400 years: Will this year’s General Assembly make history?

Nothing puts a spring in the step of legislators heading to Richmond to do the people’s business like the fact that it’s an election year, and all 140 members of the General Assembly are up for reelection. Oh, and it’s the 400th year since the colonies’ first legislative body, the House of Burgesses, met in […]

Slight snag: City Council candidates, new PAC launch campaigns

It wasn’t your typical launch party. Supporters of local activists Don Gathers and Michael Payne gathered at Kardinal Hall January 8 for the official tossing of the hats into this year’s City Council races. But Gathers made a different kind of announcement: A doctor’s visit three hours earlier had convinced him to postpone his campaign […]

C’villeization: Proposed ad campaign draws complaints

The word “civility” has become a bad word among some Charlottesvillians. Now a proposed tourism ad campaign touting “C’villeization” as a play on the C’ville nickname is also drawing fire. Chapel Hill-based ad company Clean presented mock-ups of its “Welcome to C’villeization” rebranding campaign at a December 20 tourism board meeting. The ads feature images […]

Airport escape: Teen on the lam raises questions about alerts

The 17-year-old boy who escaped his private security guards at the Charlottesville Albemarle Airport on November 30 was “scared,” “cold,” and “hungry” by the time he reached several homes six miles from CHO, according to one of those residents. An Earlysville woman who spoke with him in Spanish, and who talked to C-VILLE on the […]

Day 12: Fields gets life plus 419 years

After finding him guilty of first-degree murder and nine other charges on Friday, a jury today recommended that James Alex Fields Jr. spend the rest of his life in prison for the carnage he caused here when he drove into a crowd August 12, 2017, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens more. On top of […]

Day 10: Guilty on all charges

A jury deliberated seven hours December 7 before reaching a verdict in the first-degree murder trial of self-proclaimed neo-Nazi James Alex Fields Jr. for the death of Heather Heyer: guilty. Fields also faced five charges of aggravated malicious wounding, three of malicious wounding and one count of felony hit and run. The jury of seven […]

Day 8: The waiting game in Fields’ trial

The planned three-week trial of James Alex Fields Jr. is running well ahead of schedule. That’s why it was so jarring that proceedings ground to a halt with a two-hour delay December 5 because of a concern about jurors. When court finally was in session around 11am, Judge Rick Moore said some unnamed person said […]

A little help: Tourism bureau seeks PR firm to turn around its image

Before the summer of 2017, a Google image search of the word “Charlottesville” might have turned up some photos of our picturesque purple mountains, or the stately columns of Monticello and the University of Virginia. These days, as demonstrated in the recent Charlottesville documentary, it turns up images of flag-waving neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Now, […]

Day 6: How Heather died—Witnesses detail severity of injuries

Marissa Blair Martin initially was unsure if she wanted to go downtown the weekend of the Unite the Right rally in 2017.  However, after the tiki-torch march through UVA Grounds on August 11, she changed her mind. She and her then-fiance, Marcus Martin, decided, “We had to so stand up for our community,” she testified […]