PAWLEYS ISLAND - Death flirted with Glenn Brown one day before lunch, and the encounter shook him with fear. The heroin dealer was ready to kill him, and he pressed a gun against Brown's head to prove it. Feeling the cold steel on his flesh made Brown, a special agent working the streets of Baltimore for the Drug Enforcement Administration, plead and pray for his life. "Take my car," Brown begged. "Take my money. Take my wife. You can take anything I have. Just don't shoot me. Please don't pull that trigger." [continues 687 words]
Being tough on criminal behavior in public housing helps keep residents living there as safe as possible, said area executive directors who support aggressive eviction policies. "I think it will be very beneficial overall in keeping drugs out of housing authorities," said Jane Hilburn, executive director of the Myrtle Beach Housing Authority, which has 18 single-family public housing homes. "I think it is a good law. You get the proof, and that is it." The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that government agencies can use aggressive eviction policies to get rid of drug users in public housing. Justices, without dissent, said they had no problem with a law that allows entire families to be evicted from public housing for drug use by one member. [continues 244 words]
CONWAY - Yvonne Grissett was bound by alcohol and crack cocaine for more than 10 years, but she is set free now and hoping to get others loose from substance abuse. "I lost four friends because of alcohol and crack cocaine addiction," said Grissett, 38. "They were good people at heart who got caught up in a lifestyle they never could get out of, and they died in it. I don't want to lose any more of my friends." To help those still trapped in their addictions, Grissett has launched Set Free, the birth of an idea she said came from God. [continues 606 words]
