Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer - 9.6.26

0:00We now turn to Owens Burles' messenger inquire to bring your news from in and around Owens Burle and Davies County. The reader today is Jerry Hope. We are reading from the edition dated Friday, September the 5th and articles will be selected from this past week with an emphasis on regional and local news. As a reminder, radio eyes are reading service intended for people who are blind or have other disabilities to make it difficult to read printed material. Next, an article titled Sheriff's Department Details Timeline of Wednesday Officer Involved Shooting. A man fatally shot by Davies County Sheriff's deputies Wednesday night and killed his ex-wife and shot her mother just minutes before and later tried to strike deputies with his vehicle of official said Thursday. Jonathan Sever's 30 years old of Owens Burle, later struck a Davies County Sheriff's

1:02officer patrol car head on an exchanged gunfire with deputies before being shot and killed according to the Kentucky State Police. Kentucky State Police identified Tracy Peace 37 years old of Owens Burle as the woman Sever's is believed to have killed. This was found deceased with a gunshot wound in Sever's vehicle. Sever's and deputies exchanged gunfire at 1048 pm in the 9700 block of Morgan Town Road. Davies County Sheriff Brad Youngman Ohio County Sheriff Adam Wright and other public safety officials outlined the timeline of events at a news conference Thursday afternoon. Kentucky State Police identified Sever's and Peace after the news conference. The first call about Sever's was made to Owens Burle Davies County 911 at 423 pm when the dispatcher was told Sever said he was going to load up all his guns and harm himself.

2:07Youngman said Wright said Ohio County deputies went to the new cut road home to check on Peace and look for Sever's. Peter Aided Dispatch reports saying deputies did not locate Sever's but spoke to Peace and family members there who said Sever's hadn't been there for a year. Reports say Sever's phone pinged at multiple locations throughout the evening and Owens and Owens Burle Police Department Patrol officer spotted Sever's vehicle at 959 pm and attempted to stop him but Sever's drove off and was not pursued which is not in uncommon situations since Sever's was not being sought in connection to a crime Youngman said. At 109 pm a Davies County Sheriff's deputies spotted Sever's vehicle near County Heights Elementary School. The deputies had to find a place to turn around but was unable to locate Sever's Youngman

3:09said. At 10 minutes later Sever's mother called to dispatch saying Sever's had called and was threatening suicide and gave dispatchers the address of the new cut home. She further stated that disturbance was taking place and Sever's was beating on the door to the home Youngman said. A 9-1-1 call from Peace's mother was made at 10.20 pm when she told his dispatchers that Sever's had gotten inside. Four minutes later while our dispatcher was on the phone with him to dispatcher in the background, could he hear shots being fired right said. When the first OC SO Deputy arrived at the home, he found Peace's mother who had been shot multiple times in the torso and legs. Right said. The pieces three children were also in the home but were not injured. Right said Peace's mother was trying to prevent Sever's from coming into the bedroom where her daughter was when she was shot. Peace's mother was flown to University of Louisville Health where she was in stable

4:13condition. The Thursday right said her name was not released as of Thursday. Peace was abducted from the home at 10.32 pm DCSO Deputy Sew Sever's vehicle in Youngman said Sever's almost several officers who were outside their cruisers staging while he was fleeing the area. A pursuit took place which ended a minute later with Sever's striking a DCSO patrol vehicle head on KSP reports say. At that point Sever's fired at deputies from inside the vehicle then got out of the vehicle and attempted to flee. Youngman said Sever's was in a field when he and deputies exchanged gunfire and Sever's was struck. Peace was found in Sever's vehicle deceased from a gunshot wound Kentucky State Police report said. Responders from the White's villain Davies County fire departments attempted to provide medical aid but both peace and Sever's were beyond care and were deceased.

5:15Youngman said. In TARD DCSO as well as all the agencies represented alongside me are saddened by the events that led to peace's death and are thoughts and prayers to her and her loved ones at this time. Youngman said. No deputies were injured when Sever's nearly struck the deputies or when he struck the patrol car with his vehicle Youngman said. Investigations was turned over to the Kentucky State Police which was standard procedure when a deputy is involved in a shooting Youngman said. All evidence of the incident has been turned over to Kentucky State Police. I will tell you four deputies were involved Youngman said. The names of the deputies were not released at the request of Kentucky State Police. Youngman said. Those officers as it turns out were about to begin their regular days off Youngman said. Those deputies will be offered crisis services and will be interviewed by Kentucky State Police. They'll be working in some regard even if it isn't on the road responding to calls Youngman

6:19said. The Kentucky State Police press release says there is no definitive timeline for the link of the investigation. Protect the integrity of an ongoing investigation. It is Kentucky State Police's standard operating procedure not to release specific details until vital witnesses have been interviewed and pertinent facts gathered. The release says. Timelines to complete investigations vary based on the complexity of the case. Next. In article titles, Stanley Bridge closure is causing issues. The closure of the highway 60 bridge over Katie Meadows Slau between mile points 5.2 and 5.4 just southeast of Stanley in Western Davies County is causing concerns for those who work and live in the area. The replacement of the bridge which began in April and was initially scheduled to have one link closures has run into complications that have made the timeline of completion uncertain.

7:22Matt Hughes, a spokesman for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet said a meeting will be held in the coming days to discuss how to move forward with the project. But for those who travel the area frequently the delay is causing real issues. Only about 30% of the time are they down there working on the bridge said Philip Anderson who works in the area selling fertilizer. And the green trucks, the trucks going to Scott paper company have to come up the Ottoman Parkway and then over back roads, sad roads and when it starts raining is going to tear those roads to pieces. The bridge replacement ran into a delay when work crews discovered an older buried found nation beneath the current bridge that predates the 1950 structures. That foundation along with concrete culverts that have been found will have to be removed before replacement can continue. The discovery of the older structure made it impractical to rebuild the bridge while

8:22keeping one laid open. Hughes said the full closure was initially set the last 90 days from the mid-June announcement. Anderson said there have already been several issues in the area due to the closure and he's concerned the situation will only get worse as more large trucks use the sad roads. The trucks have to take Wimsett road across the railroad track and Griffith station and there have already been semi-as hung up there and have torn the road up at the railroad crossing Anderson said. I'm also concerned about the cost of needing to replace the sad roads all of a sudden. They're being damaged when it rains. Hughes said the state is aware of the potential issues the delay is caused including safety issues and he anticipates his plan to move forward with the project will be announced in the coming days. Next. An article titled $4 billion data center in Hancock County expected online in 2027.

9:25The project developer for the approximately $4 billion to $4.5 billion data center plan for Hancock County told the Nolan'sboro audience thirsty that the facility will start coming online in the second half of 2027 and is expected to be fully operational for following year. Pace Raleigh, the vice president of project development at the company Terro Wolfe Inc. told attendees at the Greater O'Hennersboro Chamber of Commerce's Brewster Brewster breakfast thirsty that the facility will employ hundreds of people when it is completed. He also said the data center will generate more than $1.5 billion in state and local revenue over a period of 15 years. Data centers can be a controversial topic no doubt about it. Chamber of Commerce, Board President Sean Patterson said at the top of Raleigh's presentation,

10:26our job as the Owensboro Chamber is to educate the community. Data centers have been a topic of controversy since February when Terro Wolfe announced it had purchased the former Century Illuminum site in Hallsville to construct a data center. In July, Terro Wolfe announced an artificial intelligence giant and Thropaic had entered into a $20-year $19 billion lease agreement to use the planned data center which Terro Wolfe officials are calling the Justified Data Campus. The topic has been brought up at every Owensboro City Commission meeting for months with local residents raising concerns that a data center would be built at the industrial site. The City purchased last year on U.S. 60 near West Parish Avenue and then on a near the int, on or near the former Elmer Smith Power Plant site on the City's east side.

11:27Firms that work in data centers among other things have options on properties near the Elmer Smith site while OMU is studying a proposal to build a gas-fired power plant on part of OMU property there. Terro Wolfe has a $20-year agreement to purchase power from Big Rivers Electric Corporation and Kinnergy and is building on the site because of the existing electric infrastructure there. The power plant was approved in August by the State Public Service Commission, Data Center Power servers for cloud data storage, artificial intelligence and Bitcoin mining and relief described the facility as a building that delivers power and cooling everything that's needed for these servers to run, release it. The Justified Campus has 482 megawatts of power generation from the existing infrastructure

12:30that fed power to sensory aluminum. They'll come in and rent essentially by the kilowatt, running said, that power will run this site, particularly the cooling operation and leave about 400 megawatts of rentable IT power to potential customers like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and others. According to release, slide presentation, no new power infrastructure is planned for the city, but if any is built in the future, the cost will be passed to companies renting the facility servers. It's a very clean space release said. Terro Wolfe is demolishing the sensory aluminum plant and doing environmental remediation on the site in preparation for construction at a cost of $50 million, release said. When we step into a project, we want the community to know we are really following responsible

13:31development, he said. In terms of pollution, a data center produces no smoke, no odors, no waste water and no industrial manufacturing emissions, Raleigh said. Other data centers have been found to have an effect on air quality. For example, a 2025 article by Time Magazine citing data from the University of Tennessee that looked at the XAI data centers in Bucks Town near Memphis, Tennessee found concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, which the environmental protection agency says contributes to acid rain, ground level ozone pollution and the development of worsening of respiratory illness like asthma increased by 79 percent. Those concentrations from pre-XAI levels immediately surrounding the data center and by 9 percent in Bucks Town.

14:32Justified campus was used a closed-loop water cooling system filled with 400,000 gallons of water. That water would be reused in the system for a 10-year period, Raleigh said. Afterwork, the water would be disposed of without being put into the county's wastewater system, Raleigh said. On a daily basis, the facility would use less than 5,000 gallons of water, Centrioluminum used daily, he said. The first phase of the project is expected to go online during the third quarter of 2027. I used to build a lot of energy infrastructure projects that would normally be two to three years, Raleigh said. We're building this in about 16 months. That's sort of the nature of the sector right now. It's moving at an insane timeline. Raleigh said, Terriblef will build the powered shell of the center and anthropic will invest

15:36another $10 billion into installing the servers. We estimate over $1.5 billion in state and local tax revenue just from this one project, just from this one phase of this project, Raleigh said. But there's any expansion of the project, it just grows faster from there. The project is anticipated to create up to 150 permanent Terriblef positions along with another 150 from anthropic will be said. Hancock County is just one of five hyperscale data centers Terriblef is building in the United States. A second Kentucky Terrible data center is in development in Grayson. After the meeting, when asked about the rapid pace of data center expansion nationally, Raleigh said, the demand has been extraordinary for AI technology and therefore when the general population wants AI and businesses want AI, the demand translates to compute and compute

16:41translates to these buildings. In order to get that compute online, they want it as quickly as possible. All the hyperscalers, anthropic, Google, Amazon, they are moving quickly to build out that compute. According to an Annanburg Public Policy Center survey reported last month 61% of those survey, opposed data centers locating in their area. The New York Times reported in April that 55% of responders to a Quinnipack University poll said they saw AI as a force for harm rather than good. When asked about general public opposition, AI and data centers, Raleigh said, I understand there's a lot of questions about data centers and that makes a lot of sense when there's something new coming in. The best we can do is explain what it is. We're building how we're doing it and how we're trying to do it as best as possible.

17:42The whole conversation about AI, if people want it, is above my pay rate, Raleigh said, I build these buildings, but I know I use AI a ton. It doesn't really replace jobs. It enhances them. It enhances people's productivity and I think a lot of businesses are really realizing that and that's where you're seeing the huge spike in demand. Hancock County judge executive Johnny Chick Roberts who felt visited a terrible data center in New York State to learn more about the company said he does not want any cost of the Hancock project to come back on county residents. Our stance is still the same. We expect those folks to pay their own way, Robert said. We don't want to subsidize any businesses on the back of the great payers. The Public Service Commission approved that agreement where all infrastructure and all new cost, terrible of holds, that responsibility. Robert said that's the way it should be.

18:42Robert said the county has requested a noise study on the project. Noise is primarily associated with a data centers cooling system. Raleigh's slide presentation said the equipment would be inside the buildings and that the facility would use low noise fan technology with noise expected to be in the 55 to 60 decibel range 100 feet from any of the outdoor air coolers. American Academy of Audiology website says 60 decibels is in the equivalent of normal conversation or dishwashers which is considered moderate noise level. Raleigh's presentation did not address what backup generators would be installed at the justified campus according to a March report by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute which provides science-based educational resources to policymakers of the public. The combination of thousands or tens of thousands of servers in a computing warehouse can raise

19:44noise levels to 96 decibels. Social generators for backup power also produces noise and are tested at least monthly the March report said. We want to make sure before and during if the noise is a problem they can mitigate that and they've agreed to that. Robert said this is still a new process Robert said and we're still doing our homework with them. If these weren't so new you would probably be okay but you're trying to see if you've missed anything Robert said. At the end of the day you want to make sure our county is protected as much as it can be. This was a private sale they didn't need a vote from the court and they had the planning and zoning they needed. So we keep doing our research and keep doing our homework. Next. An article titled Commissioner's Views Differ as a moratorium on group housing ends. The city's moratorium on group housing such as substance use rehabilitation facilities

20:46expired Thursday and city officials have differing ideas on what should happen next. The city put the moratorium in place September 2nd last year. The one year moratorium was passed after city officials received complaints from residents who lived near drug treatment facilities. The idea was that officials would study how the other cities group housing regulate group housing and suggest new regulations to city commissioners. The ordinance prevented the Onesboro Metropolitan Planning Commission from accepting any site development plans for clinics. The ordinance also stopped the board of adjustment from issuing any conditional use permits for rehabilitation and transitional homes. Fiscal court put its own moratorium in place in October which is still in effect. Ryan Howard executive director of Onesboro Metropolitan Planning Commission said the planning staff looked at how Louisville Bowling Green and Meduca regulate group housing facilities

21:49with Bowling Green. My remembrance is we are substantially similar to what we've done here Howard said. I think Paduca's restrictions are less restricted than what our ordinances are. Louisville was not a suitable comparison given how much larger that city is compared to Onesboro Howard said. To manage your Nate Pagan said what happens next will depend on the will of the commissioners. Mayor Tom Watson said the plan is to see what happens with the moratorium no longer in place. We all kind of decided we were going to monitor it for a while and let events determine the commission's next steps. Watson said. Commissioner Sharon Nismith says she is in favor of extending the city's paws on new group housing projects. I would actually be in support of keeping that moratorium. Nismith said. Nismith said she has concerns at homes would be converted into residential substance abuse treatment but without proper supervision for clients.

22:49Nismith also said other communities send people in need of drug treatment or other services don't as well rather than creating treatment problems of their own. I think other communities see we have those resources. Nismith said the focus of local residential treatment programs should be on the city and county residents. Nismith said you always want to help everybody but we have to protect our resources. Nismith said later she said I think we need to be careful we are not overwhelming the system by offering unlimited opportunities. Mayor pro tim bob glins that he did not think the moratorium could be extended as we've all been educated moratoriums can be challenged in court glins said. I would be in support of letting it lapse and seeing what happens glins said. And I don't think a moratorium longer than a year is going to be to go and challenge. Placing additional zoning regulations on group housing could hurt existing operations that

23:50are looking to expand glins said. I would need to see a study that said the problem is so significant that we need to add more layers of regulations. He said commissioner Jeff Stanford said he would support having new residential treatment or existing programs locate in the same area or spot. I feel like an oldsman we attract people here that need help because we have the best help around. But there are only so many resources said for said. Stanford said having new programs in a consolidated area would allow agencies to provide a variety of services to people in need such as drug treatment, mental health, counseling, education and job training at one site. Such an arrangement would put the right people in the right spots. And for said commissioner Curtis Magglinger could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Next. An article titled senior center ribbon cutting set for October 1st. The new senior community center of Owensboro, Davies County is complete on the inside with

24:54the contract of making final minor changes and adjustments what crews move furniture and supplies into the facility. Although some of the outside features likely won't be finished into the December, the building will be ready for its first event on September 24th and a ribbon cutting ceremony on October 1st. Pam Smith Wright, chairwoman for the senior center board said the new facility will open for daily use beginning October 5th. It's gorgeous Smith Wright said Tuesday the facility. We awaited a long time for this Smith Wright said. Assistant City manager, Leland Hancock said Tuesday that work on the facility is down to adjusting details identified in the walkthrough and cleaning. The senior center plan was announced in 2024 after the organization's board rejected a proposed merger with the Owensboro family YMCA one year before. The new senior center is near the western Kentucky Botanical Garden on West 2nd Street. The senior center will hold its Silver Salute fundraiser in the new building on September

25:5724th. Next, an article titled annual Freedom Walk to commemorate 25th anniversary of 9-11. The September 11th, 2001 attacked, killed 2753 people in the World Trade Center. At the pinnacle on another 184 were killed while 40 more died when passengers aboard a hijack plane bound for Washington, DC attacked the hijackers causing the plane to crash and Pennsylvania. Owensboro will commemorate the September 11th attack again this year. Veterans all TC groups and citizens participate in the annual Freedom Walk beginning at 11am Friday at Owensboro Fire Station at 512 West 9th Street. People are asked to begin gathering at station 1 at 10.30am and 11am the group will march down for Enrico Street to the Davies County Courthouse for a brief ceremony. Pam Smith, right organizer of the event, said the marchers will be accompanied by ROTC

27:00groups from local high schools. Next, this concludes excerpts from the September 5th edition of the messenger inquire. Your reader has been Jerry Hope. On behalf of everyone here at Radio Eye, stay well. Thank you for listening. Keep on listening and have a good day.