Five years ago, 2021
• The Human Collective organization rallies to help fix a leaky roof and decay conditions at Deborah Kelly-Gainers’ home after the county’s State Housing Initiative Program is shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Orange Park High’s Sebastian Kouchakjy and Ridgeview’s Serenity Derousie win first-place honors at the county and state science fairs and will now compete at the international fair.
• The Town of Orange Park receives $1.4 million in reimbursement in CARES Act funding.
10 years ago, 2016
• The Clay County Sheriff’s Office starts its “Coffee with a Cop” program by sitting with residents in Keystone Heights and discussing their concerns.
• Bobbie and Joseph White of Middleburg are indicted for first-degree murder, armed robbery, armed robbery with assault, second-degree arson and possession of arson in the death of Corey Bryan Laine, 35, of Jacksonville.
• Julieann Crisp, who was born without significant portions of her spine, is given a special rehab bicycle from the Orange Park Rotary Club.
20 years ago, 2006
• U.S. Marshals converge at a home on Vanderford Road where they captured Joe Nathan Dufresne who was wanted in connection with a Michigan-based white supremacist group known as The Creativity Movement.
• Flanked by Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherford on one side and Clay County Superintendent David Owens on the other, Clay County Sheriff Rick Beseler makes a public plea to parents to be aware that gangs could be recruiting local teenagers.
• Officials with the Historical Society of Penney farms announce plans to erect a statue of the town’s namesake and founder, James Cash Penney, to mark the town’s 80th anniversary.
30 years ago, 1996
• Linda Kay Murphy and Michael Gary Christianson, a Clay County Jail corrections officer and a former corrections officer, respectively, are arrested and charged with unlawful compensation and official misconduct for alleged misconduct on the job.
• The Clay County Sheriff’s Office investigate the drowning death of Thomas Earl Bunn, 37, a Henley Road resident in Lake Asbury, whose body was found submerged in about 35 feet from the shore.
• Clay County Sheriff Scott Lancaster threatens to sue the Green Cove Springs Board of Zoning Adjustment after the panel voted down a variance needed to expand the Clay County Jail.
40 years ago, 1986
• Clay County Commissioners lift a ban on transporting animals from Animal Control to the University of Florida where they would serve as research subjects and be subject to euthanasia.
• The Clay County Sheriff’s Office arrests brothers James Andrew Dye and Tommy Lee Dye for the October 1985 murder of Dewbra E. Dye, 38.
• Clay County Agricultural Fair Association President Claude Kelly announces the board voted to move its first fair from a fall date to a spring start over weather concerns.