A look back at the News and Sentinel’s most read stories of 2019
From left, Alex Brown, Destiny Brown, Alethea Bateman and Josiah Brown are shown at City Park in September. A friendship developed between the families after Bateman administered CPR to Josiah when he nearly drowned June 30 at the Marietta Aquatic Center. (File Photo)
David Lee Grimm, center, is escorted from his home by Parkersburg Police Officers Frank Snyder and Fred Lowers on Aug. 20, 1969, hours after shooting and killing two people and wounding three others in downtown Parkersburg. (Photo courtesy of Mackey’s Antique Clock Repair)
Pat Catan’s is shown in Parkersburg’s Park Shopping Center in January after the closure of all of the craft chain’s locations was announced. It has since reopened as Michaels. (File Photo)
Wood County Board of Education member Justin Raber speaks during a May 14 school board meeting in which the potential closures of five schools were discussed. (File Photo)
Waverly residents Dan and Kim Sayres address the Wood County Board of Education on Oct. 22, asking members to reconsider a plan to close Waverly Elementary School. (File Photo)
Parkersburg High School Principal Kenny DeMoss gives closing remarks during the school’s 2019 graduation ceremony on May 23. DeMoss was accused of plagiarism because of the similarity of his speech to one given by actor Ashton Kutcher in 2013. He said he made a mistake in not citing his source and apologized. He was suspended for five days without pay. (File Photo)
Parkersburg Police Detective S.A. Semones escorts Michael Wayne Leadmon, 22, of Parkersburg, out of Wood County Magistrate Court following Leadmon’s Sept. 3 arraignment on a murder charge in the death of 68-year-old Karen Yeager. (File Photo)
Coolville residents Aaron “Doc” Springer, left, and his mother, Cindy, are shown before the Sept. 5 “Ambush Makeover” segment in which they participated on “The Today Show.” (File Photo)
Coolville residents Aaron “Doc” Springer, left, and his mother, Cindy, are shown after receiving their makeovers on the Sept. 5 episode of “The Today Show.” (File Photo)
Chester Robert Lilly is led out of Wood County Magistrate Court after being arraigned June 19 on a charge of murder in the stabbing death of 40-year-old Travis Shane Peters. (File Photo)
Gretchen Lankford, center, is shown at soccer practice in October, nearly two months after being bitten by a copperhead while hiking at the Broughton Nature Preserve near Marietta. (File Photo)
Madison Wine, 16, enters Wood County Circuit Court where she was arraigned Sept. 19 on charges of murder, arson, attempted murder and cruelty to animals. (File Photo)
From left, Alex Brown, Destiny Brown, Alethea Bateman and Josiah Brown are shown at City Park in September. A friendship developed between the families after Bateman administered CPR to Josiah when he nearly drowned June 30 at the Marietta Aquatic Center. (File Photo)
David Lee Grimm, center, is escorted from his home by Parkersburg Police Officers Frank Snyder and Fred Lowers on Aug. 20, 1969, hours after shooting and killing two people and wounding three others in downtown Parkersburg. (Photo courtesy of Mackey’s Antique Clock Repair)
Pat Catan’s is shown in Parkersburg’s Park Shopping Center in January after the closure of all of the craft chain’s locations was announced. It has since reopened as Michaels. (File Photo)
Wood County Board of Education member Justin Raber speaks during a May 14 school board meeting in which the potential closures of five schools were discussed. (File Photo)
Waverly residents Dan and Kim Sayres address the Wood County Board of Education on Oct. 22, asking members to reconsider a plan to close Waverly Elementary School. (File Photo)
Parkersburg High School Principal Kenny DeMoss gives closing remarks during the school’s 2019 graduation ceremony on May 23. DeMoss was accused of plagiarism because of the similarity of his speech to one given by actor Ashton Kutcher in 2013. He said he made a mistake in not citing his source and apologized. He was suspended for five days without pay. (File Photo)
Parkersburg Police Detective S.A. Semones escorts Michael Wayne Leadmon, 22, of Parkersburg, out of Wood County Magistrate Court following Leadmon’s Sept. 3 arraignment on a murder charge in the death of 68-year-old Karen Yeager. (File Photo)
Coolville residents Aaron “Doc” Springer, left, and his mother, Cindy, are shown before the Sept. 5 “Ambush Makeover” segment in which they participated on “The Today Show.” (File Photo)
Coolville residents Aaron “Doc” Springer, left, and his mother, Cindy, are shown after receiving their makeovers on the Sept. 5 episode of “The Today Show.” (File Photo)
Chester Robert Lilly is led out of Wood County Magistrate Court after being arraigned June 19 on a charge of murder in the stabbing death of 40-year-old Travis Shane Peters. (File Photo)
Gretchen Lankford, center, is shown at soccer practice in October, nearly two months after being bitten by a copperhead while hiking at the Broughton Nature Preserve near Marietta. (File Photo)
Madison Wine, 16, enters Wood County Circuit Court where she was arraigned Sept. 19 on charges of murder, arson, attempted murder and cruelty to animals. (File Photo)
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PARKERSBURG -- An account of a local nurse in the right place at the right time was The Parkersburg News and Sentinel's most-read story online in 2019.
Parkersburg resident Alethea Bateman had just arrived at the Marietta Aquatic Center on June 30 when her daughter spotted a 5-year-old boy floating face up in a shallow portion of the pool, blue from the waist up. Bateman administered CPR and checked the boy's pulse until he began coughing.
"I just thank God," Bateman said in an interview a couple days later.
The boy, Josiah Brown, also a Parkersburg resident, spent three days in the hospital. A friendship has developed between his family and Bateman's as a result of the incident.
"If not for Alethea, I would not have my baby now," Destiny Brown, Josiah's mother, said in September. "Thank God he is OK. Thank God she was there."
The second-most-read online story of 2019 recounted events that occurred 50 years earlier in Parkersburg when David Lee Grimm, a 25-year-old U.S. Marine Corps veteran, shot and killed two people and wounded two others near a downtown bar.
After a dispute at the Club Ada Bar & Tap on Sixth Street, Grimm returned in the early morning hours of Aug. 20, 1969, and dropped a tear gas grenade through an opening in the door. As people fled from the establishment, he opened fire with a high-powered rifle from behind a railroad bridge abutment, killing Club Ada owner Charles Hardman and patron William Plant Jr. Another patron was wounded and a man driving home from work was shot in the neck by Grimm.
"It was a shocking event," former Parkersburg Police Chief Larry Gibson, a detective on the force in 1969, said. "That was an isolated incident for that age. We didn't have a lot of those happening in the '60s. But today, it's almost a monthly or a weekly occurrence anymore."
Grimm was found guilty of murder in 1970 and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, a psychiatrist for the defense testified that he was mentally ill as a result of a head injury sustained in Vietnam. After a new trial was ordered in 1980, the case was dismissed because Grimm had already been paroled and many witnesses had either moved away or died.
A breaking news item on Jan. 30 announcing the impending closure of the Pat Catan's store in the Park Shopping Center drew the third-most page views. All 36 Pat Catan's locations were closed by parent company Michaels but, after a period of uncertainty, the Parkersburg location reopened as a Michaels.
A May report on a Wood County Schools Board of Education meeting at which Superintendent Will Hosaflook announced he would recommend closing five schools to prevent the district from exhausting its savings by the end of 2020 was the fourth most-read story. The board voted in October to close McKinley, Waverly and Worthington Elementary schools. Van Devender Middle and Franklin Elementary School also were considered, but were not included due to logistical issues.
The district is being sued by a businessman and outspoken advocate of Waverly to prevent the closure of that school. The district is reviewing the complaint and has yet to file a response.
The fifth most-read story of 2019 didn't just generate attention at NewsandSentinel.com, as Parkersburg High School Principal Kenny DeMoss apologized for not citing a source for his speech at the school's May 23 graduation ceremony. Grad Abby Smith posted a YouTube video that intercut DeMoss' remarks with actor Ashton Kutcher's speech at the 2013 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards. The speeches used similar phrases and wording throughout, with some differences and some portions matching word for word.
DeMoss was suspended five days without pay. A few days before that vote by the school board, Kutcher tweeted "'Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.' - Oscar Wilde. *cite your sources kids and faculty," followed by a smile emoji.
Sixth on the list was a report on the arrest of 22-year-old Michael Wayne Leadmon on a charge of murder in the death of Karen Yeager, 68, of Parkersburg. Investigators have said Leadmon and a juvenile, armed with guns, forced their way into Yeager's Broad Street home on Sept. 2. Yeager's body was found two days later beneath the Fifth Street Bridge. She was reportedly struck, knocked unconscious, choked and fatally stabbed.
Leadmon pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in October and was sentenced this month to 40 years in prison. His attorney said he is cooperating with investigators and testifying against the other suspect, who may be tried as an adult.
A much lighter story drew the seventh-highest page-view count after a Coolville resident and her son appeared on the fourth hour of "The Today Show" in September for an "Ambush Makeover" segment.
Cindy Springer's hair hadn't been cut beyond a simple trim in 45 years, while her son, Aaron "Doc" Springer, quit getting his cut after moving back to the area from Pittsburgh and never picking a regular barber. Cindy was nominated by her sister and adding Doc to the mix convinced the producers to take them both. The results pleased and surprised the mother and son, as well as the rest of their family.
Another murder was eighth on the list after Parkersburg resident Chester Robert Lilly III was arraigned for the June 18 stabbing death of his neighbor, Travis Shane Peters, 40. Lilly was indicted in September on charges of murder and failure to register as a sex offender and remains in custody at the North Central Regional Jail without bond. His trial is scheduled for Jan. 27.
No. 9 was a story about Lowell teen Gretchen Lankford being bitten by a copperhead while hiking with her cousins at the Broughton Nature Preserve just outside of Marietta. The 16-year-old was taken to Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, where she spent four days receiving treatment, including 10 vials of antivenom.
A preserve official said it was the first reported bite there. Copperheads are one of three venomous snakes found in Ohio and the most commonly encountered. They are most active between April and October, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
Rounding out the list was breaking news from Sept. 19, when an indictment was unsealed in Wood County Circuit Court charging 16-year-old Madison Wine in the May 5 murders of Robert and Charolette Taylor, who died in a fire at their Davisville home. She also faces charges of attempted murder involving a younger juvenile at the house and cruelty to animals because of dogs that died in the fire.
Although prosecutors did not specify the relationship between Wine and the Taylors, documents in a related civil suit indicated they had adopted the girl. Wine's trial is set for Jan. 8 at 9 a.m.
Members of the East Wood Volunteer Fire Department and two Wood County Sheriff's deputies were honored by state officials earlier this month for their efforts in saving the 6-year-old.
Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com.
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Most Read Stories of 2019 at NewsandSentinel.com:
1. Parkersburg nurse saves boy's life at Marietta Aquatic Center (July 2)
2. 50 years since Parkersburg mass shooting (Aug. 20)
3. Pat Catan's craft store closing (Jan. 30)
4. Wood BOE: Five schools will be recommended for closure (May 15)
5. DeMoss issues apology, statement for graduation speech (May 31)
6. Parkersburg man charged with murder in death of Karen Yeager (Sept. 4)
7. Coolville mother, son get makeovers on "Today Show" (Sept. 12)
8. Arrest made in fatal stabbing (June 19)
9. Lowell teen bitten by copperhead on local trail (Sept. 6)
10. 16-year-old to be tried as adult for murder (Sept. 19)