RICHLAND CO.—Richland County Sheriff Andy Hires has come off one FOIA for information and has denied another.
The mysterious accident that no one at the sheriff’s department could tell us about, then subsequently not call us back about (as featured here on Sunday last) has been revealed. Turns out the vehicle involved in it was NOT driven by drug cop Mike Bertin, as we speculated in this article, but was instead driven by 47-year-old Beth A Voelkel, of New Athens, Ill., a 2005 Nissan Altima that ran under the back of a Wabash Valley Service Company 2009 International regular cab truck, driven by John E. Watters, 53, of Claremont.
Doesn’t look a whole lot like what we have photos of….
According to the report, Watters advised that he was driving west on U.S. 50 on the afternoon of Sunday, May 5, 2013 and turned on his turn signal and stopped at county road 1760 East to wait for oncoming traffic before turning south onto that road. Three witnesses, Carl Kocher, Una Kocher and Sandy Warren, all advised that he had his left turn signal on and was waiting when Voelkel ran into the back of his tanker truck.
Voelkel advised later, at the hospital, that she had fallen asleep at the wheel.
Voelkel was cited for Failure to Reduce Speed to Avoid an Accident, Too Fast for Conditions and Operating Uninsured.
Doesn’t exactly look like the diagram, does it?
Now. What we’re going to do about the FOIA denial over documents generated by the high-speed pursuit out of Lawrence County and into Richland a couple of days later remains to be seen…but the facts of the matter are that we are no longer dicking around with Andy Hires and his damn denial of FOIAs. We’ve cabbaged on to some of the tactics that the Edgar County Watchdogs are using and we think this is going to cause Dandy Andy a big headache…as well as a big headache for his buddy, David Hyde, the preacher who passes as our state’s attorney in Richland County.
Here’s what Andy said in his letter dated yesterday, May 12:
Per your second request, which is attached and dated May 07, 2013, requesting all documents generated pertaining to the high-speed chase that occurred last night, May 6, originating in Lawrence County and conducted across U.S. 50 from Lawrence County and into Richland, this request is being denied, due to it would interfere with proceedings or reasonably contemplated proceedings.
That’s crap. We got more off the scanner traffic than we do out of what we were requesting from FOIA. So these public bodies need to be turning over information when it’s requested…or it’s going to start costing them when we get denials.
We’ll get more into it as we uncover it. Be watching.