Free Republic

Ten out of 13 members of the Prairie Du Pont Volunteer Fire Department quit at a fire district board meeting on Monday night after a convicted arsonist was appointed acting fire chief. The Prairie Du Pont Volunteer Fire Protection District Board of Trustees met in East Carondelet on Dec. 20 and fired Prairie Du Pont Volunteer Fire Chief John Rosencranz, KTVI reported. The board gave no reason for the termination as they replaced Chief Rosencranz with Prairie Du Pont Volunteer Fire Assistant Chief Jerame Simmons, who was sitting at the same table. In a statement released after the meeting on...

Hodgkinson had a history of violence that did not rise to the level to prohibit him from legally owning a firearm. He was the foster father of at least two girls. The first, Wanda Ashley Stock, 17, committed suicide in 1996 by pouring gasoline on herself and setting herself on fire after a few months of living with the Hodgkinsons, the Belleville News-Democrat reports. The Hodgkinsons gave an interview to the paper after her suicide, calling her a “very practical, level-headed girl.”

CAHOKIA • A Cahokia High School assistant teacher and coach has been charged with having sexual contact with a teenage boy and transmission of HIV. Mario L. Hunt, 35, of the 1900 block of Florence Street in Cahokia, was charged in St. Clair County on Monday with criminal sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual abuse transmission of HIV. The offenses happened with a 17-year-old boy during the first six months of 2011.

We're not sure what's more amusing about this story, the obvious and clichéd abuse of power or the retro charm of dialing the wrong fax number. C'mon, who even faxes anymore? We've gotten so used to people getting busted by accidentally e-mailing everyone in their address book or slipping up on Facebook that we almost feel sorry for the clerk in question, entangled by '90s technology. Almost. Joann Reed, the records clerk for the sheriff in St. Clair County, Illinois, sent a three-page fax including a copy of a speeding ticket, with a handwritten note saying, "Dismiss this case" and...

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — A small-town mayor and church pastor was in jail Monday on charges of soliciting sex over the Internet from a police detective posing as a 13-year-old girl. Allen Kauffman, 63, was arrested Friday on four counts of felony enticement of a child in the latest sting orchestrated by a police detective in another southwest Missouri town, Diamond. Prosecutors alleged in court filings that Kauffman believed he was communicating with a 13-year-old girl from the Joplin area in a Yahoo chat room last November and December. In online messages, Kauffman allegedly asked the girl for sex and...

Michigan District 81 State Representative Lauren Hager might be thinking: “I might have committed a felony”, after recent revelations that he violated Michigan State Campaign Finance law. Hager’s handpicked sixteen-month St. Clair County Commissioner Phil Pavlov as his successor, Pavlov might now have second thoughts in what appears to be stepping in more than “termed out” Lauren Hager’s shoes.