The Crockery Township Fire Department will be one of four staging areas across the Michigan's Lower Peninsula today as part of a statewide emergency readiness test. Firefighters and paramedics from several departments in Ottawa and Muskegon counties are expected to respond to the department, 16875 Main St. (112th Avenue) in Nunica, after being called at about 2:20 this afternoon, said Crockery Township Fire Chief Gary Dreyer, who is coordinating the local staging site.

A section of Lakeshore Drive, south of M-45, was closed to traffic for about an hour late Wednesday afternoon following a two-car accident in front of 10765 Lakeshore Drive. Four people with minor injuries were taken by ambulance to North Ottawa Community Hospital following the 4:42 p.m. accident, said Lt. Bruce Palm of the Grand Haven Township Fire Department. One person refused medical treatment. Palm said the car pulled out of a driveway into the path of a southbound sport utility vehicle. No further information was available at this time.

Police are investigating the murder of a West Michigan native, whose body was found in parts in Texas. Authorities said they found the dismembered body of Laura Ackerson, 27, near Richmond, Texas - hundreds of miles from her current home in Kinston, N.C. Ackerson's family still lives in Ionia County, where she grew up.

A series of recent thefts reported from beaches and cars in the city of Grand Haven and Grand Haven Township have prompted police to warn people to secure their valuables. "Don't leave valuables on the beach,' said Lt. Renee Freeman of the Grand Haven Department of Public Safety. "Lock your cars.' Freeman said surrounding areas have been getting hit with "snatch-and-grab' thieves who run up to cars or beach towels and grab whatever is handy.

A man convicted of murder in the 2006 death of an 80-year-old woman in the small mid-Michigan community of Hubbardston has been sentenced to life in prison without parole. Justin Stephens was sentenced Tuesday in a courtroom in Ionia. A jury in May found the 21-year-old guilty of first-degree murder, felony murder and second-degree home invasion in the death of Bernita Cunningham. Stephens' defense lawyer had raised questions about the work of investigators during the trial.

The former office secretary for a plumbers union in Lansing has been sentenced to three years, six months in prison for embezzling $412,000 from the union and its apprenticeship and training fund. April D. Franklin, 35, worked for Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 333 between 1999 and 2009. The Mason woman pleaded guilty in May to federal charges of theft from an employee benefit plan and embezzlement of union funds.

Authorities have identified a body found alongside a Lake County road and said the man apparently died of a gunshot wound. The body of 31-year-old Andrew Smith of Big Rapids was found early Saturday along a road near the boundary between Yates and Pleasant Plains townships. The site is about 4 miles southeast of Baldwin. The death was under investigation.