MAYFLOWER, Ark. (AP) - A broad tornado sliced through Little Rock’s suburbs Sunday, killing 11 people and leaving behind a miles-long path of destruction as a powerful system rumbling off the Plains provided a violent kick-start to the nation’s tornado season.
The scene was the same in town after town, with emergency workers and volunteers going door-to-door to check for victims. State troopers performed the same task among the damaged and toppled 18-wheelers, cars and trucks on a two-mile stretch of Interstate 40, a major thoroughfare in and out of Arkansas’ capital city.
“It turned pitch black,” said Mark Ausbrooks, who was at his parents’ home in Mayflower when the storm arrived. “I ran and got pillows to put over our heads and … all hell broke loose.”
“My parents’ home, it’s gone completely,” he said.
Forecasters had warned for days that violent weather would strike this weekend, ending an unusually calm weather pattern. A morning storm forced a delay at the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon and by afternoon the weather system had grown deadly, spawning a tornado that killed a person in Quapaw, Oklahoma, before moving north into Kansas and destroying dozens of homes in Baxter Springs.
The twister was estimated to be three blocks wide when it struck Baxter Springs, destroying 60 to 70 homes and 20 to 25 businesses in the city of roughly 4,200 residents, according to Cherokee County, Kan., emergency manager Jason Allison.
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An 11-month-old boy in North Carolina has died, two days after being injured in one of a series of tornadoes that hit in the state, authorities said. The fatality came on a weekend of potent thunderstorms that lashed wide areas of the South and unleashed deadly tornadoes in the Midwest.
Julia Jarema, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, said the boy died in a hospital Sunday but she didn’t release further details or the boy’s identity. More than a dozen people were reported injured and around 200 home and businesses destroyed or heavily damaged in Friday’s scattered tornadoes in North Carolina.
On Sunday, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory toured that and other storm-struck areas of the state and said his prayers go out to the boy’s family. He pledged to seek state and federal government assistance for the victims.
Elsewhere, a new round of powerful storms hit around the Midwest and the South, spawning several tornadoes, including one that claimed lives in a small northeastern Oklahoma city and another that carved a path of destruction through several northern suburbs of Little Rock, Ark.
Forecasters, meanwhile, said they were checking radar reports suggesting possible tornadoes had developed Sunday evening in five locations in north Mississippi though none of those apparently touched ground.
Meteorologist John Sirman in the National Weather Service office in Memphis, Tenn., said those possible twisters appeared to have sprung out of two storm cells that swept through the northern part of Mississippi within two hours before those cells weakened.
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DAVIDSON, N.C. (AP) - The feisty personalities and anti-establishment fervor that fed tea party challenges in recent Republican U.S. Senate primaries are largely missing this year, a troubling sign for Democrats who want the GOP to nominate candidates with limited appeal.
In North Carolina, a once-promising clash between an establishment Republican and two harder-right rivals has yet to catch fire, with the May 6 primary approaching. Longtime activists say they find little awareness, let alone excitement, among conservative voters, even though Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan is a top target in November.
Asked about Democrats who say North Carolina Republicans are fighting a “civil war,” former Guilford County GOP chairman Marcus Kindley said, “They wish.”
The picture is similar elsewhere.
Early pledges to oust Republican senators seen as insufficiently ideological by some tea partyers fizzled in Texas, South Carolina and Tennessee. In Kentucky, tea party-backed Matt Bevin is struggling against Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.
A Colorado tea partyer stepped aside to let a congressman run unimpeded for the Senate. In Georgia, the tea party has not coalesced around any of the seven GOP Senate candidates.
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WINCHESTER, Tenn. (AP) - Investigators have found a body of a woman inside a car after a police chase in southern Tennessee.
State troopers and Franklin County Sheriff’s deputies found the remains of 46-year-old Bridgette Haley after stopping the car in Estill Springs after a pursuit Saturday night.
The Sheriff’s Department told WSMV-TV in Nashville (https://bit.ly/1flAgcdhttps://bit.ly/1flAgcd ) that the driver, 46-year-old Troy Whipple, tried to run after the stop, but was eventually caught.
During a search of the vehicle, investigators found Haley’s body.
Her body has been sent to the State Medical Examiner’s Office for autopsy.
Whipple is in custody in the Franklin County Jail. He’s being held without bail.
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