Thursday, May 11th

From the Tennova Healthcare Cleveland News Desk, here is your news for Thursday, May 11th, on Mix 104-1 and Talk 101-3 The Buzz.

Topping our news today…

An update on the first-degree murder trial of Jody Alan Hughes: On Wednesday, in Bradley County Criminal Court, the jury found Mr. Hughes guilty of first-degree murder, kidnapping, conspiracy to tamper with evidence, and tampering with evidence. Mr. Hughes is one of five suspects involved in the murder of Tyler Worth in October of 2015.

From the Cleveland Daily Banner…

No charges have been placed against anyone, as investigation continues, into the fatal stabbing Monday at a southeastern Bradley County residence.

Capt. Steve Lawson of the Bradley County Sheriff’s Office, who heads up the BCSO’s Criminal Investigative Division, said that detectives are continuing to look at the circumstances that led to the death of 54-year-old John William Self. His body was located at a residence on Oakland Lane S.E. early Monday afternoon.

During the investigation, information was received that a man had left the scene shortly after the incident which led to the victim’s death, and a search of that area was coordinated to locate a person of interest, Russell Lee Therkildsen. Therkildsen was later located by BCSO officers and was taken to the Bradley County Justice Center.

“We brought him here and interviewed him,” Lawson said, adding that Therkildsen was not charged with any crime in the incident. He did say that Therkildsen remains a person of interest in the case.

Since he has not been charged, Therkildsen was not incarcerated, Lawson said.

Lawson said that the BCSO’s earlier reference Monday to Therkildsen being “in custody” only referred to him being located by officers and taken for questioning to the Justice Center, not that he was charged.

From the Chattanooga Times Free Press…

The Tennessee Valley Authority restarted its Unit 1 reactor at its Watts Bar Nuclear Plant on Tuesday after refueling the reactor to generate power for the next 18 months.

TVA said it replaced 80 of the 193 fuel assemblies in the reactor and completed 10,000 work activities and equipment inspections during the outage, which added 800 TVA and contract personnel at the Spring City, Tenn., plant over the past month.

TVA spokesman Jim Hopson said it should take several days of power ascension testing to gradually bring the 1,150-megawatt unit up to full power.

The newest reactor at Watts Bar, which became a commercial unit last October, remains offline while workers work to assess and prepare a ruptured condenser that broke apart when support beams failed at the reactor on March 23. TVA expects the $5 billion unit to be offline until later this summer because of the difficulty of replacing and repairing the condenser equipment in the tight quarters on the non-nuclear side of the plant.

The heat exchanger, or condenser, turns steam generated within the reactor back into water. TVA President Bill Johnson said last week the equipment could not be checked for reliability during the prolonged construction of Watts Bar Unit 2, which began in 1974 and was completed last year.

At full capacity, Watts Bar’s two units produce more than 2,300 megawatts of electricity, or enough power for 1.3 million average homes.

The Cleveland Daily Banner reports…

More than $30 million in road development and improvement projects have been included in the IMPROVE Act budget as part of a three-year transportation program, according to information released by Gov. Bill Haslam and Tennessee Department of Transportation Commissioner John Schroer.

Leading the way among Bradley County projects is the long-sought widening of the congested Highway 60/Georgetown Road which also services two schools, and will service a third in the near future.

The program features more than $30 million of investments for project phases in the Bradley County area, according to two members of Bradley County’s legislative delegation.

This has been your local and state news. You can get news anytime by visiting our website, mymix1041.com, powered by Pioneer Credit. From the Tennova Healthcare Cleveland News Desk, this is Jeremy Gault reporting.