In early March, the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force arrested 18 people, ages 17 to 30, following almost a year of undercover operations in Belmont. Eight men and one woman face charges of distributing marijuana. One man faces charges of distributing both marijuana and imitation cocaine. Eight suspects face cocaine charges. In JADE press […]
The resulting contradiction couldn’t be sharper: While developers and their supporters on Council hammer a “Wealthy Buyers Only” sign on the top of the City gates, a new breed of disenfranchised City dwellers is sprouting below. Lynn Wiber is among them. Educated and employed, she has no home of her own and few prospects of […]
Using the latest DNA technology, Charlottesville police in November linked a series of area rapes to a single perpetrator. The attacker’s modus operandi—violent sneak attacks on carefully selected victims—led police to suspect the serial rapist could be responsible for as many as seven assaults since 1997. Hoping for a tip that could lead to an […]
Rain…The word alone forms a complete prayer. Spoken as a plea or demand, the simple invocation has been a common mantra across the Southeast this year. The congregation of thirsty supplicants included, until recently, those of us living in the Rivanna Watershed, which in the past four years has been shy about 40 inches of […]
The Beltway sniper was not, as many talking heads predicted, an international terrorist or a Marilyn Manson fan. The prime suspect, John Allen Muhammad, is a Gulf War veteran. His sidekick, 17-year-old John Lee Malvo, seems to be a lost youth who followed the wrong role model. Malvo’s case may be extreme, but it is […]
By now, the photographs of flak-jacketed police officers mingling in the yellow-cordoned parking lot of a strip-mall has become a familiar image in the daily newspapers. The leftover scenes from recent sniper attacks convey the desperation that comes with trying to comprehend madness. Faced with irrational, wanton brutality, it’s natural for people to seek cause-and-effect […]
Goodbye Bypass? Not just yet The Western Bypass may be dead, for now, but the unbuilt road still casts a long shadow over local transportation politics. Last spring, the nearly insolvent Virginia Depart-ment of Transportation cut the $180 million Route 29 Bypass from its six-year plan. Politicians from southern communities like Lynchburg and Danville continue […]
George Garrett is a storyteller and has been since his age was measured in single digits. It was then that Garrett says he decided he wanted to be a writer, even though he had no clue, at the time, what it meant to be one. Today, after more than 60 years practicing his craft, Garrett […]