State news briefs

Charity takes
donations for
NC Green Beret family
HOPE MILLS, N.C. (AP) — The Army’s Special Forces Command is releasing more information about the Green Beret who died trying to save his two daughters from their burning North Carolina home.
The elite military force says 36-year-old Chief Warrant Officer Edward Cantrell was born in Dyersburg and joined the Army in 1994 as a military policeman. He served in South Korea, Bosnia and Italy before earning his Green Beret in 2004 at Fort Bragg and buying his family home in Hope Mills.
An overnight fire Tuesday at the home trapped Cantrell’s 6-year-old and 4-year-old daughters. He ran into the burning building in a failed attempt to save his children.
Cantrell’s wife survived.
A charity is collecting donations through the Army Special Operations Command’s Facebook page.
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Couple convicted
of child neglect
JONESBOROUGH (AP) — A jury found a Jonesborough couple guilty of child neglect involving five children who were never sent to school and lived in a bus with no running water when they were found by authorities in 2010.
The Johnson City Press reported that 55-year-old Robert Simons III and 39-year-old Mary Ella Tittle were convicted Thursday on the most serious charges of aggravated child neglect in the case of their daughter who wasn’t receiving adequate treatment for her serious kidney disease.
They also were convicted of two counts of child neglect and four counts of felony child neglect involving the care of the couple’s four other children.

Published in The Messenger 3.9.12

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