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By LAURENCE HAMMACK,
Roanoke Times
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Federal authorities arrested a Pulaski man Thursday on charges of participating in the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol. Carson Lionel Rees is accused of entering restricted grounds, demonstrating in the Capitol building and two counts of disorderly conduct, according to documents filed in Roanoke’s federal court. Rees, whose age was not available, is the 11th person from Western Virginia to be charged with joining thousands of rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, at the urging of then President Donald Trump.
VaNews April 19, 2024
By ASHLYN CAMPBELL,
Daily News Record
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A little more than $1 million in federal funding that Congress approved this March will go toward creating Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math hubs across Virginia — but the effort that got the Commonwealth there came from an educator in the Shenandoah Valley’s backyard. Amy Sabarre, the Harrisonburg City Public Schools STEM director and the president of the Virginia STEM Education Advisory Board, helped secure that $1,028,000 for STEM education, an accomplishment that took the teacher 10 years of persistence.
VaNews April 19, 2024
By DEAN MIRSHAHI,
WRIC-TV
The Supreme Court of Virginia has again ruled against the state and ordered the release of a man who said he earned credits to be let out from prison early but was wrongfully denied by the Department of Corrections.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia filed a petition for the release of Jose Garcia Vasquez, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, arguing he earned enough sentence credits to be released around November 2022 but an “erroneous interpretation” of a law by the corrections department kept him in prison.
VaNews April 19, 2024
By NATHANIEL CLINE,
Virginia Mercury
Two Virginia school divisions are slated to launch a pilot program intended to help reduce youth involvement in gangs and violent behaviors with guns but it’s unclear if the initiative will be fully funded, as lawmakers go back to the drawing board to work up a new state spending plan.
On April 2, Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed legislation to create the Community Builders Pilot Program that will start with Roanoke and Petersburg City Public Schools students entering the eighth grade. Pupils in both districts face high rates of gun violence and cases of students bringing firearms to school.
VaNews April 19, 2024
By KELLY ROSKAM,
published in
Richmond Times-Dispatch
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With the conclusion of Virginia’s veto session, Gov. Glenn Youngkin refused to do more to protect individuals, most of whom are women, experiencing domestic violence. Violence against partners and family members is a public health epidemic. The danger is amplified for victims of domestic violence when combined with the prevalence and accessibility of firearms. To protect victims, survivors and the public, domestic abusers are often prohibited from possessing firearms; yet enforcement of those prohibitions are lacking. By vetoing bills aimed at strengthening our domestic violence and firearms laws, Gov. Youngkin chose to protect abusers and their firearms rather than victims and public health.
Roskam is director of law and policy at the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
VaNews April 19, 2024
By NEAL AUGENSTEIN,
WTOP
A Loudoun County, Virginia, judge set a new trial date for fired school superintendent Scott Ziegler and made no reference to Ziegler’s attorneys claim that the judge erred in ordering a new trial after setting aside a previous misdemeanor conviction.
Thursday morning, Circuit Court Judge Douglas Fleming set Feb. 3, 2025, as the first of a possible five-day jury trial, six weeks after throwing out Ziegler’s conviction for the retaliatory firing of a teacher who reported that an elementary school student inappropriately touched her.
VaNews April 19, 2024
By DAVE RESS,
Richmond Times-Dispatch
(Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)
The calls roll in, 24 hours a day. Sometimes, it's abuse as a relationship becomes unbearable. Sometimes, money worries are unsurmountable. Sometimes, it’s the depths of depression so severe that there seems no way out. Sometimes, delusions that won’t leave a sufferer in peace. Virginia’s 988 crisis line fields them all, some 8,000 a month. And as implementation of the 988 crisis line lags nationally, it is evolving in Virginia into a place to take a first step to getting help before mental troubles reach a point of no return.
VaNews April 19, 2024
By RALPH BERRIER JR.,
Roanoke Rambler
The Rev. Bill Lee believes it’s raining manna all over Roanoke.
Lee stood before a roomful of listeners and recounted the story from Exodus of the miracle food from heaven that sustained the Jewish people as they wandered in the wilderness after their escape from Egypt. He asked his audience, Black and white people, church-goers from congregations across the city, if they believed manna still covered the ground today.
“What sustains us?” he asked. “What is all the stuff that God has made available to us, the manna, that we are not picking up? God didn’t stop giving manna in 2024. It’s everywhere.”
Lee’s examples were not honey-flavored crackers from the Old Testament. Instead, he pointed to modern-day opportunities that seem like miracles to someone who grew up in a rural area in the 1950s and ’60s like he did, opportunities such as a community college system that’s available to anyone.
VaNews April 19, 2024
By PETER CARY,
Piedmont Journalism Foundation
It seemed like a great deal when residents of rural northwest Prince William County decided in 2021 to sell their properties for a new data center alley known as the “Prince William Digital Gateway.”
With contracts to sell for up to $900,000 an acre, they expected to split their real estate tax bills with their data center buyers upon sale and walk away with big profits.
Now, however, that sweet dream has turned into a nightmare — at least, a tax nightmare. The supervisors rezoned the land for data centers, but two lawsuits have blocked the land sales, leaving landowners in limbo. Meanwhile, the land is now considered much more valuable and, therefore, their taxes due have spiked dramatically.
VaNews April 19, 2024
By DWAYNE YANCEY,
Cardinal News
Shenandoah County is debating whether to change the names of two schools — by changing them back to Confederate names that were retired in 2020.
That would certainly put Shenandoah County in a unique category: Lots of places have taken the names of Confederate figures off of public buildings, but I’m hard pressed to find any who have then turned around and restored those names.
In Shenandoah County’s case, Stonewall Jackson High School became Mountain View High School and Ashby-Lee Elementary became Honey Run Elementary. A vote in 2022 to restore the original names failed on a 3-3 vote. However, the three school board members who wanted to keep the new names are now gone, and the three who wanted the Confederate names are still there — so the issue is live again.
VaNews April 19, 2024
