RICHLAND CO.—We’d like to point out that tonight is the anniversary of an event that really put Olney on google: the First Degree Murder trial of Brandon Jenkins.
Jenkins was the Texas man who, here in Richland County on business, was caught up in a shitstorm of drunken, misbehaving punks on the parking lot of Super 8 in Olney, and was as a result charged with intentionally killing one of those punks.
A jury saw through prosecutor David Hyde’s bullshit, and set Jenkins free (after convicting him of a misdemeanor Reckless Conduct count, added as a lesser charge) after a six-day trial that riveted the area.
We’re proud of Jenkins, his family and friends, who stood by him and whose support never wavered.
However, we’d like to point something out.
All the testimony that we heard on the last day of the defense’s case—about the dangerous conduct of the violent Earp gang, the many people they beat, the vehicles and/or houses they trashed of the people they didn’t like or had a bend against, the threats they made toward Olney law enforcement—was, despite the good it did Brandon to show the jury what he was up against, all for naught for the taxpayers of Richland County.
NONE of those incidents cited that day of testimony—the brutalization of Angelina Totten, the battery of Nathan Steber, the damage to their vehicles and house, just as examples—have ever been charged against any of the surviving Earps or Casey King.
In fact, we’ve learned that the rest of the vile gang have basically been told that if they get out of the area, their charges will be dismissed and they won’t even have to return for any follow-up.
So we the citizens of Richland County are not safe; we are not protected against this kind of filth; we are always at the whims of whomever it is that David Hyde—who doesn’t even live in this county, nor pay taxes here, but instead drives over from Crawford County EVERY DAY—has as his “boay” du jour.
So we reiterate our plea: please help us find someone to run against him in the next election, even if that’s still three years away. He’s our prosecutor because no one else wants the job. But someone has to sweep up the trash in Richland; what happened with Brandon Jenkins went a long way toward it, but more needs to be done.
Brandon and Nichole Jenkins, one year ago tonight, going home after Brandon spent almost six months in the Richland County jail for NOTHING.