Jacksonville

A north Alabama man was arrested Friday in connection with two homicides after patrol officers in another part of the state said they found him driving around with his dead wife’s body in the front seat beside him. Fred Sommerville, 47, is accused of killing his estranged wife, Lakresha Sommerville, 39, of Ardmore, Tennessee, who was reported missing Thursday in Limestone County, Alabama. Ardmore sits on the southern Tennessee state line and abuts its sister city of the same name in Alabama. Law enforcement officials have spelled the couple's name Sommerville, though their social media profiles show the spelling as Somerville. Fred Sommerville was taken into custody following a police pursuit in Pickens County, more than 150 miles away in west Alabama. “His wife, Lakresha, was in the front seat of the vehicle. She was dead and had been dead for several hours,” Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely said during a news conference Monday evening. As of Tuesday morning, Fred Sommerville remained in the Pickens County Jail on charges of abuse of a corpse, attempt to elude, first-degree theft of property and reckless endangerment. He is expected to be transferred to Limestone County, at which point he will face a charge of first-degree murder for the murder of two or more people. Blakely said along with the slaying of his estranged wife, Fred Sommerville is also a suspect in the Thursday night killing of Bruce Cosman, 74, of Ardmore, Alabama. The News Courier in Athens reported that Cosman and his wife were inside their home around 7:30 p.m. Thursday when they heard suspicious noises outside. Cosman went outside to investigate the noises and his wife heard gunshots. According to the newspaper, Cosman was shot multiple times, dying in the yard. Blakely said Monday that investigators have evidence placing Fred Sommerville at Cosman’s home at the time of the shooting. He did not say what that evidence is. “There’s a lot of things we can’t go into at this time because it’s still an ongoing investigation,” Blakely said. He said a lot more legwork needs to be done in the case, but he is confident that the killer is in custody. Blakely said one reason he held the news conference was to calm the fears of residents in Ardmore. “We don’t have a murderer running loose up there in Ardmore. We have the person. He is in custody,” Blakely said. “We’re very confident he is the one that murdered Mr. Bruce.” >> Read more trending news  The timeline of the killing of Lakresha Sommerville is still not nailed down, Blakely said. He told reporters Monday that the victim’s mother reported her missing, with a possible kidnapping by her estranged husband, late Thursday night. Fred Sommerville was apprehended in Pickens County, in the town of Aliceville, around 11 a.m. Friday. Lakresha Sommerville had obviously been dead for hours at that point, the sheriff said. Blakely said there is no indication Fred Sommerville knew Cosman or his family. “We have some theories and possibly some evidence that’s going to indicate why he wound up at that residence, but we’re not prepared to discuss those at this time,” Blakely said. Watch the entire news conference with Limestone County officials below.  It was unclear why Fred Sommerville drove to Pickens County, though investigators said he has an uncle who lives there. Blakely said Sommerville also drove through other areas of Alabama for hours before his capture. The News Courier reported Fred Sommerville was caught after Aliceville police officers, who had heard reports regarding Lakresha Sommerville’s missing vehicle, spotted him downtown and attempted to pull him over. The officers ultimately fired at the car to stop it, the newspaper reported. The sheriff said Lakresha Sommerville had filed several complaints against her estranged husband alleging domestic violence and stalking. “According to the reports we’ve received so far, she was scared of him,” Blakely said. It was not yet clear exactly where Lakresha Sommerville was slain. According to investigators, she was shot once in the head. A Facebook page apparently belonging to Fred Sommerville, listed under the name Fila Somerville, shows multiple angry public posts that appeared to be directed at his estranged wife over the past few months. “All the slander you do towards me only gonna make that number bigger,” he wrote less than a week before Lakresha Sommerville was slain. “Get your lawyer, ‘cause you gonna pay dearly. Bet that.” Several people have commented on the post since the slaying last week. 'Why, Fred? Why?' Lakresha Sommerville's mother, Cindy Surles, wrote. 'Why would you take away the only person that was taking care of your son?' She wrote that Fred Sommerville did not care about the boy, who, according to Lakresha Sommerville's Facebook page, turned 13 earlier this year. 'All you care about is Fred and if it's not about Fred, then it ain't about nothing,' Surles wrote. On July 2, Fred Sommerville posted that he was in a domestic partnership with Lakresha, who appeared to express surprise at the relationship status. A friend asked Fred if he was OK. Fred Sommerville wrote that he had some business to take care of. 'This (expletive) the reason y,' he wrote, indicating his estranged wife. Other friends wrote that Lakresha Sommerville was not the source of his problems and urged him to accept that the relationship was over. On Friday, a woman named Stacey Smith commented on the status, along with several others on the Facebook page, telling those who saw her posts that Fred and Lakresha Sommerville were missing. 'No one has heard from them since yesterday afternoon,' Smith wrote. 'Their son was left behind and haven’t heard from them! If anyone knows or heard anything please let us know!' The following day, after news of Lakresha Sommerville's slaying emerged, the comments on Fred Sommerville's page turned to anger and anguish. 'You sorry (expletive), you didn’t have to kill her,' one person wrote. 'You could’ve thought of your son.' A friend of Lakresha's, April Robison, wrote on a Facebook fundraiser to help Surles fund her daughter's funeral and raise her son, that Lakresha Sommerville was loved and respected by many. 'Kresha was dedicated to her son, her mom, her whole family,' Robison wrote. 'She could light up a room with her smile. Her laugh was infectious. She will be missed by this entire town. We have lost a truly beautiful soul.' In a December post thanking her friends for birthday wishes, Lakresha Sommerville wrote that she thanked God for life and was looking forward to what the next year of life held for her. 'Just being honest I'm not living my best life yet, but if it's in God's will, I'm on my way,' she wrote. She wrote that she was looking forward to new and exciting things and a drama and stress-free year. 'May Chapter 39 be the best year yet!' she wrote.

An 18-year-old who was born in Dallas has spent weeks in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection over a paperwork mix-up that has left immigration officials questioning whether he is an American citizen, according to multiple reports. >> Read more trending news  Officials detained Francisco Erwin Galicia at a CBP checkpoint in Falfurrias, Texas, on June 27, the Dallas Morning News reported. He was stopped with friends and his 17-year-old brother while headed to North Texas for a soccer scouting event, according to the newspaper. His brother, Marlon, is not a U.S. citizen and had only a school ID card on him, according to the Morning News. Galicia's attorney, Claudia Galan, told The Washington Post that her client showed authorities a wallet-sized Texas birth certificate, his state ID card and his Social Security card, but she said they rejected the documents as likely fake and took him and his brother into custody. 'They just didn't believe they were real. They kept telling him they were fake,' Galan told the Post. 'He's been here all his life.' Marlon agreed to be voluntarily deported to Mexico within days of his detention, according to the Morning News. 'I didn't imagine this could happen, and now I'm so sad that I'm not with my family,' Marlon told the newspaper by phone from Reynosa, Mexico, where he's staying with family. 'Now, we just have to wait and see and hope that they release my brother.' Galicia was born in December 2000 at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, according to a birth certificate reviewed by the Morning News. Galan told CBS News that she's provided U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials with several documents to prove Galicia's American citizenship, including his birth certificate, health insurance cards and high school ID. 'He's going on a full month of being wrongfully detained,' Galan told the Morning News. 'He's a U.S. citizen, and he needs to be released now.' According to the Post, authorities might not have been able to immediately confirm the authenticity of Galicia's paperwork because his mother, who is not a U.S. citizen, took out a tourist visa in his name when he was younger, which falsely listed his place of birth as Mexico. Galicia's mother, Sanjuana, told the Post she got the visa because she believed it was the only way to allow her son to travel across the border to visit family and added that she couldn't get him a U.S. passport because she gave a different name for herself on her son's birth certificate. Sanjuana told the Post that her son is 'desperate' to leave detention and that he fears he might be deported to Mexico at any moment. 'I need my son back,' she told the Morning News. 'I just want to prove to them that he is a citizen. He's not a criminal or anything bad. He's a good kid.' It's not the first time authorities have detained a person claiming American citizenship, though the cases make up a fraction of ICE detentions each year, according to a 2018 report from the Los Angeles Times. Between 2012 and April 2018, ICE officials released 1,480 people from custody after investigating their claims of American citizenship, the Times reported. A review of Justice Department records and interviews with immigration attorneys 'uncovered hundreds of additional cases in the country's immigration courts in which people were forced to prove they are Americans and sometimes spent months or even years in detention,' the newspaper reported. 

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office is investigating, following a shooting on Beachwood Boulevard. Police say they were called to the area, which is off Beach Boulevard, Tuesday morning, just before 11:00 AM. When officers arrived, we're told they found one man with what appeared to a gunshot wound to the leg.  Police say the victim told them, that he had been in an argument with an unknown individual, who took off.  At this time, police believe the suspect is no longer in the area. There's no current suspect description that's been released.

Authorities arrested 35 people earlier this month in a series of nationwide immigration raids that targeted 2,000 families suspected of entering the country illegally, according to multiple reports. >> Read more trending news  Citing government figures, The New York Times reported 17 people who were apprehended were part of families that crossed the border together while 18 people were considered 'collateral apprehensions.' An unidentified Homeland Security official also confirmed to CNN that 35 people were arrested in the raids, which were slated to take place in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco. The Times previously reported the operation was aimed at apprehending families that recently crossed the border and which were notified in February to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office and leave the United States. Officials do not typically announce planned immigration raids ahead of time, according to The Associated Press. President Donald Trump, however, confirmed the raids were set to take place and touted the effort as a major operation in his efforts to stymie illegal immigration. 'If the word gets out, it gets out. Hundreds of people know about it,' he told reporters July 12. 'It's a major operation. … They're going to take people out and they're going to bring them back to their countries or they're going to take criminals out, put them in prison or put them in prison in the countries they came from.' The advanced notice spurred action from immigrant advocates and might have prompted some of those targeted to flee.  'There is no way to quantify the impact that had but you could turn on any TV station for several weeks (and learn about the raids), this being one of the lead topics,' acting ICE Director Matt Albence told BuzzFeed News on Tuesday. 'It's very difficult to locate those individuals who don't want to be found.' Albence told the Times on Monday that he was unaware of 'any other population where people are telling them how to avoid arrest as a result of illegal activity.' 'It certainly makes it harder for us to effectuate these orders issued,' he said. From mid-May to mid-July, nearly 900 people were arrested by ICE officers as part of cross-check operations in which regional field offices dedicate resources toward a goal like picking up people who remain in the U.S. despite final deportation orders or people suspected of entering the country illegally who have criminal records, according to BuzzFeed News. White House officials on Tuesday said 605 people who have criminal records and who were suspected of entering the country illegally were recently picked up by ICE officers.

It was framed as an either-or decision: does JEA shrink in to the future, or does it grow? “We’re talking about exploring options to grow and protect JEA from what would otherwise be a slow but certain death spiral,” says JEA Board Member Alan Howard. After months of detailing relatively grim options for the future involving layoffs, rate hikes, and more, JEA’s Senior Leadership Team has now put forward details of an alternative “non-traditional” response, which would spare those consequences by removing JEA from the City of Jacksonville’s government structure. The Board of Directors voted Tuesday to move forward with exploring that “non-traditional” response- to solicit and study community or private ownership of the utility. “We did not vote today to sell JEA. I think it’s important that we say that. What we exactly did today, specifically what did today, was we gave leadership direction to pursue an unconstrained, non-traditional response to make JEA better for the employees, for the community, as a whole,” says JEA Board Chair April Green. This all comes as part of JEA’s strategic planning process. Leadership has said in recent months that continuing on JEA’s path without any change would lead to electric rates climbing 52% by 2030, with water rates up 16%. This is the result of several factors, including continued moves toward energy efficiency by customers, which largely means less revenue for the utility. To avoid this outcome, JEA rolled out a proposal for what they deemed “austere” changes last month, involving 574 layoffs and more moderate rate hikes. “We are accustomed as a leadership team and as a team of employees to providing excellence in everything we do for our customers. Under this scenario, the cost cuts are so deep, and the personnel cuts are so deep, that there’s no way we could continue to provide that level of excellence to our community,” says JEA President and Chief Operating Officer Melissa Dykes. Dykes confirmed Tuesday that the layoffs were projected to take place within the first seven months of moving forward with this scenario. Last month, JEA’s Board of Directors voted to move forward with planning for that proposal, but said at that time that they wanted more information about other paths that could be taken. New concerns were raised Tuesday about whether these steps would even go far enough. “Unfortunately, the traditional utility response doesn’t fix the problem with the declining business. Although the austere response shifts some of the financial burden of the cash gap away from our customers, at the end of this period, JEA is still left with far too much debt for a business that’s facing the external competition that we’re expecting,” Dykes says. “When you talk about the traditional response, whether it’s [option] 1 or [option] 2, it’s like writing your own obituary,” says Board Vice Chair Frederick Newbill. JEA leadership had previously talked about an alternate “non-traditional” approach, but Tuesday’s Board meeting was the first time more information was provided about what that would look like. “While it would still require a process with an uncertain outcome, it is a local process, where we as a community get to decide the best path for our community utility, so that it can continue to serve this community for generations to come,” says JEA Chief Financial Officer Ryan Wannemacher.  There are several different possibilities, but the commonality is removing JEA from the city government structure and putting it in to the hands of community or private ownership. The Board ultimately voted to move forward with this option instead, saying they want to work on growing JEA in to the future, and this is the way to do it.  JEA’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Aaron Zahn says they only started delving in to these non-traditional options in the last month, after the Board said they wanted other ways to move forward. In that time, he says they have put together the general framework for different possibilities, although they have not yet fully analyzed how each would work with key metrics like customer rates and environmental stewardship. The options they laid out include a range from community control to running as a private operation to partnering with some other company, including major tech or oil and gas. As part of this exploration, JEA says there will be “minimum requirements” to any deal. That will include customer rebates, base rate stability, protections for employee compensation and retirement benefits, moving forward with a new Downtown headquarters, and more. The Board also committed to a one-time cash payment to the City of around $3 billion, in lieu of future annual contributions. Zahn says JEA does not have that kind of liquidity, and rather this would be something they anticipate any prospective future partner to come to the table with. Multiple Board members spoke about the importance of these measures, in wanting to ensure the community, customers, and employees alike are all cared for by the current service and as they look at what the future holds. There were concerns expressed at the start of Tuesday’s meeting, with several union representatives urging the Board to act with the employees in mind. “We advise our members to focus on safety and concentrate on their job, but it is extremely difficult after the last couple of Board meetings focused on solutions that were not only detrimental to our member’s livelihoods, but were completely lacking some hope at times,” says Jesse Ferraraccio, with IBEW Local 2358. Removing the government control element is vital for the future of JEA, according to the utility, because of the barriers for future growth that exist in the current dynamic. Leadership cited examples like provisions of the Florida Constitution that could preclude them from working in electric vehicles, terms of the City Charter that prevent geographic growth, public records laws that could put them at a competitive disadvantage in new developments, and more. While they projected they could have some success in changing the City Charter, they estimated a change to the Constitution to be a costly battle with a very small chance of success.  They, therefore, believe that removing themselves from the government arena is the most effective way to get rid of those existing barriers for growth. Tuesday’s vote triggers what is expected to be a roughly year-long process, during which time the Senior Leadership team will actively solicit offers and study the different non-government ownership structures they presented, as well as any they have not. They will then present those to the JEA Board, along with the “traditional response” that involves layoffs and rate hikes. The Board will vote, and if they decide to take on a restructuring, the decision would then have to pass through the City Council, and then the voters. Several Board Members questioned how confident the leadership team was about the grim projections and the need to act on them. Dykes acknowledged that there have been big events that have led to inaccurate projections in the industry before, but says they factored in more than two dozen variables in this analysis. “Is it gunna be 100% right? It’s not. But this is our best guess and our best projection of where this business is headed over the next ten years,” she says. “The true value of a projection or forecast is that it enables us to envision where we could end up in the future, while there is still time to pull the respective levers and change the course of the organization, versus getting to our destination and merely reporting back on what happened,” says Board Member Kelly Flanagan. JEA has floated privatization in the past, which ultimately led to a politically charged debate and the creation of a special City Council committee to study the matter. At the time, the idea was put out as a desire to understand the value of JEA, but leadership argues it became a debate on whether to sell, which they say is not what they had intended.  That prior “exploration” stalled out early last year, when Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry said that he would not put forward any privatization plan for City Council consideration. Given that, WOKV reached out to the City for a response to today’s vote by JEA’s Board, and a statement from Curry says whatever path JEA takes must have guarantees for the community. The City Council liaison, Danny Becton, says there needs to be some out-of-the-box thinking. “JEA is at a crossroads. Like many companies that we see in today’s ever-changing world of technology advances and innovation, JEA is no different,” Becton says. Privatization talks in the past raised a number of concerns, including that a private company would not be eligible for the same disaster relief funding that the municipal-owned JEA gets, and that it could also lead to a dynamic where the utility is less responsive to community needs and concerns. WOKV asked Zahn if the utility is in a good position for the next year, so that they can stay financially sustainable while considering these options, and not have to make any immediate rate changes or layoffs. “It is a calculated risk that we are taking to delay action today by 6-12 months to see if the minimum requirements set forth today can come to fruition,” he says. He hopes the steps they’re taking to be deliberate in the management of JEA will prevent any fiscal crisis like he says they could face without change.

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