Top 9@9 for July 3, 2012 - FOX 54 WZDX – Huntsville News, Weather and Sports

1. Alabama state troopers are working overtime this week to keep the highways safe. All available troopers will be on the road through Sunday night to conduct license and sobriety checkpoints and look for speeders.

2. Some of those state troopers called to the scene of a serious wreck this afternoon on Winchester Road between Shields and Moores Mill. We're told a man and a woman involved in the accident fled the scene, but were picked up about a mile away.

3. The Harvest-Monrovia Water department is out patrolling communities looking for violators of its water restrictions. Fines can be handed out to residents in violation of the regulations.

4. Arab police are mourning the loss of one of its K-9 units. Odie died of a fungus infection Monday morning after two years with the department.

5. Birmingham based Belle Foods is taking over some Valley grocery stores as part of the acquisition of 57 stores. Some area Food Worlds and the Piggly Wiggly in Athens will be re-branded under the Belle banner.

6. Alabama Governor Robert Bentley will spend the Fourth of July in Hamburg Germany where he'll visit an Airbus assembly plant. He'll make a stop in England on his return trip to recruit business as a result of the Airbus announcement.

7. Andy Griffith, famous for his role as sheriff Andy Taylor on the 1960s TV show that bore his name, died Tuesday in North Carolina. He was 86 years old.

8. An SUV goes airborne in Wisconsin after extreme heat caused a road to buckle.

9. Tacos flown in for an entire town. Taco Bell got word of a hoax that claimed one of its restaurants would be opening in a remote Alaska town and dropped off 10,000 tacos via helicopter.