Sign of the times: Supes don’t take kindly to city plaque

An item on the Albemarle Board of Supervisors consent agenda August 3 was to allow the city to put up a historic plaque in Court Square in front of the county’s courthouses. Only instead of rubberstamping the request, one supervisor took issue with the content, and others complained it was yet another missed opportunity for […]

Slow burn: New traffic project doesn’t calm all concerns

Last month, the city announced the initiation of a traffic calming project on Locust Avenue, where locals have been concerned about the influx of cars whizzing up and down the street for some time. But a resident who has persistently tracked the traffic himself says the project has had “no apparent benefit.” After a 12-year-old […]

Bronco Mendenhall plays by his own rules

“Bronco’s office is under renovation,” I’m told as I walk into UVA head football coach Bronco Mendenhall’s temporary office in July. “They’re adding bookshelves.” Mendenhall sits at the end of a long table in a conference room, surrounded by pieces of paper. He looks every bit the part of a head coach in a Virginia […]

Femme fatale: Literary allusions in the Haysom homicides

The tale of UVA students Elizabeth Haysom and Jens Soering, who were convicted in the 1985 double murders of Haysom’s parents, has long riveted central Virginia, and a new documentary reveals how the two saw themselves as tragic characters out of Shakespeare and Dickens. Initially Soering confessed to the murders, he says, to protect his […]

In brief: New bridge, 10-story luxury hotel, funky smoothies and more…

Good news for smoothie fans Charlottesville has no reports of hepatitis A cases like the outbreak that struck 28 Tropical Smoothie Cafe patrons throughout Virginia that was thought to be caused by contaminated Egyptian strawberries, according to the local Virginia Department of Health office. Understudy steps in While UVA drama professor Walter Francis Korte Jr., […]

Martese Johnson’s case will likely move forward

The UVA graduate who was taken to the ground by ABC agents outside of Trinity Irish Pub in March 2015 appeared in a Roanoke federal court August 26 for a motions hearing in which the agents’ attorneys, once again, asked for the case against them to be thrown out. “Though he has not yet formally […]

#justiceforprofit: Pig larceny, maiming case moves to grand jury

The couple who took a wandering pig that police delivered to the Charlottesville Albemarle SPCA and who had plans to turn it into a Fourth of July barbecue, according to a Newsplex interview, had their charges certified to the grand jury in an August 25 preliminary hearing in Albemarle General District Court. More than a […]

Thomas Eagleson sentenced to seven months for unlawful filming

In April, a Forest Lakes resident was arrested for installing a hidden camera inside his neighbor’s master bathroom. Facing 23 years in prison, he was sentenced to seven months August 25. “This is a bit of a unique circumstance because these people were not strangers to each other,” defense attorney Rhonda Quagliana said in Charlottesville […]

Absolute pardon: Soering petitions another governor

During the 30 years he’s spent in prison, Jens Soering has maintained he had nothing to do with the brutal 1985 murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom, and that he only confessed to protect his girlfriend, Elizabeth Haysom, from the death penalty. Now Tim Kaine, the governor who agreed to send Soering back to Germany […]