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WEATHER
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EAR
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Kelsey Perkins
Fifth grade, Annunciation 
High
78
 Low
53
Mostly sunny 
Full forecast on page 2A.
FIVE QUESTIONS
1
 What athlete started a charity called the Peyback Foundation?
2
 What is the original name of the Windy City icon now officially known as Willis Tower?
3
 What comedian is known for the phrase “Git-r-done!”?
4
 In April 1943, Albert Hofmann bicy-cled home under the influence of what newly discovered drug?
5
 What author successfully sued in 2009 to halt U.S. publication of a book based on his most famous novel? 
Answers, 6B
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 16, 2019
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CALENDAR
 Today
 
100+ Women Who Care:
 In Co-lumbus and Lowndes County: 100 women giving $100 means $10,000 awarded to a member-nominated and voted on local charity. Too good to be true? Believe it. #thePOWER-of100. A Membership registration and social is 5:30 p.m. April 16 at Courtyard by Marriott in Columbus.
Friday through Sunday
 
Living Pictures:
 Fairview Baptist Church, 127 Airline Road, Colum-bus, presents its Easter production, “From Prisoners to Believers,” with choirs, orchestra and drama cast at 6:30 p.m. Free to the public. For more information, call the church office, 662-328-2924.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
Today:
Colum-bus City Council regular meeting, 5 p.m., Municipal Complex Court-room
April 18:
Colum-bus Light and Water utility meet-ing, 12 p.m., CLW office building
April 30:
Lowndes County Supervi-sors, 9 a.m., Coun-ty Courthouse
May 6:
Lowndes County Supervi-sors, 9 a.m., Coun-ty Courthouse
BY AMANDA LIEN
alien@cdispatch.com
Contractors respon-sible for storm debris removal in Columbus fol-lowing a Feb. 23 tornado estimate pickup will be completed by this week-end.During a press confer-ence held by the city, Noah Frederick, a supervisor with Looks Great Services, the Columbia-based de-bris removal company that began work in the city last week, said crews continue to make rounds throughout the city.“We feel like we’re coming to the end here,” he said. “We’ve picked up about a million pounds of debris. ... Looking at the streets, we feel like we could be fin-ished by this weekend, which would be good, it being Easter and all.” The completion time is condition-al on debris being accessible to Looks Great trucks and crews, Frederick said. Since city-contracted companies are not allowed on private property, workers can only collect what is left on curbside rights-of-way.
Storm debris removal nearly complete
City contractor estimates work to be done before Easter
Amanda Lien/Dispatch Staff
A Looks Great Services crew removes storm debris from a right-of-way on Third Avenue North near 12th Street South. Looks Good have removed over 1 million pounds of debris since work began last week.
Lowndes oting locations moved
Hunt precinct moves to Stephens Chapel; Carrier Lodge and National Guard Armory precincts also relocated
BY AMANDA LIEN
alien@cdispatch.com
Four Lowndes County voting pre-cincts have been re-named or relocated ahead of county elec-tions in August. The Hunt voting precinct, located in the former Hunt High School that was damaged in a Feb. 23 tornado, will move permanently to the Stephens Chapel Life Cen-ter at 2008 Seventh Ave. N., Lown-des County Circuit Clerk Theresa Barksdale told county supervisors during their regular meeting Mon-day. The Propst Park and Hunt voting precincts will permanently combine and will collectively be re-ferred to as the Hunt precinct. The Carrier Lodge precinct will move to the Boy Scouts building at 221 Second Ave. N. The name will remain the same. The National Guard Armory precinct will be per-manently relocated to the South-side Missionary Baptist Church Life Center at 100 Nashville Ferry Road E., and will be known as the Southside Church precinct.
Courtesy photo
Zor, a Belgian Malinois with GTR K9 Search Team, assists law enforcement in solving a cold case in Alabama in December 2018. Zor is one of several search dogs trained by the Columbus-based nonprofit.
Natural hunters
BY ISABELLE ALTMAN
ialtman@cdispatch.com
Paulette Weible says her hound dog Bella is a “leader.”So much so that when the six- year-old search dog was looking for a missing person in Columbus on  Thursday, she would stop moving every time the police officer walk-ing with her got in front of them to stop traffic.“She’d look at him like, ‘Do you  want my harness on you so you can put your nose to work?’ until he backed off so she could be lead,”  Weible said laughing. “...She does that with all the cops. She would just look at them like, ‘I’m not moving until you get out of my way.’”Bella, who has been a search dog for five years, is one of nine search dogs that Weible and her husband, Bob, use to aid in missing persons cases and criminal investigations in their Memphis, Tennessee-based nonprofit Search Dog South. The couple and the organization’s other dog handlers are called on to assist law enforcement and other govern-ment organizations in looking for individuals, from missing postal  workers to suspects on the run.Paulette said each dog is called on 90 to 100 times per year, usually
See
 DEBRIS REMOVAL
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Search dogs aid law enforcement in criminal investigations, weather disasters
See
SEARCH DOGS
, 6A
BarksdaleFrederick 
BY ALEX HOLLOWAY 
aholloway@cdispatch.com
During Saturday’s se-vere weather event that produced tornadoes lo-cally, a fight broke out between security guards and Bin 612 patrons as staff at the Cotton Dis-trict restaurant and bar attempted to clear the building and close. A video that has spread across Twit-ter, Face-book and  YouTube shows secu-rity guards, hired by Bin 612, yelling profanity at the patrons. Meanwhile, patrons were either refus-ing to leave the building or milling the streets. In the video, someone is  yelling at patrons to “get out” and no one appears to make clear where they are supposed to go. The restaurant has taken a beating on social media ever since, both from people who claimed to have been there and others who simply saw the video afterward. A Mississippi State University student, going by the handle “Sara Beth,” posted on Twitter shortly before 1 a.m. Sunday that she was kicked out of the restaurant. She claimed a bartender stood on the bar and announced “a big storm” was coming and patrons needed to leave.“I was at Bin 612 (Sat-urday night) when the
Fight during Bin 612 evacuation leads to criticism, planned changes
Restaurant tried to close on Saturday as storms bore down on Starkville
Thames
See
 PRECINCTS
, 6ASee
 BIN 612
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ONLINE
 
VIDEO:
 See video of Bin 612 altercation at cdispatch.com.
 
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TUESDAY, APRIL 16 2019
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Tuesday 
SAY WHAT?
“It was a good first half (of the season), but nobody is going remember the first half if you don’t have a good second half.”
MSU sophomore first baseman Tanner Allen. The Bulldogs will play Tuesday against Texas Southern at 6:30 p.m.
Story, 1B.
AP-NORC Poll: Low confidence in schools to respond to gunman
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 WASHINGTON Twenty years after the Col-umbine High School shoot-ing made practicing for armed intruders as routine as fire drills, many parents have only tepid confidence in the ability of schools to stop a gunman, according to a new poll by The Asso-ciated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. And while most Ameri-cans consider schools less safe than they were 20 years ago, the poll finds a majori-ty say schools aren’t at fault for shootings. Bullying, the availability of guns, the internet and video games share more of the blame.Lee Wisdom, a mother of two in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, believes stu-dents and staff have been trained as much as possible to prepare for an attack, but worries schools are still vul-nerable to things beyond their control, like a par-ent holding the door for a stranger or a child sneaking his father’s gun in a back-pack.“As far as inside the school, we’re doing all we can to keep students safe,” she said. “It is the outside of the school and the peo-ple who are coming in and out that I think are the  weak link,” said Wisdom,  who sees school violence as a product of violent vid-eo games, TV shows and the internet’s opportunities to bully and isolate.Half of Americans blame students being bul-lied a great deal for school shootings. Roughly a third say the same of the inter-net and television, music and video games.By and large, schools themselves are less like-ly to be blamed: 59% put not much or no blame on schools for the shootings.  While roughly 4 in 10 say schools have at least some responsibility, just 9% attri-bute a great deal of blame.In the years since two Colorado teenagers gunned down 12 class-mates and a teacher in the Denver suburb of Littleton, schools across the country have fixated on planning for threats that before had been unimaginable. Teachers and students practice fleeing and hiding during realistic shooter scenarios inside school buildings fortified by bolt-ed doors, bulletproof glass and security cameras.
 
SOLUNAR TABLE
The solunar period indicates peak-feeding times for fish and game.Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks 
TueWed
MajorMinorMajorMinor
10:29p5:20p10:56a5:37a1:22a6:26p11:48a6:15a
BY THOMAS ADAMSON
The Associated Press
PARIS — Firefighters declared success Tuesday morning in an over 12-hour battle to extinguish an inferno engulfing Paris’ iconic Notre Dame cathedral that claimed its spire and roof, but spared its bell towers. What remained was a blackened shell of the monument immortal-ized in Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” a building that had survived almost 900 years of tumultuous French history but was devastated amid renovation works at the start of Catholic Easter week.Its iconic twin bell towers re-mained visibly intact. Paris officials said the world famous 18th century organ that boasts 8,000 pipes also appeared to have survived, along  with other treasures inside the ca-thedral, after a plan to safeguard heritage was quickly put into ac-tion. At dawn, the twin 69-meter tow -ers swarmed with building special-ists and architects, looking tiny from the ground as they conducted analysis.“The entire fire is out,” declared Paris firefighters’ spokesman Ga-briel Plus, adding that workers  were currently “surveying the movement of structures and extin-guishing smoldering residues.”“The task is — now the risk of fire has been put aside — about the building, how the structure will re-sist,” said Junior Interior Minister Laurent Nunez in front of the ca-thedral.One of the city’s five senior vic-ars, Philippe Marsset, told AP: “If God intervened (in the blaze) it  was in the courage of the firefight-ers.”“Notre Dame was destroyed but the soul of France was not,” Michel  Aupetit, archbishop of Paris, said on RMC radio.Officials consider the fire an ac-cident, possibly as a result of the restoration work taking place at the global architectural treasure, but that news has done nothing to ease the national mourning.“Notre Dame has survived therevolutionary history of France,and this happened during building works,” said influential former Cul-ture Minister Jack Lang.French President EmmanuelMacron pledged to rebuild the ca-thedral that he called “a part of us”and appealed for help to do so.
Prayers, hymns, community shared in firelight of Notre Dame cathedral
 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PARIS — Some kneeled, some folded their hands to make silent entreaties. Others sang with their eyes focused on the sky that had gone from blue to yellow and or-ange, and filled with acrid smoke.In an impromptu act of togeth-erness and hope, Parisians and vis-itors to France’s charismatic capital came together to pray for Notre Dame as a fire quickly advanced through the cathedral Monday. The blaze that engulfed Notre Dame brought memories and sorrow to people around the world who had seen or dreamed of seeing the church known for its sculpted gargoyle guards and place in literary history. But emotions might have run highest in the crowd outside an-other Gothic church, not far from where Notre Dame burned.In front of the Saint-Julien-des-Pauvres church, a couple hundred people knelt in prayer in the middle of a larger group. More voices  joined an unceasing communal hymn sung mostly a cappella, though accompanied at one point by two violins.“The cathedral is more than walls. It’s a symbol of Catholic France,” said Paris resident Gaetane Schlienger, 18, who tried to climb a tree near the vigil. “But I have a lot of friends who are not Catholic, and for them it also has a huge impact.”Schlienger said she comes to Notre Dame nearly every week be-cause gazing at it “you feel in security, in peace. It’s magnificent.” The cathedral also called to Quentin Salardaine, 25, a doctor from Paris, as flames devoured it and colored the sky.“I think this building just symbolizes Paris, no matter if you’re Cath-olic or not. I’m not,” Salardaine said. “I’m just here because I couldn’t stay at my place just knowing that this thing is happening and there are people gathering, singing this religious anthem.”
Fire out, organ intact but work ahead for charred Notre Dame
‘Notre Dame was destroyed but the soul of France was not’
Archbishop of Paris Michel Aupetit
‘I think this building  just symbolizes Paris, no matter if you’re Catholic or not’
Parisian doctor Quentin Salardaine
Half of Americans blame students being bullied a great deal for school shootings
AREA OBITUARIES
COMMERCIAL DISPATCH OBITUARY POLICY
Obituaries with basic informa-tion including visitation and service times, are provided free of charge. Extended obituaries with a photograph, detailed biographical informa-tion and other details families may wish to include, are available for a fee. Obituaries must be submitted through funeral homes unless the deceased’s body has been donated to science. If the deceased’s body was donated to science, the family must provide official proof of death. Please submit all obituaries on the form provided by The Commercial Dispatch. Free notices must be submitted to the newspaper no later than 3 p.m. the day prior for publication Tuesday through Friday; no later than 4 p.m. Saturday for the Sunday edi-tion; and no later than 7:30 a.m. for the Monday edition. Incomplete notices must be received no later than 7:30 a.m. for the Monday through Friday editions. Paid notices must be finalized by 3 p.m. for inclusion the next day Monday through Thursday; and on Friday by 3 p.m. for Sunday and Monday publication. For more information, call 662-328-2471.
 Terry Hope
COLUMBUS — Ter-ry Hope, 59, died April 14, 2019, at Baptist Me-morial Hospital-Golden  Triangle.Services will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Lowndes Funeral Home Chapel. Burial  will follow at Furnace Hill Cemetery in Ver-non, Alabama. Visita-tion will be one hour prior to services at the funeral home. Lown-des Funeral Home is in charge of arrange-ments.He was preceded in death by his father, Felix Hope Jr.He is survived by his mother, Edna Corbell Hope; son,  Allen Hope; daughters, Heather Henley, Pa-tricia Hope, Kimberly Hope, Angie Fortner and Rita Robertson; brothers, Jeffrey Hope and Tommy Hope; and 10 grandchildren.Memorials may be made to the American Cancer Society, 1380 Livingston Ln., Jack-son, MS 39213.
Roy Ratliff
HAMILTON — Roy Eugene Ratliff, 95, died  April 13, 2019, at his residence.Services with military honors will be at noon Thursday at Center Hill Baptist Church with Terry Edwards officiating. Burial will follow at the church cemetery. Visi-tation will be two hours prior to services at the church. Tisdale-Lann Memorial Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.Mr. Ratliff was born Dec. 18, 1923, in Bald- wyn, to the late Ben- jamin Roy Ratliff and Cleo Carmack Ratliff. He was a veteran and  was formerly employed as a wood finisher with  Warwick Manufactur-ing. He was a member of Center Hill Baptist Church.In addition to his parents, he was pre-ceded in death by his brother, John H. Ratliff;and sisters, Faye Hon-eycutt and Georgene Chaffin.He is survived by his son, Timothy  Wayne Ratliff of South-aven.
Howard Knight
COLUMBUS — Howard Franklin Knight, 67, died April 15, 2019, at Baptist Me-morial Hospital-Golden  Triangle. Arrangements are incomplete and will be announced by Lown-des Funeral Home.
Mattie Smith
MACON — Mattie Smith, 87, died April 15, 2019. Arrangements are incomplete and will be announced by Lee-Sykes Funeral Home of Macon.
See
OBITUARIES
, 5A
 
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TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2019
3A
BY EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
The Associated Press
 JACKSON — The governing board for the upcoming Missis-sippi Lottery is setting rules for ethics and public records.It is also taking steps to hire bankers to provide financial services and a person to run day-to-day operations.Mississippi is one of the last states to create a lottery after legislators voted to do so in  August, partly as a way to pro- vide money to pay for roads and bridges.Republican Gov. Phil Bryant nominated the five lottery cor -poration board members sever-al months ago, and they were recently confirmed by state senators. Tickets for the game of chance could go on sale later this year.Lottery corporation board members met Monday at the Balch & Bingham law office in  Jackson and adopted rules that say many of the corporation’s records will be available to the public. Exceptions include doc-uments that would reveal trade secrets, lottery security or in-formation from a confidential source about vendors or the qualifications or conduct of re-tailers that sell lottery tickets.Board members also adopt-ed an ethics policy that bans lottery directors or employees from having a financial inter-est in any vendor that does business with the lottery. The policy also says any employee, officer or director who leaves the lottery corporation must  wait at least a year before rep-resenting any vendor or lottery retailer in front of the corpo-ration or before accepting any employment with or compensa-tion from any lottery vendor.“Most of this is common sense,” Lucien Smith, a Balch & Bingham attorney, told the board. Also Monday, board mem-bers heard proposals from rep-resentatives of BancorpSouthand Hancock Whitney Bank.  The board members said they  will decide in the next few  weeks on which bank will be awarded a financial servicescontract.“These are both high-qual-ity institutions, as far as I know,” board member GerardGibert said. The decision could be madeat about same time that theboard hires a president for thelottery corporation.
Mississippi lottery board adopts rules on ethics and records
Governing board also taking steps to hire bankers to provide financial services and a person to run day-to-day operations
 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 JACKSON — Early assessments show Satur-day’s tornado outbreak damaged more than 250homes, businesses and public buildings acrossMississippi. The National Weather Service has counted at least 10 tornadoes in Mississippi on Saturday,ranging from Escatawpa on the Gulf Coast as fanorth as Greenwood Springs in Monroe County. The worst damage is around Hamilton in Monroe County, where one man died. Emergen-cy managers say 130 homes, 14 apartments, two businesses and three public buildings are dam-aged or destroyed there.Gov. Phil Bryant visited Hamilton on Mon-day. The Mississippi Emergency Management  Agency set up a mobile command center there providing workspace and augmenting communi-cations while cell and radio towers are repaired.In Warren County, including Vicksburg, pre-liminary assessments show 50 homes, 15 busi-nesses and three public buildings were dam-aged or destroyed.
 Tornadoes hit more than 250 buildings across Mississippi
National Weather Service counted at least 10 tornadoes from storms on Saturday
BY ALEX HOLLOWAY 
holloway@cdispatch.com
 Ward 5 Alderman Patrick Mill-er is resign-ing from Starkville’s board of alderman take a job in Biloxi.Miller submitted a let-ter of resignation to the city on Monday. His resig-nation is effective imme-diately.Miller confirmed his resignation to The Dis-patch. He said he’s taking a job as director of ad-vancement for St. Patrick High School in Biloxi. He currently works with Mississippi State Univer-sity’s Extension Service overseeing municipal pro-gramming, and part of his work includes a role as the director for the Mississip-pi Institute of Municipal Clerks.He said he’s proud of the work the city has ac-complished in his time on the board of aldermen, from an increased digital footprint to adjusting the utilities rate structure to help fund a massive infra-structure project.“I’ve been incredibly proud to serve with May-or Lynn Spruill and the board of aldermen,” Mill-er said. “We have accom-plished more in two years than some cities I’ve seen in my work across the state do in 20 years.”Mayor Lynn Spruill said Miller has been an invaluable alderman.“He’s been a wonder-ful board member and it is our loss,” she said. “I’m very pleased that it’s a positive move for him, because in the scheme of things, if it’s best for his family and him, then I certainly wish him all the best.” With Miller’s resigna-tion, the board will oper-ate with six members for now. Spruill said the city  will consider a date for a special election to fill Miller’s seat at today’s board meeting. She said she hopes the city can set the special election on the same date as a referen-dum to increase the city’s 2-percent tourism sales tax, which aldermen will also consider today.“I’m hopeful that our special election can coin-cide with our referendum so we aren’t holding two elections,” Spruill said. “But we’ll have to see  what those dates would be and how that would make sense for us.”Miller, who is original-ly from Ocean Springs, has lived in Starkville 12  years. He served as Ward 5’s commissioner on the Planning and Zoning Commission for 2015-17, before winning election as an alderman. He followed former Ward 5 Alderman Scott Maynard, who opt-ed not to seek another term. Miller also coached travel basketball for years  while in Starkville.During his time on the board, Miller led the aldermen on a number of issues that have led to changes in city policy. He introduced a change to the city’s parking or-dinance, which was ap-proved and enacted last summer, to set residential parking by the number of dwelling units, rather than square feet.He also encouraged board members to look at adjusting the city’s hunt-ing ordinance to allow for using firearms on certain properties in annexed territory. Aldermen ap-proved the change earlier this year as the city con-tinues to consider annex-ing land to the east.
 Aldermen reaction
Miller’s fellow alder-men spoke well of him af-ter learning of his depar-ture from the board. Ward 1 Alderman Ben Carver said he’s enjoyed working  with Miller.“It’s been a pleasant ex-perience,” he said. “Any time you have younger people running for boards and commissions, it brings an energy and a vi-brance to the board. He’s  young in his career and already has a lot of expe-rience.” Ward 2 Alderman San-dra Sistrunk said Miller has been easy to work  with. She said his calm, thoughtful demeanor was a benefit for the board. “I think Patrick has done a wonderful job,” Sistrunk said. “Especially as a first-time board mem-ber who hit the ground running. He is very thoughtful and deliberate in what he does. He’s very knowledgeable about gov-ernment, and we’re going to miss him.”
Miller resigns as Starkville Ward 5 alderman to take job on coast
Board to set special election to fill vacancy
Miller
Bin 612
Continued from Page 1A
tornado hit and every-one inside was yelled at by the people working and shoved out into the storm,” she wrote. “I was forced outside when the tornado was hitting cam-pus and had to find anoth-er place to seek shelter after getting kicked out. Not OK.” Ty Thames, chef and owner of Bin 612, ac-knowledged to The Dis-patch his staff and the six contracted security guards on duty that night all could have handled the situation better. He main-tains, however, the goal was to get the patrons to take shelter in a parking garage across the street — not to simply turn them out into the storm. Thames said he mon-itored the weather and kept in touch with meteo-rologists throughout Sat-urday. As severe weather approached, his and other Cotton District establish-ments opted to close.Bin 612 was not a safe shelter, he said, and the basement has limited space, though it did shel-ter 15 people Saturday.“Given the wall-to- wall glass windows, it’s not a tornado shelter and needed to be evacuated,”  Thames said. “We were trying to get everyone out. The parking garage  was 50 feet away, and everyone I spoke to was telling me that was much safer.”Bin 612 attempted to close at 9:55 p.m. — about the same time a tornado touched down in the Craig Springs area southwest of Starkville — and Thames said restaurant staff told patrons to seek appropri-ate shelter, including at the parking garage.However, the attempts to get patrons out were not entirely successful, and as the storms grew closer, tension rose and security grew more abra-sive with the crowd. The situation escalated to a point where Starkville police were called to the scene at about 10:31 p.m. to break up the fight. That  was after a pair of torna-does that touched down near Starkville had dis-sipated. However, severe thunderstorms were still in the area.  A video SPD released shows the department’s response to the call, as  well as what appear to be patrons walking in the street. An officer intervened in a physical altercation after arriving, according to SPD’s statement, and pepper sprayed and phys-ically subdued a male subject. The person was given medical aid and re-leased.“The Starkville Police Department did not initi-ate an evacuation of Bin 612, 612 University Dr., or any other business during this time,” the statement says.  Thames said he con-tracts with Average  Joe’s Security to provide guards for Bin 612. The Dispatch could not locate any contact information for the firm, including on its Facebook page, by press time. Thames said he is  working to create and implement an evacuation plan for similar situa-tions and to ensure that his staff is better trained to handle severe weather situations.“I’m getting a couple of meteorology experts to come down and go through an evacuation plan to implement with all my staff,” Thames said. “Hopefully in the future, this will be less of an is-sue. We will set up an escort program an hour before to get people to the parking garage.”
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