By Dennis Brown

A suspect thought to be the triggerman in a shooting incident on Montgomery Road has been apprehended in North Carolina.

The search for the suspect spanned a three state area as officials closed in on his trail. It ended last night when he was apprehended in Durham County, North Carolina, according to Deputy Dwayne Stone. The shooting incident happened January 15.

Lewis County Sheriff Bill Lewis said the suspect was identified last week after a surveillance video showing Gary Robinson and another man at a convenience store in Greenup County was shown on WSAZ Television’s website.

“Within 30 minutes of the video being released, someone called in to the sheriff’s office and identified the man who was with Robinson,” Lewis said.

Lewis said the video appeared to show Robinson had the man some money.

Lewis said the suspect was identified as Wesley Bernard Allen, 45, of Bahama, North Carolina, a small community near Durham. Allen is thought to be the person who shot John Jamison at Jamison’s home on Montgomery Road.

He said local deputies worked with officials in North Carolina and obtained a warrant for Allen.

Lewis said last week SWAT teams there approached two locations known to be frequented by Allen but were unable to locate him. “At this time he remains on the run,” Lewis said on Friday. “But we will get him.”

Allen was arrested by Durham County law enforcement Sunday night, according to Stone. “The authorities confirmed he had an injury to his face,” Stone added.

Lewis said he believes Allen received an injury to his face as he and Jamison fired at each other. “We recovered a blood sample at the scene which does not match the victim,” Lewis said. He added the sheriff’s department had received reports last week that Allen had visited a hospital in North Carolina for treatment of a facial injury and had reportedly been seeking the services of a plastic surgeon.

Lewis said reports had also surfaced that Allen had been sighted in Virginia, resulting in a search for him by authorities there.

Lewis said Allen apparently fired 10 rounds at Jamison, 47, from a .40 caliber pistol, judging from the number of spent cartridges located at the scene. He said initial reports were that Jamison had been hit by three of those rounds although family members recently told him Jamison had received seven bullet wounds.

Gary H. Robinson, 62, was arrested January 15 just 

inside Greenup County and charged with complicity to commit first degree assault. He was lodged in the Lewis County Detention Center and was later released on $100,000 cash bond. 

Lewis said Robinson was escorted by jail officials back to his home in Ashland and fitted with a monitoring device. He remains confined to his home.

Lewis said Jamison is continuing his recovery from the bullet wounds at Grant Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio.

Lewis said the sheriff’s department was notified about 9:00 a.m. January 15 of a shooting incident at the home of John and Dana Jamison on Montgomery Road at Garrison.

He said a suspect reportedly knocked on the front door at the Jamison home and when Dana Jamison answered the door, he asked to speak with a person who was not at the home and then asked to speak with John Jamison.

Lewis said Dana Jamison warned her husband that something didn’t seem right about the visitor and he responded to the door with a .357 caliber pistol.

Lewis said John Jamison and the suspect fired at each other while Jamison was in the living room of the home and the suspect was on the front porch. He said Jamison was struck in the neck and upper torso by shots fired from the .40 caliber gun.

Lewis said after the shooting the suspect was seen fleeing south on Montgomery Road in a later model white Toyota Camry.

Jamison was taken to the mouth of Montgomery Road by his wife, where they met up with a MedCorp Ambulance which had been dispatched to that location on the AA Highway. Jamison was taken to Southern Ohio Medical Center in Portsmouth, Ohio, where he underwent emergency surgery, Lewis said. Jamison was transferred to Grant Medical Center in Columbus after he had been stabilized.

Lewis said Deputy Dwayne Stone and Deputy Tom Polley soon developed several leads and obtained a warrant which led to the arrest of Robinson.

Lewis said Deputy Stone along with officers from the Greenup County Sheriff’s Department and Kentucky State Police were waiting for Robinson to arrive at a school in Greenup County on the afternoon of the day of the shooting. He said Robinson apparently saw the officers and didn’t pull into the school parking lot.

He was stopped a short time later by a KSP Trooper on Ky. Rt. 8 near the Lewis County line, Lewis said.

Lewis said Robinson and Dana Jamison have a child together from a previous relationship.

Stone said the process is underway to begin extradition proceedings to return Allen to Kentucky to face the charges.

Former Lewis County Clerk Shirley Hinton has been indicted for allegedly misappropriating office funds and filing false tax returns.

The Lewis County Grand Jury handed up the 13 count indictment January 15 which included six counts of theft by failure to make required disposition over $500 (class D felonies), six counts of filing false income tax returns (class D felonies), and one count of first degree official misconduct (class A misdemeanor).

The charges were announced last Tuesday in a press release from Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway’s office.

The charges cover six years, 1999, 2001 and 2005 through 2008, and are the result of investigations by the office of Kentucky State Auditor Crit Luallen, the Kentucky Department of Revenue and the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office.

The case was presented to the grand jury by the Office of Special Prosecutions, a branch of the Attorney General’s office, according to the release.

The charges allege that in each of the six years Hinton failed to make required payment or disposition of public funds and filed false tax returns with the Kentucky Department of Revenue. The misdemeanor charge on official misconduct covers the period from January 1, 1999, to May 1, 2009.

Hinton, 74, is being represented by Vanceburg attorney Lloyd Spear. Spear said last week that Hinton is “mortified and heartbroken by the charges.”

“She regrets that these charges cast her years of public service in this light,” he said.

Spear said Hinton has reimbursed all funds in question and has also paid back the costs of the special audits which had been conducted.

“There is no loss of any tax money whatsoever,” he said.

“There was never a falsification of records or of the daily sheets,” he added.

Spear said Hinton would have already made an appearance in Lewis County Circuit Court but that Circuit Judge Robert Conley recused himself because Hinton had been a long-time local public official and he had had official dealings with her on several occasions.

He said Special Judge John David Caudill has appointed Carter Circuit Judge Rebecca Phillips to the case.

“We are working with the Attorney General’s office now to schedule a date for the arraignment,” Spear said. “Right now we’re looking at an appearance in Lewis Circuit Court before Judge Phillips in late February.”

Hinton began her career in the Lewis County Clerk’s Office in 1954 under then County Clerk George Martin Plummer. In 1969 she was elected to the office and served as clerk until her retirement last year.

In an audit released last year by Luallen’s office, auditors reported bank deposits for the first three months of 2007 were short $15,312. In the same report auditors noted that office records tested for the beginning of 2008 they found the account short nearly $20,000.

Hinton responded in the audit that she had repaid those funds from her personal account.

Hinton’s chief deputy clerk, Glenda Himes, was appointed to complete the unexpired term which runs through this year.