Sean Murphy

1 week ago | leader-call.com | Sean Murphy

Watching the unfolding events in Washington, D.C., regarding the “Big Beautiful Bill,” I can’t help but feel a mix of anger, frustration, and nausea, as Yogi Berra might have said. It’s astonishing how little has changed over the decades in the way sausage is made. In the past, no one would have ever imagined witnessing such a practice, but now, we’re all forced to stare transfixed through a window as the god-awful spectacle unfolds.

2 weeks ago | leader-call.com | Sean Murphy

An alert South Laurel senior citizen likely kept her from being a rape victim, LPD Chief Tommy Cox said. On Monday afternoon, a woman was in her front yard on South 9th Avenue at about 4 p.m. when a man, identified as George Fairley, 56, came up toward her on the bicycle. He started a conversation with the woman, but then went “hands-on” her, Cox said. Cox said the man shoved her to the ground and that’s where her quick thinking paid off.

2 weeks ago | leader-call.com | Sean Murphy

The air-conditioning technician assigned to the Laurel Police Department will not soon forget his latest trip to headquarters on South Magnolia Street. He was in his truck in the LPD parking lot Monday morning when a disturbance broke out inside the front lobby, Cox said. As reported in Wednesday’s paper, Grady Taylor came to the LPD to talk about a disturbance when detectives had to get involved. “He was making threats that we just could not ignore,” Cox said.

2 weeks ago | leader-call.com | Sean Murphy

Sometimes police work can be a crappy job. On Wednesday morning at about 10 a.m., an LPD patrol officer James Parish pulled into a self-serve car wash in the 800 block of South 16th when one of the officers looked up to see a woman “doing her business,” LPD Chief Tommy Cox said, adding it was not a No. 1. The woman, identified as Diamond Pearl Franklin, 31, was seen with her pants around her ankles “going No. 2” while leaned up against one of the stalls.

2 weeks ago | leader-call.com | Sean Murphy

Each one of us here at the Leader-Call, with a staff less than the size of the news and sports department at the first newspaper for which I worked, has our stressers. It is thankless and most often filled with more grief than it is worth. The day is coming for all of us, some faster than others, to just say, “OK, enough!”Like the old mob movies, though, once they get you in, you can never get out. Each of us has the stressful time of year. Mine has either just ended or is just beginning.