The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 14

THE COURIER-JOURNAL REGION FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 1995 IVITlimiQin nvnnnlinc rlrkofVi ratrmonc cnolrolinnllint rlKrfi-k Teen killed, another hurt JLTXUUiucilll piauil UlaUl ltUWl OllCllW-llCllIVlIlllg UCUaiC by train in Pineville PINEVILLE. Ky. (AP) A 16- By ALLEN G. BREED comment. Attempts to reach other which was outlawed in Kentucky in on handling them, of course.

Why based on a Bible verse in Mark that says one of the five signs of a true believer is the power to "take up serpents" without being harmed. He said Saylor's death would not be seen by other devotees as an indictment of snake handling or as a weakening of Saylor's faith. People will simply believe this was God's way of calling Saylor home, he said. "Probably, if anything, it makes them believe that much stronger." year-old boy was killed and a 19-year-old was injured yesterday when they were hit by a train. State police said Fred Ira Dunn of Fourmile was killed.

James 1. Smith of Pineville was hospitalized in stable condition. The teens were walking along the tracks. Police said they heard the train but thought the train was on a second set of tracks. don the police do something about that?" But Collins, of the state police post at Harlan, said there is no practical way to crack down on the practice.

"Nobody complains at the time anybody's handling snakes," he said. "People don't want to say anything about their church. It's their religion." Kimbrough said the practice is Associated Press State police are investigating the death of mountain preacher Kale Saylor, who was bitten by a rattlesnake, but a scholar who worked with Saylor says authorities should back off. "He died practicing what he believed in," Dave Kimbrough, who studied with the 77-year-old Harlan County preacher for 10 years while working on a doctoral thesis, said yesterday. Kimbrough, of Stanford, said he considered Saylor a friend and mentor and called him one of the "wisest people I ever met." He said he wanted people to know that Saylor and other snake handlers "are not a freak show." But Saylor's death has reopened discussion of the Appalachian religious practice of snake handling, relatives were unsuccessful.

Under Kentucky law, it is illegal to handle or display any reptile in a religious ceremony. The punishment is a fine of between $50 and $100. Trooper Tony Young, a spokesman at state police headquarters in Frankfort, said yesterday it was difficult to tell how many incidents have occurred because records of the crime are not compiled in a manner easily accessed on the agency's computer system. He said the Harlan post knew of only two similar incidents being reported. Ruth Farler of Perry County tried to get authorities to crack down on the practice last year after a snake bit her son, Virgil Gibson, at a Leslie County church.

He spent several days in the hospital. "It's so sad," she said when told of Saylor's death. "They'll just keep Saylor, of Bledsoe in southeastern Kentucky, died around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Pineville Community Hospital, according to Clay Howard of the Mount Pleasant Funeral Home. Neither Howard nor hospital officials would release a cause of death.

Saylor was minister at a Pentecostal church that bears his name at Stoney Fork, just across the line in Bell County. The incident allegedly occurred Sunday, but Trooper Johnny Collins of the state police post in Harlan said it was unclear whether it was during a religious ceremony. Bell County Deputy Coroner Bill Bisceglia said his office was not notified. Collins said state police did not find out about the death until late Wednesday. Two of Saylor's sons, Kale Saylor Jr.

and Stratton Saylor, declined to YOU CAN TRUST Your locally owned funeral homes: Bosse Funeral Home Keenan's Funeral Home Owen Funeral Home Pearson-Ratterman Bros. Schoppenhorst Neurath Barrett Funeral Home Embry-Bosse Funeral Home Highlands Funeral Home Nunnelley Funeral Home Pearson's Ratterman Funeral Homes NeuratK, Subdivision planned along Chamberlain Lane FUNERAL HOME 725 East Market Street Preston at Hebron Lane nj. LociJJ)- Owned Since 1904 PLANNED CI G0Cb3 WOLF TRACE SUBDIVISION V- Ir (T 1 CD US a- 4 By SHELDON SHAFER Staff Writer A Lexington firm plans 220 homes on an 80-acre farm along Chamberlain Lane near Wolf Pen Branch Road in a still largely rural section of eastern Jefferson County. Ball Homes a 37-year-old residential builder, filed plans yesterday for the Wolf Trace subdivision near Interstate 71 and Chamberlain Lane, 1,700 feet north of Wolf Pen Branch Road. Rezoning is not required, but the Louisville-Jefferson County Planning Commission must review the plans for drainage, traffic flow, access and other details.

Ray Ball, president of Ball Homes, said the homes would be built over about three years and sell for around $150,000 each, including the lot. Ball has been looking at the Louisville market for several years, and probably will develop more than one subdivision, he said. Ball Homes has agreed to numerous stipulations for Wolf Trace. Among them are a hydrological analysis of the subdivision's impact on a creek, mitigating drainage problems, drafting an erosion-control plan and improving Chamberlain Lane at the subdivision entrance. An area preservation group has fought plans for a nearby subdivision called Wolf Pen Woods; the project is being contested in court.

Planning Commission spokesman Charles Davis said Wolf Trace could raise some of the same issues. Sam Goldstein, a 16-year Wolf Pen Branch Road resident whose property abuts the Wolf Trace property, expressed dismay about plans for another development. Although Wolf Trace would not require rezoning for smaller lots, Goldstein said the subdivision would not be in character with "ft 'Wm STAFF MAP BY STEVE DURBIN existing homes on multiacre tracts. He said most residents "moved out here to have some space, not to be surrounded by subdivisions." Several other developments have been filed with the commission: Development, headed by Jesse Bollinger, plans the Spring Falls subdivision with 164 residential lots on 40.7 acres near McNeely Lake Drive and Price Lane in southern Jefferson County. 16th Street Rental Corp.

seeks commercial zoning at 2620 W. Market St. in Russell for an Ace Hardware store and three small unspecified retail uses. The plan shows 17,640 square feet of retail space. Holding Co.

has filed for new zoning at 11899 Westport Road for a one-story, building to be used to install equipment in light trucks and for outdoor storage of trucks and truck parts. "A McDonald's restaurant is planned on the north corner of Hurstbourne Parkway and Stony Brook Drive in Stony Brook North. Suit by widow of miner blames bribe scheme for husband's death airs nrrnrm at3rQrm r-xit S3I iff knowingly putting Ratliff life at risk. In December, a federal grand jury charged inspector T. Richard Oney with accepting $2,900 in bribes to overlook safety violations at the Miller Branch mine.

Oney, 46, of Vincennes, is scheduled for trial Monday in Pikeville but is expected to plead guilty instead to conspiring with another inspector to accept bribes from October 1989 to January 1990. The lawsuit noted that at least three other MSHA inspectors from the Pikeville office have been indicted for extorting bribes. Two pleaded guilty, and the third was convicted at trial. Associated Press PIKEVILLE, Ky. The widow of a coal miner killed in a 1991 rock fall has sued the mine's operators and a federal agency whose inspectors allegedly took bribes to overlook safety violations.

"This is a case that's really going to open a lot of issues," said Paul Deaton, an attorney for Benita Rat-liff, whose husband, Timothy, was killed Dec. 4, 1991, at Miller Branch Coal five miles north of ville. The lawsuit, filed Feb. 21 in Pike Circuit Court, alleges federal mine inspectors took bribes to permit unsafe conditions at the mine, 11 Driver faces murder charge in crash that killed 4-year-old ed the car in which 4-year-old Jamie Lee Burke of Bullitt County was riding in a car seat. The collision set off a chain reaction involving five other cars, police said.

A fire erupted when the gas tank of the first car ruptured, but everyone except the Burke child, who was already dead, got out before fire engulfed the vehicles. Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney McKay Chauvin said yesterday that Wallace had not been formally charged before he was indicted. He is to be arraigned Monday. A driver accused of causing a fiery seven-vehicle accident that killed a 4-year-old child and injured 10 other people may be placed on trial for his life. A Jefferson County grand jury returned indictments Wednesday on charges of capital murder, assault, wanton endangerment and drunken driving against Wallace W.

Jones, 48, of Jeffersonville, Ind. Wallace was identified as the driver of a dump truck that set off the accident Nov. 10 on Preston Highway at Mud Lane. Jones' truck reportedly rear-end IMP1 Three men accused of burning house built in 1840 1 A 71 A IRl Ellis Ray Jonier and Charles Edward Mann both 18, Tuesday on charges of conspiring to burn and then burning the two-story frame home at 1103 Adams St. The home, which had been converted into apartments, was built in 1840 by the Rev.

James Davis Hines, a preacher. The blaze left four families homeless, including Mann and his pregnant wife. South-Central Kentucky Bureau BOWLING GREEN, Ky. Three Bowling Green teen-agers face federal arson charges in a fire that destroyed a historic home in downtown Bowling Green Feb. 12.

The home is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. A federal grand jury in Louisville indicted Ricky Allen Hagan, 19, and.