Around The State

Ball State professor and wife guilty of trespass\nMUNCIE -- A jury convicted a Ball State University professor and his wife of trespassing on a hog farm the couple had complained about to state environmental officials.\nProsecutors argued history Professor Abel Alves and his wife, Carol Blakney, ignored a "No Trespassing" sign at the Seldom Rest farm in southern Delaware County in October 2002, while defense attorney Kathy Stinton-Glen asked the Delaware Circuit Court jury to acquit her clients because "they did not disrespect the sign."\nProsecution witness Bobby Adams, a friend and neighbor of Bill and Kaye Whitehead, owners of the farm, testified he saw the defendants' car parked along a county road with Blakney behind the wheel. Alves was standing on a gate containing a no-trespassing sign, Adams said.\nBill Whitehead testified the gate was 30 to 40 feet off the road.\nStinton-Glen told jurors her clients had merely stopped along the road to look at a barn. She said Blakney remained in the car, and Alves went no farther on the property than the gate.\nDeputy Prosecutor Judi Calhoun argued that the moment Blakney pulled her car a foot off the road, she was trespassing. And the moment Alves stepped foot off the road, he was trespassing.\nAfter a two-day trial, jurors convicted the couple Friday night. Afterward, juror Natalie Slaven said, "That's their property, period." She declined further comment, and other jurors declined comment.\nChildren removal from homes quadruples \nINDIANAPOLIS -- The number of Marion County children removed from their homes rose by more than a third last year and has nearly quadrupled in six years.\nWelfare authorities for the central Indiana county filed a record 405 child removal cases last year compared with 294 cases in 2002 and 113 cases in 1997.\nThe case growth reflects the growing hardships facing families today, said Juvenile Court Judge James Payne. Many of the parents in child welfare cases are poor, he said, and about two thirds have substance-abuse problems.\nSierra Glover, 21, of Indianapolis was taken from her mother at birth and grew up as a ward of the court. She was never adopted and spent years bouncing among seven foster and two group homes.\n"You get the feeling you're like a canned good," Glover said. "You fall off the shelf, and they put you somewhere where there's space available."\nStatewide, 5,315 children were taken from their parents from 1999 to 2002. During that period, 4,243 children were adopted. The remaining 1,072 children were placed in some form of foster care.\nSome children's advocates said the trend shows child welfare officials have become more aggressive in protecting children from abuse and neglect.\nEscaped inmates captured at local store\nEVANSVILLE -- Two men who escaped from the Morgan County Jail over the weekend were captured Monday at a convenience store about 100 miles away, police said.\nVanderburgh County sheriff's deputies arrested Bradley Lee Pryor, 32, and Jamie Michael Collins, 33, without incident at the store near the intersection of Interstate 64 and U.S. 41 north of Evansville, Sheriff Brad Ellsworth said.\nOn Saturday, the men were able to loosen and remove a piece of metal from a cell door in the medium-security section of the Martinsville jail and then use that metal to break through the cement block cell wall leading outside, Morgan County Sheriff Robert Garner said.\nThe men jumped 25 to 30 feet to the ground from the second-floor of the jail about 25 miles south of Indianapolis, Garner said.\nCollins injured his ankle in the jump, Ellsworth said.\nEllsworth said when one of the officers on Monday asked Pryor for identification, he replied, "If you're a deputy, and you're talking to me, you know who I am." \nCollins had been held on robbery charges since Tuesday, and Pryor had been held since April on drug-related charges. Garner said they also faced escape charges.\nThey were being held Monday without bond in the Gibson County Jail.