Florida Sentinel Bulletin

GEORGIA — When a mother heard knocks at the door of her Loganville, Ga., home Friday afternoon, she initially thought it was a solicitor.

Though the persistent knocks evoked suspicion from the 37-year-old mother of two and lead her to hide herself and her children in her home office on the third floor of her home. At that point, the man forced himself into the three-story residence and allegedly began rummaging through the home and eventually made his way up to the office where the mother was hiding with her 9-year-old twins.

“He opens the closet door and finds himself staring down the barrel of a .38 revolver,” said Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman, who relayed the.

Chapman asked that the woman’s name not be published.

The woman fired six shots at Paul Ali Slater, five of which hit him in the face and neck. Incredibly, he survived but was badly injured. “The guy’s face down, crying,” the sheriff said. The woman told him to stay down or she’d shoot again.

TEXAS — Jerry Hartfield was still a young man when an uncle visited him in prison to tell him that his murder conviction had been overturned and he would get a new trial.

Not long afterward, he was moved off of death row.

“A sergeant told me to pack my stuff and I wouldn’t return. I’ve been waiting ever since for that new trial,” Hartfield, now 56, said during a recent interview at the prison near Gatesville where he’s serving life for the 1976 robbery and killing of a Bay City bus station worker. He says he’s innocent.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Hartfield’s murder conviction in 1980 because it found a potential juror improperly was dismissed for expressing reservations about the death penalty. The state tried twice but failed to get the court to re-examine that ruling, and on March 15, 1983 — 11 days after the court’s second rejection — then-Gov. Mark White commuted Hartfield’s sentence to life in prison.

EDGEFIELD, SC — A 114-year-old South Carolina woman who was the oldest living U.S. citizen has died, two of her daughters said Saturday.

Mamie Rearden of Edgefield, who held the title as the country’s oldest person for about two weeks, died Wednesday at a hospital in Augusta, Ga., said Sara Rearden of Burtonsville, Md., and Janie Ruth Osborne of Edgefield. They said their mother broke her hip after a fall about three weeks ago.

Gerontology Research Group, which verifies age information for Guinness World Records, listed Mamie Rearden as the oldest living American after last month’s passing of 115-year-old Dina Manfredini of Iowa. Rearden’s Sept. 7, 1898, birth was recorded in the 1900 U.S. Census, the group’s Robert Young said.

Rearden was more than a year younger than the world’s oldest person, 115-year-old Jiroemon Kimura of Japan.

Going into this morning, expectations were that that the new report from Bureau of Labor Statistics would show the economy added about 160,000 jobs in December. As it turns out, in the preliminary report, the expectations were quite close.

The BLS reported that the overall economy added 155,000 jobs last month, while the revised unemployment rate was unchanged at 7.8%.

RENO, NEVADA — Jeffrey Blanck, a civil rights attorney in Reno, Nev., has become the first non-Black leader of the Reno-Sparks NAACP in the branch’s 66-year history, according to the group’s web page.

Blanck will be replacing outgoing President Lonnie Feemster, who has just completed his last of four two-year terms at the organization.

Blanck’s involvement with the local NAACP has long been established, with the lawyer serving as the second vice-president and legal redress chair. A 27-year veteran, Blanck was moved to practice law after being inspired by the Civil Rights Movement of the ’60s, according to his website. In a brief statement, Blanck spoke to the diversity of the branch he is soon to helm.

I am proud that our leadership and membership reflect the rich diversity of our community and our country,  said Blanck.

AURORA, Colo.  — SWAT officers who stormed a Colorado home where a gunman had holed up found a horrific scene – four dead bodies including that of the gunman.

Police said the armed man fired shots at officers Saturday from a second-story window before officers killed him. Once inside, they found the bodies of three other adults.

The suspect, whose name was withheld by police, held officers at bay for nearly six hours after neighbors reported gunfire at 3 a.m. inside the modest townhome in the Denver suburb of Aurora, said police Sgt. Cassidee Carlson.

It wasn’t known if officers shot the suspect or if he shot himself.

Investigators said two men and a woman appeared to have been killed before officers arrived.

JACKSON, MS — An explosive federal hate crime case in Mississippi from 2011 has sparked charges against a mob of young Whites who confessed to harassing and assaulting Blacks in the town of Jackson. On Thursday, a sixth member of the group pleaded guilty to charges of a conspiracy to commit a hate crime in federal court.

The death of Black auto plant worker James Craig Anderson was the impetus behind charging 21-year-old Joseph Paul Dominick. The Rankin County man appeared in Jackson’s U.S. District Court as Judge Carlton Reeves announced the plans to sentence him at a later date.

Dominick, the ex-boyfriend of “American Idol” finalist Skylar Laine, is the sixth man of a group of White men and women to be charged with going into Jackson and attacking groups of Black people with slingshots and bottles.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to recover in a New York hospital where she’s being treated for a blood clot in her head.

Her doctors say blood thinners are being used to dissolve the clot and they are confident she will make a full recovery. Clinton didn’t suffer a stroke or neurological damage from the clot that formed after she suffered a concussion during a fainting spell at her home in early December, doctors said in a statement Monday.

Clinton, 65, was admitted to New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday when the clot turned up on a follow-up exam on the concussion, Clinton spokesman Phillipe Reines said. The clot is located in the vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. She will be released once the medication dose for the blood thinners has been established, the doctors said.

Mrs. Lillian Miles Lewis, wife of U. S. Representative John Lewis, died on Monday.

A release from the representative’s office states that she passed away in Atlanta, Georgia. The couple married 44 years ago after meeting at a New Year’s Eve party in 1967.

“The congressman traveled from Washington, D.C. to Atlanta Monday night.”

Mrs. Lewis is survived by Rep. Lewis and one son. The cause of her death has not been released.