I wanted to take a moment to share with everyone information about what started out as an evening walk with family and friends at Lake Vesuvius but quickly turned into a bad situation when my car was broken into and personal belongings were stolen on Sunday evening, Sept. 2.

I want to personally give a big “thank you” to Deputy Nick Waugh of the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office, who was the investigating officer, for being there when I needed his help, following up on everything he said he would do and for keeping me informed throughout the process.

Deputy Waugh did everything he said he would do and I appreciate his staying the course in doing a job well done that resulted in the arrest of the thieves responsible.

I also want to go a step further and say “thank you” again to several members of the Ironton Police Department (Sgt. Brian Pauley, Patrolmen Chad Gue and Jamie Pruitt) who also played a major role and assisted me in an attempt to track down a signal from my stolen cell phone on Sunday evening while Deputy Waugh was called to another location within the county.

I was also want our community to be aware that these two departments worked through the details during this 48-hour ordeal and showed some outstanding joint police work in taking care of the business of getting some criminals off our streets.

These two public service departments worked together and were able to make a couple of arrests of the people responsible for the damage to my car and theft of my personal belongings.

Thanks to Deputy Nick Waugh, Sgt. Randy Goodall of the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office along with Captain Joe Ross, Sgt. Brian Pauley, and Patrolmen Jamie Pruitt of the Ironton Police Department for bringing them into custody.

I can’t express enough gratitude for their efforts and appreciate Sheriff Jeff Lawless for going out of his way to talk to me on his day away from the office and ensure me they were going to do whatever they could to find those responsible.

A lot can be accomplished with people working together towards a common goal.

Thanks to everyone once again and to those that I didn’t mention that worked behind the scenes.

Johnda Williams

Deering