First, heartfelt thank you goes out to Mercer County Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Ingraham for answering prayers for leniency. Wisdom, kindness, compassion. Justice as it should be.
There’s a story here, one that winds through small town America, Halloween, a drug bust, qualifying medical conditions, hostile prosecution, an arduous three years, a half million dollars and justice for patients in the end.
It all began in Rockford, a village of 1,120 people in Mercer County on the far west side of Ohio. White rural Republican red state, it’s a place where miles of soybeans, wheat and corn align razor straight roads. A “Mayberry” of the Midwest.
Ghosts and goblins have been known to haunt Halloween, usually as costumed kids ringing nearby doorbells in pursuit of candy and cookies. A knock on the door of the Keeling family on October 31, 2017, however, took on more ghoulish proportions.
