Homicide

A month after 63-year-old Dallas Hall was found dead in his yard from a gunshot wound, deputies charged a man for his death over a property dispute. Justin Spicer, 23, of 318 Carolina Ave., confessed to detectives from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office that he acted alone and shot Hall at his home on Little Stoner Road on May 2, Clark County Sheriff Berl Perdue Jr. said. Spicer was arrested late Thursday afternoon on murder, first-degree burglary and tampering with physical evidence charges.

A Danville man pleaded guilty last week to reckless homicide and assault charges related to a July 11, 2000, traffic accident that killed a Danville woman. Daniel Swartz, 21, of 718 West Lexington Avenue, pleaded guilty in Boyle Circuit Court to charges of reckless homicide and assault under extreme emotional distress. He was sentenced to five years in prison on each count, to run concurrently. Commonwealth Attorney Richard Bottoms said Swartz was involved in an automobile accident on Ky. 34 in which Ruby Elizabeth Smith, then 62, died, and a juvenile passenger in her car, Christopher Grey II, was injured.

LIBERTY - Brent Wall, 43, of 1313 Clear Branch Road, has been sentenced to three years on a reckless homicide charge, court records show. Wall pleaded guilty in August to the charge and was sentenced Sept. 12 in Casey Circuit Court. He was charged in the death of Isual Hernandez, who died early Sept. 7, 2003, after Wall struck him with his automobile as he walked along Ky. 1649. Wall also was fined $500, and given three years in prison each on reckless driving, leaving the scene of an accident and tampering with physical evidence charges.

HARRODSBURG - Police believe a woman whose skeletal remains were found along a Mercer County parkway was a homicide victim. The remains were discovered Wednesday near Martha Lane Collins Bluegrass Parkway by a deer hunter scouting the area. State police said the female victim is in her late teens to possibly mid 20s. Trooper Chris Lanham, spokesman for the Richmond post, said Dr. Emily Craig, state forensic anthropologist, determined from the state of the bones that the case is a homicide.

STANFORD - Rosemary Hazlett plans to mark the first anniversary of her late grandson's death by placing flowers on his grave today. Caleb Denham, the unborn child of Ralph and Leah Denham, was delivered stillborn after his parents were involved in an automobile accident in August, 2002. Hazlett, speaking on behalf of Caleb Denham's parents, will meet with media today outside Buffalo Springs Cemetery in hopes of keeping her grandson's memory alive through proposed fetal homicide legislation.

Dear Editor: We would just like to thank everyone who helped us with the Caleb-Haley Bill. Even though our bill was not heard by the House of Representatives in Frankfort, they did eventually pass a similar bill on fetal homicide. The new law now states that a fetus is a person entitled to protection from conception on, instead of the old law that said a fetus is not a person unless it is born alive. It will be two years in August that we lost our unborn son, Caleb, to a drunk driver.

HUBBLE - Four days before the anniversary of his son's murder, Rick Shangraw received a text message from his cellular phone company. It was a password for Internet billings that Shangraw was told he could not set himself. He was told the phone company would set it, then text it to him. The new password read "RYAN25. " Shangraw's son, Ryan Keith Shangraw, 20, and his friend, Harold "Bo" Upton III, 18, were gunned down five years ago today in Ryan's trailer in Hubble. The case remains unsolved.