May. 23, 2025

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A 106-year-old man, the oldest inmate in Alabama's state prisons, died on Wednesday, reports AL.com's Carol Robinson.

When they sentenced Floyd Lee Coleman to the rest of his life in prison, they probably didn't think that would be longer than 45 years.

He was getting off easy.

Coleman was 60 years old when he lured a 7-year-old girl named Quintina Steele into his room at a Bessemer boarding house, raped her and strangled her to death.

He initially denied the allegations but was convicted and sentenced to die in Alabama's "Yellow Mama" electric chair. Later, the Alabama Supreme Court ordered a new trial over the state's new death-penalty law. Coleman pleaded guilty and managed to receive a life sentence.

Coleman died at UAB Hospital. Steele, his victim, would be in her early 50s today.

There is an Alabama state law that says game wardens have the power "To enter upon any land or water in the performance of their duty."

With no mention of search warrants in that line, it seems to offer a game warden broad power to enter land and issue citations.

Some folks in the Shoals have filed a lawsuit to challenge that, reports AL.com's Scott Turner.

The three plaintiffs haven't been charged with related crimes or violations, but they say they don't like having game wardens poking around on their land on multiple occasions, showing up unexpectedly and appearing on game cameras.

Hunting and fishing regulations apply to all lands in Alabama, public or private. In one of the plaintiffs' cases, the landowner received a warning about baiting deer -- something the landowner denied was happening.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs argue that the Alabama Constitution requires a warrant based on probable cause in order for law enforcement to search private property and that game wardens should not be exempt from that.

The Washington County lake that was closed by an outbreak of giant salvinia will reopen this weekend, reports AL.com's Lawrence Specker.

Giant salvinia is an aquatic fern native to Brazil. They say it can double its coverage area in just a few days, growing into a mat on top of the water that blocks sunlight and oxygen. It was discovered in J. Emmett Wood Lake last year.

The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources closed the lake in August, drew it down to dry out the salvinia around the perimeter and treated the surface mats with an herbicide. They're hoping that at least makes any salvinia that's left something that can be managed.

And here's a request for angers and other boaters: Be careful not to transport foreign weeds from one lake or river to another on the prop of your motor or anywhere else on your boat.

While Wood Lake is now open to fishing from the hill, the boat ramp will stay closed until the water level rises.

Here's the occasional reminder for folks to avoid feeding alligators.

AL.com's William Thornton reports that a pretty good-sized alligator in Huntsville was put down after it was seen approaching humans.

Approaching humans on purpose isn't really normal behavior for a gator. And it often means somebody's been feeding it.

This gator was just over 10 feet long and weighed around 275 pounds. They can get a lot bigger, but that's more gator than you want associating your presence with feeding time. It was spotted in the Jackson Bend subdivision off Haysland Road in South Huntsville.

If South Huntsville sounds like a long way north to be finding a gator, it is.

Sightings of the big reptiles along the Tennessee River go back many decades, but the current permanent population comes from a relocation of 56 gators from Louisiana to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge in 1979. At the time, the American alligator was endangered, and efforts were being made to expand its range.

Forty six years later, they're hanging on. Biologists say that the larger gators can survive a North Alabama winter while the hatchlings likely die off. They believe it takes a few mild winters in a row to produce a new crop of gators that can survive into adulthood. They can live up to around 50 years.

1892 East, a restaurant located in Huntsville's Five Points neighborhood for nearly 15 years.

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In 1941, music composer Jackson Hill of Birmingham.

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