100 years ago
July 12, 1919
BENTONVILLE -- The two half-breed Indians who, at noon Wednesday, robbed the Bank of Cave Springs of $1,700 in cash, have escaped into Oklahoma and the Bentonville sheriff and members of the posse from this place have returned home today. The robbers held up Cashier Hurd and escaped on horses. They were surrounded late Wednesday afternoon on the Henry Holland farm, eight miles from Cave Springs, according to reports reaching here, but escaped the cordon of officers by cutting a wire fence and heading for the Oklahoma line, which is only about 24 miles from Cave Springs. The sheriff said the posse continued the search until it had ascertained that the men were over the state line.
50 years ago
July 12, 1969
• Forty-six indictments charging 15 persons with violating the civil rights of inmates of the Arkansas Penitentiary, Pulaski County Penal Farm, and Mississippi County Penal Farm was returned Friday by the federal Grand Jury for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Thirty-nine of the indictments alleged brutality in the punishment of inmates at Tucker Unit of the Arkansas Penitentiary in the 1964-1966 period. The indictments...charge...punishing inmates, or causing them to be punished, by sending electrical currents through their bodies, whipping with a leather strap, and through the use of such objects as pliers and hypodermic needles.
25 years ago
July 12, 1994
• For 7-year-old baseballer Tyler Davis of Heber Springs, a trot back to the dugout after hitting a routine pop-up almost cost him his sight. Tyler tripped over first base and fell face-first into the baseline --apparently drawn in lime. The boy's mother, Sandy Davis, did not see the accident, but said, "They told me his face was white." Parents at the field "rinsed and rinsed and rinsed" his eyes until she returned from work and rushed him to an ophthalmologist. "When the doctor pulled back his eyelids, they found more lime caked inside," Davis said. "And the whole time it was in there, it continued to burn." Lime --used for years to mark lines at outdoor sporting events --is a caustic alkali that rapidly destroys plant and animal tissue.
10 years ago
July 12, 2009
• The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has appointed three Features staff editors effective Tuesday. Kim Christ will become Features operations editor, the department's No. 2 position, while continuing to serve as editor of the Family section. Home-Style section writer Marcia Schnedler will become the section's editor, while columnist and movie critic Philip Martin will become MovieStyle section editor. Karen Martin, former Features operations editor, HomeStyle editor and MovieStyle editor, left the newspaper on June 18 for a job in public relations. Christ, 49, started working for the Arkansas Democrat in 1986 as a copy editor. She left for a few years in the early 1990s but worked for the Democrat-Gazette's parent company WEHCO Media for 10 years before returning to the newspaper as a page designer in 2006. She assumed the Family section editor position in May. Schnedler, 66, began as a Democrat-Gazette copy editor in the spring of 2006 and became a fulltime feature writer for the Home-Style section later that year.
Metro on 07/12/2019