In an August 30 motions hearing in Charlottesville Circuit Court, a judge heard arguments for why a three-week first-degree murder trial for the man charged with driving a Dodge Challenger into a crowd on Fourth Street last summer should be moved out of the city. Defendant James Fields, who wore a black-and-white-striped jail jumpsuit and […]
In an August 30 motions hearing in Charlottesville Circuit Court, a judge heard arguments for why a three-week first-degree murder trial for the man charged with driving a Dodge Challenger into a crowd on Fourth Street last summer should be moved out of the city. Defendant James Fields, who wore a black-and-white-striped jail jumpsuit and […]
Public meetings held by elected officials in Charlottesville no longer go uninterrupted. But last night’s Albemarle County School Board meeting in which six people were arrested and one was hospitalized was a meeting of a different breed. For about a year, the Hate-Free Schools Coalition of Albemarle County has pressured the school board to reexamine […]
Developer Keith Woodard has abandoned his plan to build a $50 million castle of downtown luxury condos and retail space on a city-owned Water Street parking lot. “The project was a tremendous undertaking, and over time, the process of obtaining the necessary approvals became very difficult and at times adversarial, causing continual delays and uncertainty,” […]
It’s about crime The Albemarle County Police Department released its annual crime report for 2017 in June, and while we already published some of the most striking statistics, here’s what else caught our eye. Between the years of 2016 and 2017, crimes rates increased in all but one category. The largest increases were in homicide […]
In an August 21 hearing in Charlottesville Circuit Court, Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania took an unusual seat—in the defendant’s chair—with his files resting on a table on the left side of the room, while another man took Platania’s usual seat on the right. William Evans, a Fairfax attorney representing himself, is suing the commonwealth’s attorney […]
The two young men handed lengthy prison sentences last week for their involvement in the August 12, 2017, brutal parking garage beating of DeAndre Harris sat in stark contrast to one another in Charlottesville Circuit Court. One’s remorse was hard to miss. Jacob Goodwin, the Arkansas man who can be seen in videos wearing full […]
The lights were off and the door was locked in Shreya Mahadevan’s fourth-grade classroom at Johnson Elementary School. Small bodies huddled quietly behind a wall of backpacks—their teacher in tears. “It was really scary. Petrifying,” says the 9-year-old girl about the lockdown her school was under last October, when a man in nearby Johnson Village […]
At the first felony sentencing from last year’s violent Unite the Right rally, a judge on August 21 ordered a Maryland Confederate White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan leader to serve four years in prison for firing a gun at flamethrower-wielding Corey Long after an unlawful assembly had been declared. Richard Wilson Preston, […]
During the week leading up to the August 11 and 12 anniversary, local anti-racist groups hosted a series of events, including panels on their use of in-your-face tactics and why they believe the First Amendment should not apply to white supremacists. Protesters up the ante UVA religious studies professor Jalane Schmidt opened the August 7 […]
Korte sentenced to 12 months With a handful of UVA colleagues sitting in the courtroom, film studies professor Walter Korte, 74, was sentenced to five years in prison with all but 12 months suspended after pleading guilty to two counts of possession of child pornography. Korte was busted in August 2016 when he was spotted […]