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Officials hold ribbon-cutting for ‘substantial completion’ of Glendale I-65 interchange

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Federal, state, and local officials celebrated the progress being made at the new Interstate 65-Kentucky Route 222 interchange in Glendale Friday.

Planning on the interchange improvement project began more than a decade ago when local officials began preparing the Glendale Megasite for a potential manufacturer, which arrived in 2022 with the announcement of the BlueOval SK plants. The ribbon cutting Friday celebrated “substantial completion” of the interchange.

The project realigns Kentucky Route 222 and provides a safer, more efficient interchange for car and truck traffic. New on and off ramps for I-65 and new intersections, one at KY-222 and U.S. 31-W and the other at the entrance road to the BlueOval SK site, were also part of the project.

Governor Andy Beshear was in attendance Friday, which he mentioned during his appearance on the Quicksie Morning Show as part of the AT&T Morning Line Monday.

“We were at the new interchange, which is incredible at Glendale,” Beshear said. “That’s going to take a little bit of the pressure off the residents of Glendale that have been so good to the rest of the Commonwealth, welcoming that largest investment in the history of Kentucky, that game-changing state-changing investment, BlueOval SK.”

Work on the project will continue into the summer. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet is still evaluating further improvement projects in the area as part of the Glendale Mobility Study.

EPD invites public to Chalk the Walk event Wednesday

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The Elizabethtown Police Department is inviting area families to an awareness event Wednesday.

“In acknowledgement of April being Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Awareness Month, we are hosting a Chalk the Walk event at the police department this coming Wednesday between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. in an effort to raise awareness and put a stop to these heinous crimes,” said EPD Public Information Officer Chris Denham. “Citizens will be provided with sidewalk chalk as well as a space to draw murals or slogans that show their support for victims. Juanitos Tacos will be on site and dinner will be provided free of charge to all participants. In the event of inclement weather, we will move the event into the lobby of the police department and the art will be drawn on large poster boards.”

The EPD says that statistics show that nearly 2 in 5 women and 1 in 5 men will experience contact with sexual violence in their lifetime, and Kentucky is ranked sixth in the country for child victims of maltreatment at a rate of 14.7 per 1,000 children, nearly double the national rate.

More information on the event can be found on the Elizabethtown Police Department Facebook page.

Two juveniles in custody after allegedly vandalizing Meade County church

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Two juveniles are in custody after allegedly vandalizing a church in Meade County.

The Meade County Sheriff’s Office says on April 9 deputies responded to the Saint Theresa of Avila Catholic Church in Rhodelia in regards to a vandalism complaint.

“The deputies met with some of the church staff who were able to provide some videos of two juveniles on the property vandalizing the exterior of the buildings,” said Meade County Sheriff Phillip Wimpee. 

Deputies entered the building and discovered more than $10,000 in damages.

“It appeared that the juveniles had dispersed several fire extinguishers inside the church and destroyed numerous religious artifacts, and some of these religious artifacts are irreplaceable because of the church being so old,” Wimpee said. “The juveniles spread holy oil all over the floor of the building, destroying the carpet, and turned one of the crosses upside down on the altar.”

Deputies processed the scene and collected evidence at the church and in the church’s cemetery where headstones were found to have been damaged.

“The detectives were able to identify two juvenile suspects who were in custody at this time,” Wimpee said. “The suspects are being charged with Burglary in the second degree and Criminal Mischief in the first degree.”

The investigation has been turned over to the Meade County Attorney’s Office and the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office for prosecution.

Baptist Health Hardin excited to expand diagnostic imaging services

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Baptist Health Hardin CEO Rob Ramey says the recent 2,000-square-foot expansion of the Ring Road Diagnostic Imaging center is part of a $4 million effort to provide area patients with better options.

“We’ve now got four imaging centers where we have 3D mammography available for everybody,” Ramey said. “We’ve upgraded and we’re continuing to upgrade our MRIs and our CTs around the entire market. We’re adding additional x-ray capabilities. We’ve added at the hospital ion robotic imaging, bronchoscopy imaging.”

Baptist Health Hardin hosted an open house at the center on Friday. The open house was an opportunity to highlight some of the additional features the expansion made possible including a women’s center to provide more privacy, a new MRI machine that decreases time and increases patient comfort, and an additional CT scanner that will allow the center to process more than 5,000 additional CT scans a year.

“We know that we need that capacity for our community, for the growth we’re seeing, and with this new machine the images are better, the processing is faster, so it really hopefully will help streamline the processes for our patients and give them an even better experience as well,” Ramey said.

Ramey says the expansion will enhance a diagnostics team that is already a well-regarded one.

“We also understand that you all have a choice, that our community has a choice in where they go for care, and just the other day we were over here and we were celebrating with our staff because they were recognized as being in the top 8 percent nationally of all the diagnostic centers around the entire country,” Ramey said.

The Baptist Health Hardin Diagnostic Imaging center is open Mondays through Fridays.

Tip to sheriff’s office lands two arrests in Grayson County

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A tip to law enforcement resulted in two arrests in Grayson County.

According to the Grayson County Sheriff’s Office, a citizen called the sheriff’s office on April 9 to report a “wanted person” removing items from a storage building next to a business on west U.S. 62 in Leitchfield. Grayson County Sheriff Norman Chaffins responded to the scene and saw a male subject walk out of the storage building and to a running vehicle. After being asked to identify himself, the man said his name was Shane Melton, and he produced an Indiana ID card.

Additional units arrived on scene and three more suspects exited the building. Melton was found to have active warrants out of Grayson, Hart, and LaRue counties along with an extradition warrant out of Indiana. He was also found to be in possession of a handgun and methamphetamine.

Melton was taken into custody. One of the suspects that exited the building was identified as William Sandlin of Leitchfield, for whom a warrant for Leaving the Scene of an Accident and other charges was issued a few days prior after Sandlin fled the scene of an accident on Claggett Road. Sandlin was also taken into custody, with both suspects lodged in the Grayson County Detention Center.