Swastikas painted at southern Indiana retirement community
FLOYDS KNOBS — Graffiti including swastikas, upside-down crosses and drawings of genitalia has been cleaned up after being discovered in southern Indiana.
The spray-painted images were found Monday in Floyds Knobs. Sheriff Frank Loop said authorities suspect teenagers were behind the vandalism at a retirement community and to a New Albany-Floyd County school bus. The Azalea Hills retirement community added temporary security patrols afterward.
Cassie McCoun, an administrator at Azalea Hills, told the News and Tribune she didn’t think the vandalism was targeting a specific group.
Loop told The Courier-Journal it’s not being investigated as a hate crime. Vandals also tipped over a sheriff’s department trailer and damaged a mail box.
The Jewish Community Relations Council condemned the anti-Semitic graffiti and says it takes such incidents seriously.
City: INDOT will miss Aug. 31 target for I-69 Section 5
BLOOMINGTON — The city of Bloomington says the state will miss its Aug. 31 target for substantially completing Section 5 of the Interstate 69 extension to Evansville.
The city issued a news release Tuesday saying the Indiana Department of Transportation would miss the target, based on a report the agency presented to the Bloomington/Monroe County Metropolitan Planning Organization last week.
INDOT spokesman Andy Dietrick told The Herald-Times that substantial completion likely won’t be reached until September based on weather forecasts.
INDOT defines substantial completion as having all interchanges on the 21-mile section and at least two lanes in each direction open to highway traffic and most access roads paved. The state set the Aug. 31 target after taking control of the project from a private developer last year.
Evansville officials back project for WWII troop ship move
EVANSVILLE — A restored World War II naval vessel will move to a more prominent location along the Ohio River in Evansville under a plan approved by city officials.
Construction is expected to start this fall on a $2.8 million project to prepare the former site of the Tropicana Evansville casino boat to become the dock site of the LST 325 troop landing ship.
Organizers say they expect the ship’s 10,000 annual visitors will double with the new downtown location. The ship has been docked a few miles upriver since 2005.
The ship took part in the 1944 D-Day landings in France and was brought back to the U.S. from Greece in 2001 to be restored.
City Council members voted 8-1 Monday night in favor of the project.
Gunshots killed man whose body found at nature preserve
ANDERSON — A coroner says a man whose badly decomposed body was found in a central Indiana nature preserve died from two gunshots to the head.
Madison County Coroner Marian Dunnichay identified the victim Tuesday as David Lamar Phillips II, 36, of Anderson.
His body was discovered Monday at the Rangeline Nature Preserve in Anderson, just west of Mounds State Park.
Madison County Sheriff Scott Mellinger says three Anderson residents have been arrested in connection with his death.
Mellinger says Phillips’ death may be connected to that of a woman whose body was found Tuesday on farmland in Grant County just north of the Madison County line. The woman has not been identified.
The sheriff says a man already in custody led investigators to the woman’s body.
–Associated Press
