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Students at T.K. Stone Middle School Thursday got hands-on experience in STEM education and helping members of their community.

Students in Jennifer Weaver’s class, with help from Heartland Ambucs, assembled two tricycles for children with disabilities.

Weaver said she met Heartland Ambucs volunteer Darrell Olson through Wesley Hilltop.

“We had a couple of bikes that they brought on Thursday, and I had the classes split up into two groups, and they kind of rotated groups around so that each kid had a little bit of buy-in with getting to help assemble the bikes together,” Weaver said.

Weaver said the project offered an opportunity to put the skills the Project Lead the Way students learn in their STEM classes to use, but it also gave them an opportunity to help beyond the classroom.

“A lot of times, unless they’re involved in specific clubs or other community groups that do service for other things, they don’t get the option to be able to do that, and so I think it was a great learning experience to kind of do something that was more about somebody else,” Weaver said.

Weaver said she is proud of the response of her students, and hopes they can contribute again in the future.

“I was a little, maybe, anxious, just to see, because they were using different tools that they’ve never used before, and this was kind of a little bit out of their comfort zone somewhat, but they kind of dove in and once they got started, they were hooked,” Weaver said.

You can learn more about Heartland Ambucs by visiting their Facebook page.

A Hardin County teenager was convicted for his part in a 2024 overdose death of a minor.

The Kentucky Attorney General’s Office says 18-year-old Aadyn Kristopher-Nelson Durbin pleaded guilty in Hardin Circuit Court this week to Second Degree Manslaughter, Trafficking in a Controlled Substance, and Trafficking in Marijuana. Durbin was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The AG’s office says “Durbin admitted to knowingly selling fentanyl, which caused the victim’s death in December 2024. As part of the plea agreement, Durbin agreed not to have any contact with the victim’s family or attend any events at Elizabethtown Independent Schools.”

The Elizabethtown Police Department arrested Durbin along with two adult suspects (Damien Felker and Brandon Durbin, both of Elizabethtown) as part of their investigation into the death of a 17-year-old at an Elizabethtown residence on December 18, 2024. The EPD said at the time that the overdose death was likely related to tablets that were designed to look like a prescription narcotic but were actually laced with fentanyl.

The AG’s office says fentanyl was present in more than 60 percent of the 1,410 Kentucky overdose deaths that occurred in 2024.