Press coverage of the Andre Stenson case has been a moving target, with Channels 8 and 6 doing breaking stories Friday night at 11 while Channel 10 was completely skunked, save the "what's going to be in tomorrow's paper" segment with the News-Sentinel's Maria Cornelius announcing that a man the police were arresting had ended up dead in East Knoxville.

(East Knoxville, by the way, is often a term having less to do with geography than race. It generally encompasses anything that involves African Americans and stretches from Lonsdale, Mechanicsville and parts of Westview to the easternmost city limits.)

Channel 10 came roaring back over the weekend with David Nelson emphasizing the dead man's arrest record. Everybody featured angry East Knoxvillians (so we do it, too) and preachers calling for calm. News-Sentinel coverage evolved with tantalizing now-you-have-it, now-you-don't mentions of cocaine being found in the victim's car, culminating with a killer anonymous police source mention of a "cocaine-induced heart attack" Monday. Radio and TV followed with sloppy reporting of autopsy findings terming Stenson's death a "heart attack."

By Wednesday, after the release of the toxicology report that was negatory for cocaine, an N-S story said no drugs were found in the victim's car. Unreported was police official's refusal to allow Stenson's widow, Marcie, to see her husband's body Friday, and that it took the intervention of State Rep. Joe Armstrong, City Councilman Danny Mayfield and County Commissioners Diane Jordan and Frank Bowden and NAACP President Dewey Roberts to persuade UT Medical Center personnel to relay her request to county Medical Examiner Sandra Elkins Saturday afternoon. (Once notified, Elkins obliged Stenson's family.)

* Funeral services for Andre Stenson will be 1 p.m. Friday at Tabernacle Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Boulevard. The family will receive friends at 12:30 Friday prior to the service, and the body will be available for viewing at Jarnigan and Son, 2823 Martin Luther King Boulevard after 4 p.m. Thursday. The family lacks sufficient funds to bury him, and those who wish to help with expenses may send donations to the Tribe 1 Stenson Fund, P.O. Box 478, Knoxville, TN 37901.

Uh-Oh—Now it's Really Going to be Crowded

The line of hungry customers at the Tomato Head might be getting longer now that owner/food visionary Mahasti Vafaie was profiled in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Vafaie was featured in the Jan. 4 edition's "Southern Chefs" series, hailed for bringing her eclectic cuisine to the "ghostly, boarded-up buildings" of Market Square six years ago. In the article, Vafaie says she would most like to serve her New American Home Cooking to Tom Waits and Glen Gould—probably grilled vegetables marinated with olive oil and lemon vinaigrette. Other Knoxville chefs profiled in the series previously include Chuck Hudson at Charlie Peppers and Chris Skalet at JFG Coffeehouse.