Detroit
Reward offered in sailor’s shooting
DETROIT (AP) — Authorities are seeking the public’s help in solving the 2013 armed robbery and shooting death of a sailor home on leave in Detroit.
A $20,000 reward through Crime Stoppers was announced Tuesday for information leading to arrests in the slaying of Petty Officer 2nd Class Terrence Hill. The announcement came on Veterans Day.
Detroit police say Hill was parked near Manor Street and Seven Mile Road on Jan. 4, 2013, when he and a female acquaintance were forced out of their vehicle by two men.
Hill was shot as he struggled with one of the men. Both men then fled.
Hill spent six years in the Navy and served two tours in Afghanistan after his 2006 graduation from Detroit’s Communication & Media Arts High School.
Ferndale
Alternative high school site closes
FERNDALE, Mich. (AP) — Suburban Detroit school officials have closed the site of an alternative high school after years of crime and less than a week after a gun in a student’s possession discharged during a police search.
The Digital Learning Center in Ferndale, which occupies the former site of Taft Elementary School, will close and become all online-based, The Daily Tribune of Royal Oak reported. The program will move to the district’s Jefferson Center in Oak Park. Students will need appointments to meet with teachers.
The district is closing the school to improve safety and academic achievement, according to Ferndale Schools Superintendent Blake Prewitt. Officials already planned to close the site before the gun went off Thursday while police were searching the 17-year-old student, he said. No one was injured.
This year, the school began turning away students who had a history of discipline problems.
Crime within the school and the surrounding neighborhoods surged by 400 percent within a 10-year period, from its opening in 2001 to 2011, a study by The Daily Tribune found.
About 340 students were registered at the school this year, down from roughly 500 last year.
The building will be vacant by the end of the year, Prewitt said.
