Michigan State Representative Douglas A. Geiss has introduced legislation in the Michigan House to designate US-24 Telegraph Road from Van Born Road to Pennsylvania Road as “The Corporal Matthew Edwards Memorial Highway” in honor of my nephew, a Taylor (Michigan) Police Officer who was killed in the line of duty on July 23, 2010.
I spoke with Representative Geiss about his legislation on Tuesday, October 25, 2011:
Here’s the link to the National Center for Family- Integrated Churches. Click to find out how you can live stream their upcoming Marriage Conference with Paul Washer and Joel Beeke!
Trial begins for Westland man accused in fatal shooting of Taylor officer
Doug Guthrie/ The Detroit News
Detroit— A jury of 12 is being selected Tuesday from a pool of 62 Wayne County residents to determine the fate of a Westland man accused of killing Taylor Police Cpl. Matthew Edwards.
Tyress Thearndos Mathews, 36, is charged with first-degree felony murder for the July 23, 2010, shooting death of the officer, dispatched shortly before 6 a.m. that morning to a breaking and entering complaint. The trial is expected to last two weeks.
The defendant, captured and held in the Wayne County Jail since shortly after Edwards’ slaying, was led by Wayne County Sheriff’s deputies Tuesday into the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice courtroom of Circuit Judge Ulysses Boykin. His head is shaved, and he wore a blue suit and tie.
Witnesses have said Mathews was standing in the parking lot of the Coopertree apartment complex on Pine Street with a beer in his hand and a duffle slung like a backpack over his shoulders when Edwards and his partner, Taylor Police Cpl. Gregory Piche, pulled up in a patrol car.
Mathews is alleged to have told the officers he had a fight with his wife and wanted his keys so he could leave. When ordered to put down the bag, Mathews is alleged to have pulled a semi-automatic handgun from the bag and started firing. Edwards was struck by one bullet in the head, and Mathews is alleged to have stood over the officer firing five more shots.
Piche said he ran for cover, then returned fire and chased the gunman on foot. Piche has reported that he captured Mathews when the suspect ran out of ammunition.
“He looked up at me and said, ‘Just … kill me,'” Piche testified at a preliminary examination of the evidence against Mathews.
Besides the murder, which is punishable by up to life in prison without parole, Mathews also is charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, punishable by up to five years in prison; use of a firearm in the commission of a felony crime, which carries a mandatory two-year sentence; and being a habitual fourth offender, which in this case also is punishable by up to life in prison.
dguthrie@detnews.com
The media is stroking out about Herman Cain’s YouTube ad featuring his campaign manager taking a drag on a cigarette. Maybe a return to the days of the Marlboro Man is exactly what this country needs!
From Preaching & Preachers, p. 107:
Indeed it seems to be the case that the greater the preacher the more hesitant he has been generally to preach. Oftentimes such men have had to be persuaded by ministers and elders and others to do this; they so shrank from the dread responsibility. This was true of George Whitefield, one of the greatest and most eloquent preachers ever to adorn a pulpit. And it has been true of many others. My argument is, therefore, that a man who feels that he is competent, and that he can do this easily, and so rushes to preach without any sense of fear or trembling, or any hesitation whatsoever, is a man who is proclaiming that he has never been ‘called’ to be a preacher. The man who is called by God is a man who realises what he is called to do, and he so realises the awefulness of the task that he shrinks from it. Nothing but this overwhelming sense of being called, and of compulsion, should ever lead anyone to preach.