Stories that touched our souls, broke our hearts, brought us to tears and forced us to cheer were among the top stories of 2015

The year 2015 took Vicksburg Post readers on a roller coaster ride from the highs of Miss Mississippi earning first runner-up in the Miss America contest, to the horrific low of the discovery of a body in the former Kuhn Hospital.

It’s a year that saw the election of a new Warren County tax assessor and the retirement of long time Warren County supervisor Bill Lauderdale.

These and other stories are among the top 10 of 2015, as judged by the staff of The Vicksburg Post, and presented in order from one to 10.

Kuhn Hospital

Although city officials debated what to do with the Kuhn Memorial Hospital property for almost 20 years, plans by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen to raze the building and clean the property accelerated after the June murder of a Vicksburg woman whose body was found in on the property.

Sharen Wilson, 70, was attacked in her Drummond Street home and taken to the Kuhn property on Martin Luther King Boulevard, where she was killed in one of the buildings and her body left in a wooded area of the property where it was found by ghost hunters. Two men were later arrested and charged in the case.

The board on July 6, the week after the murder, put the 12.5-acre property under the city’s slum clearance ordinance, which would allow the city to raze the property and sell it to recover the costs of the demolition.

When the four parties with an interest in the property failed to attend a hearing on the property in September, the board moved ahead with plans to take the buildings down.

The board has applied for a $250,000 low interest state Brownfields CAP loan and is also seeking a Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields grant to cover the remaining estimated $600,000 cost of razing the buildings and cleaning the property. City officials are also looking to purchase the property to meet one of the CAP loan requirements.

Preliminary plans for the property after demolition include a development of single-family homes and a park.

 

Vicksburg teen attempts to join ISIS

In August Vicksburg woman Jaelyn Young, 20, was arrested along with her boyfriend Mohammed Dakhlalla, 22, of Starkville for allegedly attempting to join ISIS. The two reportedly had been planning for nearly a year to leave the U. S. for the Middle East. They planned to travel to Turkey, get married and then cross into Syria.

The pair were arrested Aug. 8 at Golden Triangle Airport in Columbus just before boarding a flight with tickets bound for Istanbul. Authorities said the two began seeking online help in traveling to Syria as early as May, not realizing they were actually chatting with undercover federal agents.

Young was a 2013 Warren Central High School graduate, honor roll student, senior homecoming maid, a member of the National Honor Society, a member of TEAM 456 Siege Robotics and was a sophomore chemistry major at Mississippi State University. Her family is well-respected in Vicksburg because of her father’s position as a police officer for the city and his Navy service.

Young and Dakhlalla pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization and attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization. The couple are scheduled to go on trial June 6 at the U.S. District Court in Aberdeen, according to published reports. If convicted, both face up to 20 years in prison and a lifetime of probation.

 

City stuggles with fire department overtime, leadership roles

Mayor George Flaggs Jr. clashed with Aldermen Michael Mayfield and Willis Thompson over leadership roles in city government, and with Fire Chief Charles Atkins over fire department management and overtime.

In June, Flaggs proposed changing city government to a mayor and council form, and later proposed changes to the city charter that placed city departments under him and the aldermen. He withdrew the charter plan after Mayfield and Thompson objected because would have allowed the mayor to hire and fire department heads like the fire and police chief.

A final plan was introduced in November placing the mayor and aldermen over different departments without the authority to hire or fire.

The fire department issue involved more than $800,000 in total overtime worked by firefighters during the 2015 fiscal year, which ran from Oct. 1, 2014 to Sept. 30, 2015, and required the Board of Mayor and Aldermen to amend the city budget by $335,000 to make up the shortfall.

To cut that, Flaggs proposed closing Station No. 7 and transferring the firefighters there to other stations. Atkins proposed a compromise but shutting down an engine at the Central Fire Station and transferring a firefighter to Station 7. The other firefighters on the truck would fill in as other stations as needed.

 

Port Gibson man found hanged

After going missing for more than two weeks in March, the body of Otis James Byrd, 54, was found hanging from a tree by a sheet near his home just outside of Port Gibson.

Byrd’s death took several weeks to get answers, which resulted in protests of more than 100 people in the small town of Port Gibson. The protests drew representatives from the NAACP, the National Action Network, and the New Black Panther Party.

The answers that came indicated Byrd’s cause of death was “not homicide,” but Byrd’s family and many others in the community remain skeptical of the findings.

 

teen brings suspected explosive to school

In early December, a Vicksburg teen brought an improvised explosive device to Warren Central Junior High. After someone saw the devise and notified authorities, the school was evacuated and a bomb squad from the Canton Police Department was brought in to handle the situation.

The bomb was removed from the school’s library and detonated in a nearby field. Authorities said the device, if detonated at the school, would have caused little to no damage.

The teen is awaiting judgment of the judicial system.

 

New tax assessor, supervisor

Warren County voters elected a new tax assessor in 2015, when Ben Luckett, a former county appraiser, defeated Assessor Angela Brown, stopping her bid for a third term.

In the race for Supervisor District 4, voters elected John Carlisle to replace outgoing Board President Bill Lauderdale, who decided not to seek re-election and retire. Carlisle defeated Democrat Casey Fisher, who in 2011 ran against Lauderdale.

In other races, the county’s four incumbent supervisors were re-elected, as were Sheriff Martin Pace, Circuit Clerk Jan Hyland Daigre, Chancery Clerk Donna Ferris Hardy, Coroner Doug Huskey and District Attorney Ricky Smith.

 

Company layoffs, declining oil prices

The decline in the oil industry marked by low prices on the commodities market and llow gas prices at the pump, hit Warren County hard, forcing one oil-related business to close its Vicksburg site and another to consider layoffs.

Houston, Texas-based oil service company Allrig announced in September it was closing its Vicksburg facility on U.S. 61 South, which was part of the company’s offshore rig maintenance repair and supply business, affecting 42 employees. Because it was reducing its work in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Beloved student loses battle to cancer

Afton Wallace, a senior at Warren Central High School, was diagnosed with an “impressive” malignant tumor May 22, 2014, and after a yearlong with Ewing’s sarcoma, a very rare, aggressive, childhood bone cancer, Wallace died just days after her high school graduation.

Homecoming queen, Miss Warren Central, class favorite, Star Student, and captain of the swim team, Wallace’s diagnosis and subsequent fight rallied the community, and the hashtag #AftonStrong began appearing seemingly everywhere. Wallace inspired many with her mantra, “Just keep swimming.”

“If you go around moping about how much my life sucks, ‘oh, I have stage IV cancer, and everyone gets to have a normal senior year,’ you’re going to be miserable,” Wallace said. “You have to take the happiness when you can. It’s easiest if you put a smile on your face. Even if it isn’t genuine, it turns into something genuine.”

 

Miss Mississippi takes first runner-up in Miss America pageant

Vicksburg is home to the Miss Mississippi Pageant and this year 2015 Miss Mississippi Hannah Roberts was named first-runner to 2016 Miss America Betty Cantrell during the national pageant held in Atlantic City.

Roberts is a native of Mount Olive and was also named as one of the five STEM scholarship winners, where she was awarded an additional $5,000 in scholarships to the $25,000 as first runner-up.

Following her reign as 2015 Miss Mississippi, Roberts plans to obtain her Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Mississippi Medical Center and become a pediatric reconstructive plastic surgeon.

 

Leader in Me earns national recognition

Big things happening in Vicksburg and Warren county were recognized on a national level in October when the National Dropout Prevention Network presented the Vicksburg-Warren School District and the Vicksburg-Warren County Chamber of Commerce with the Crystal Star Award for their work in implementing The Leader in Me, an initiative based on the popular book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” by Stephen Covey.

The 7 Habits is a synthesis of universal principals of personal and interpersonal effectiveness such as responsibility, vision, integrity, teamwork, collaboration and renewal designed to teach children these habits and make them more successful in school and more prepared for after-school life. The Dropout Prevention Network called the program an excellent illustration of school-community collaboration.

“The Dropout Prevention Network realized the things we’re doing are setting the groundwork for when these children are in high school that they’re not going to be dropouts,” VWSD Board of Trustees President Bryan Pratt said. “That they’re going to have the tools to cope with the challenges they have, whatever it is, we’re giving them the tools to be successful.”