting is banned and is a felony throughout the United States. President George W. Bush signed a law two years ago that increased penalties for activities that promote or encourage animal fighting. John M. Bales, the U.S. attorney in eastern Texas, said in a news release that nine people — including two Arkansans — were indicted in the interstate dogfighting ring on June
30. The indictment was unsealed Wednesday. They were all charged with three counts — conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, sponsoring or exhibiting an animal in an animal fighting venture and buying, selling, delivering or transporting animals for participation in an animal fighting venture.