Other days

100 YEARS AGO Feb. 26, 1919

■ Mrs. R. L. Gentles, one of the women witnesses in the case of the Twelfth street pike fight between W. D. Lowe and Walter Washington Sunday night, escaped from the isolation hospital late yesterday afternoon. The women, who were arrested Monday morning, were transferred to the hospital, and were to have been held there until the preliminary hearing, which was set for March 1. Just how Mrs. Gentles managed to escape could not be learned.

50 YEARS AGO Feb. 26, 1969

MARION — Crittenden County Sheriff Marion Thomas said Tuesday that state fire marshals would be at Marion to investigate the possibility of arson in fires that occurred here last week. The sheriff said a quart fruit jar full of gasoline and a paper bag fuse was found Monday behind the Elite Lamp Manufacturing Company plant here. The bomb didn’t explode, apparently because it was extinguished by rain Saturday morning, the sheriff said. He said he didn’t know if the fire bomb had any connection with the three fires here last week, “but the fire marshals are employed to investigate such incidents, so we decided to call them in.” The sheriff said the county had asked for the fire marshals before the fire bomb was discovered.

25 YEARS AGO Feb. 26, 1994

DeWITT — Two of the five men who escaped from the Arkansas County Jail last week were arrested in separate locations late Thursday and Friday, but a convicted killer sentenced to life in prison the day before the escape remains at large. Pulaski County deputies arrested escapee Larry Joe Easley, 42, of Tyronza on Friday afternoon following a traffic accident, while an anonymous tip led police to arrest Dale Sims, 28, of Holly Grove late Thursday night at a Pine Bluff convenience store. Dale Sims is the cousin of Terry Sims, 17, of the Lookout community in Monroe County, who was convicted of capital murder Feb. 16 in Stuttgart. A jury found him guilty in the shooting deaths of Casscoe grocery store owner Julian Russell, 68, and clerk Mary Lou Jones, 58, on Dec. 15, 1992. He received the life sentence the next day, hours before his escape. … Arkansas County sheriff’s deputies picked up Dale Sims at about 11:30 p.m. and returned him to the jail in DeWitt.

10 YEARS AGO Feb. 26, 2009

MALVERN — Two men were injured in a Wednesday afternoon crash in Malvern after a pursuit by troopers, the Arkansas State Police reported. About 1:30 p.m., a trooper spotted a van heading east on U.S. 270 west of Malvern being operated “in a reckless manner and at a high rate of speed,” state police spokesman Bill Sadler said. A trooper tried to stop the vehicle, but the van entered downtown Malvern and struck two cars before crossing a sidewalk and running into a furniture store, Sadler said.