Other days

100 YEARS AGO

March 9, 1919

■ Deputy Sheriff J.J. Hawkins and E.S. Jones yesterday cleared up a shooting mystery, which culminated in the arrests of Mikey O’Connor and J.C. Stephens, two white men, on charges of bringing whiskey into the state. Albert Whitley is at the Little Rock Sanitarium with a bullet wound in his back and Mrs. Stephens, wife of J.C. Stephens, is suffering from a shot in her hand. … Whitley told them that he and two other men were coming to Little Rock from Pine Bluff and as they were passing through McAlmont an automobile occupied by four negroes followed them and began shooting into the car. … Officers Hawkins and Jones then went to North Little Rock and met a negro who chanced to have been in McAlmont at the time of the shooting. … He said that the automobile was loaded with whiskey and that a carload of negroes followed them, intending to take it away from them. The officers then located the “booze car,” a Dodge touring car, which showed dents made by bullets. They then arrested Stephens and O’Connor on charges of bringing whiskey into the state. According to police, the men confessed to bringing in whiskey which they unloaded at McAlmont, where they were met by Whitley and the women.

50 YEARS AGO

March 9, 1969

LEWISVILLE — Army Capt. Neil A. Dennington, son of Mr. and Mrs. Dan Dennington of Lewisville, recently received the Silver Star in ceremonies at Fort Bragg, N.C. Dennington earned the award for gallantry in action while engaged in ground operations against hostile forces in Vietnam. He is an operations and training officer in the Seventh Special Forces Group, First Special Forces.

25 YEARS AGO

March 9, 1994

SEARCY — A federal fugitive missing nine years was caught Tuesday at a restaurant in White County by federal marshals and the Searcy Police Department, U.S. Marshal Conrad S. Pattillo said. Pattillo said federal and local police arrested Joseph T. Ray, 56, in the parking lot of a McDonald’s in Searcy. Ray had been convicted on numerous occasions of interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle, he said. Ray was arrested at 8:30 a.m. in the parking lot of the restaurant while leaving it. He had been under surveillance by federal marshals. Ray had been a fugitive since he failed to return to federal prison after an unescorted furlough in 1985, Pattillo said. Ray of Cahokia, Ill., was charged by a federal grand jury in Little Rock in 1983 with transporting stolen vehicles from a three-state area to Forrest City in July and August 1981.

10 YEARS AGO

March 9, 2009

FORT SMITH — Two people were killed Saturday night while racing on a highway in Fort Smith, the Arkansas State Police reported. George Purvis, 37, and Kim Tran, 25, were killed in the accident at 11:06 p.m. in the 2600 block of Clayton Expressway, according to a state police report. At the time of the crash, Purvis, driving a Ford Mustang, and Tran, a passenger, had been headed west on the wrong side of the highway while racing a black Dodge pickup, the report says. Purvis swerved to avoid oncoming traffic, and the Mustang spun out of control, leaving the road and hitting a tree, the report says.