Charges dropped in boy's classroom fight

By Times wires
Published November 29, 2007

MONTICELLO

Charges dropped in boy's classroom fight

A 10-year-old boy can now focus on his schoolwork: Authorities have dropped felony charges against him stemming from a classroom fight when he was 7.

Johnnie Lee Morris' case drew widespread attention. His mother complained that he was held for several hours in an adult detention facility after being arrested on a felony warrant stemming from violent behavior in his second-grade classroom.

TALLAHASSEE

Loans now available for losses to drought

Florida's farmers and ranchers are eligible for low-interest federal loans to make up for drought losses. The Agriculture Department declared 58 counties as primary disaster areas Tuesday. The state's other nine counties are covered, too, because they are contiguous to the disaster areas.

Producers can apply for loans if they have had drought-related losses of 30 percent or more in a single crop since Jan. 1.

ORLANDO

Another bomb found in subdivision

Another 23-pound fragmentation bomb was found in a neighborhood in southeast Orlando, and a munitions crew from Patrick Air Force Base was called to the scene to explode the World War II-era device.

The bomb was discovered by a private munitions contractor working for Lennar Homes. It was revealed in July that Odyssey Middle School and surrounding neighborhoods were built atop a former Army bombing range and that several live bombs were found on some ranch property behind the school.

Over the Thanksgiving holidays, the Army Corps removed 31 pounds of bomb debris and potential live ordnance from underneath the school property. Lennar found an initial 23-pound bomb buried 2 feet under a yard on Nov. 6.

[Last modified November 28, 2007, 21:31:01]