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It could happen here
Let me explain. Every April, my wife's daddy's family, the Shieldses, gather in Magnolia (or more correctly, closer to Magnolia Terminal) for a family reunion. We meet at the home of Larry and Sylvia Shields. Larry is Suzanne's first cousin and their home is on land that has been in the Shields family for several generations. Larry and Sylvia had a nice home and a fairly new one. They had rebuilt in the past few years after fire destroyed their previous home. A faulty water heater was blamed for that fire and after hearing the details, I became afraid of fire and pulled the natural gas heater in our 1894 home and replaced it with an electric model. (And before the folks at Clarke- Mobile Gas get upset, I still have natural gas heat, it is just that the units and the burners are all outside). Sometime after this first fire, the vacant home of Larry's late mother, Thelma Shields, next door, caught fire and burned too. Larry and Sylvia again lost a lot of personal belongings that they had stored there. You would think that this would have been more than enough fires for two people to suffer but earlier this month tragedy again struck Larry and Sylvia- this time aided by some real low-life outlaws. Larry works at the Georgia- Pacific paper mill at Naheola over in Choctaw County. On Aug. 8 he left work early to go home and change to go to a funeral. He was not prepared for what he discovered when he got home. None of us would be. He discovered burglars in the act of cleaning out his home. They had piled guns, jewelry and other items in the garage in preparation of loading it all up for a quick getaway. In their escape, these outlaws did something even worse than stealing. They set the house afire, apparently as a distraction to help them get away. Larry was overcome by the smoke and the excitement and had to be treated at a hospital. He is OK. Local volunteer firefighters arrived and put the fire out but the next day it blazed up again and completely destroyed the home. This makes three houses on one little hill in a rural community that have burned. This fire should not have happened. It was deliberate arson on the part of one or more likely drugcrazed scumbags. I hope the authorities in Marengo County can track them down and I hope they get the punishment they deserve. I would bet the farm that they are local and knew Larry's and Sylvia's work schedules. They just didn't realize that Larry would be home early the day they hit. Larry and Sylvia have a daughter and a son who live nearby but now they are all wondering if they should continue to live there. It is a shame that outlaws can run families off of properties that they have lived on for generations but I can't fault my in-law cousins if they decide to move. **** If all of this wasn't bad enough, just last week outlaws again struck in the same area, robbing a tiny country store in Magnolia. The store's owner, 78-year-old Theodore Curry, said four "young punks" came in and one of them pulled out a gun and said, "give me all your money." They robbed him, emptied his cash registers and left him tied up with duct tape as they fled. They also took beer, cigarettes, candy and gum and a jar of donations for a local church that contained at least $30. All total, they got $700 to $800, according to The Democrat- Reporter, the newspaper in Linden. Could these "young punks" be the same ones who burglarized and burned the Shields' home? Magnolia is only about 30 miles or so up the road in Marengo County. This same thing could just as easily happen somewhere in rural Clarke County. Thieves do not recognize county lines, you know.
Jim Cox is editor and publisher of The Clarke County Democrat.
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