Across Virginia
From Virginia State Police: Virginia State Police is investigating a single vehicle crash which resulted in a fatality. The crash occurred Sunday, (Aug 28) at 10:39 a.m. on Interstate 81 southbound at the 135.5-mile marker in Roanoke County.
A 2021 Kenworth tractor trailer was traveling south on Interstate 81, when the tractor trailer ran off the left side of the roadway, into the median and overturned.
The Kenworth was driven by Alan Everett Peck, 52, of Leesburg, FL. A passenger in the truck was injured and was flown to Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
The crash remains under investigation.
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — A Virginia Beach drone services company and the sole drone partner of the world’s largest retailer announced plans to expand its headquarters and create a research and training facility outside Petersburg, adding 655 new jobs.
The Virginian-Pilot reports that DroneUp, which has been working with Walmart since late 2021, announced plans to spend $27.2 million to expand in Virginia Beach and Dinwiddie County.
The company will spend $7 million expanding its Newtown Road headquarters, which it says will create 510 new jobs.
DroneUp also plans to establish a new testing, training, research and development center for drone operators at Richard Bland College in Petersburg, creating 145 more new jobs.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland’s highest court has ruled that Washington, D.C.-area sniper Lee Boyd Malvo must be resentenced, because of U.S. Supreme Court decisions relating to constitutional protections for juveniles made after Malvo was sentenced to six life sentences without the possibility of parole
In its 4-3 ruling, however, the Maryland Court of Appeals said it’s very unlikely Malvo would ever be released from custody, because he is also serving separate life sentences for murders in Virginia.
“As a practical matter, this may be an academic question in Mr. Malvo’s case, as he would first have to be granted parole in Virginia before his consecutive life sentences in Maryland even begin,” Judge Robert McDonald wrote in the majority opinion released Friday.
McDonald wrote that it’s ultimately not up to the Court of Appeals to decide the appropriate sentence for Malvo, or whether he should ever be released from his Maryland sentences.
“We hold only that the Eighth Amendment requires that he receive a new sentencing hearing at which the sentencing court, now cognizant of the principles elucidated by the Supreme Court, is able to consider whether or not he is constitutionally eligible for life without parole under those decisions,” McDonald wrote.
Malvo and his mentor, John Allen Muhammad, shot people in Virginia, Maryland and Washington as they pumped gas, loaded packages into their cars and went about their everyday business during a three-week period in 2002. Malvo was 17 at the time; Muhammad was 41.
Muhammad was sentenced to death and was executed in Virginia in 2009.
In Maryland, Malvo voluntarily testified against Muhammad. In 2006, Malvo pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree murder in Montgomery County in the suburbs of the nation’s capital.
At his sentencing that year, the prosecutor stated that Malvo, once under the sway of an “evil man,” had changed and “grown tremendously” since his participation in the crimes, according to the Court of Appeals ruling.
The ruling said Malvo’s sentence was “consistent with the pertinent State statute and with the advisory State sentencing guidelines at that time.”
“Since then, however, the Supreme Court has held that the Eighth Amendment does not permit a sentence of life without parole for a juvenile homicide offender if a sentencing court determines that the offender’s crime was the result of transient immaturity, as opposed to permanent incorrigibility,” the ruling said.
The ruling also noted that the Supreme Court has held that the legal constraint applies retroactively and applies to Malvo’s case.
Judges Jonathan Biran, Brynja Booth and Joseph Getty joined McDonald in the majority. Judges Shirley Watts, Michele Hotten and Steven Gould dissented.
Watts wrote that the sentencing court took Malvo’s status as a juvenile into account.
“The record demonstrates that Mr. Malvo received a personalized sentencing procedure at which his youth and its attendant characteristics were considered, and the circuit court was aware that it had the discretion to impose a lesser sentence,” Watts wrote.
Hotten wrote that any alleged finding of corrigibility “did not render petitioner’s sentences unconstitutional disproportionate as applied.”
“Rather the proportionality of Petitioner’s sentences must be weighed against the severity of his crimes,” Hotten wrote. “Petitioner committed some of the worst crimes in the history of the State. It was not grossly disproportionate that a heavy penalty was imposed.”
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Police Chief Gerald Smith sounded authoritative when he held a press conference to announce that police had thwarted a planned mass shooting at a July 4 fireworks show in Richmond.
Smith said two men had planned the shooting for the Dogwood Dell Amphitheater. But the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that records obtained through the Virginia Freedom of Information Act show that Smith was informed in writing before his July 6 news conference that the location of any potential incident was “unknown.”
Police said a tipster who had overheard a conversation called police and said there was a plot for a shooting at a large July Fourth event in Richmond.
The records show that the tipster had not specified a location. A police official emailed those records to Smith and an assistant seven minutes before Smith’s news conference. The records also show that Richmond police shared with the FBI that a location was unknown.
In an interview last week with the Times-Dispatch, Smith said his “experience” was part of how he concluded that Dogwood Dell must have been the intended target.
Police arrested one suspect on July 1, seizing guns and ammunition in a residence, and arrested the second, who was under surveillance, after July Fourth. The two men are in federal custody — one on a gun charge and one on an immigration charge — but neither has been charged with anything related to a planned shooting. Smith said last week that Richmond detectives could not corroborate the tipster’s allegation of a shooting plot.
Smith’s news conference came two days after seven people were killed in an Independence Day parade shooting in Highland Park, Illinois.
The chief’s claim that Dogwood Dell amphitheater was known to be the intended target caused alarm.
“I think the level of anxiety that they caused the neighbors that live here was ridiculous,” said Paige Quilter, the president of the Carillon Civic Association.
In a response issued through a city spokesperson, Smith said he didn’t have time to review or approve the talking points sent to him minutes before his scheduled news conference.
He said his goal was to be transparent and not cause alarm.
“For any confusion or anxiety that my stating Dogwood Dell was the most likely target, I am deeply sorry,” Smith said in the statement.
A Virginia state trooper has been cleared in the fatal shooting death of a man who led police on a chase, rammed a police vehicle with his own and attacked the trooper with a metal pole, according to findings by a local prosecutor.
The shooting occurred on Nov. 6 and involved a man from the southeastern Virginia city of Chesapeake who had a documented history of mental illness, drug use and violence. Brian Price, 45, was under the supervision of mental health professionals after being released from a psychiatric ward the previous year.
“The death of Brian Price was a justifiable exercise of self-defense by Trooper Paul Perry in the performance of his duties,” Chesapeake Commonwealth’s Attorney Matthew R. Hamel wrote of his findings in a letter to Virginia State Police on Wednesday.
The incident began with a report that Price assaulted a convenience store cashier in Newport News and appeared intoxicated, Hamel’s letter stated.
Price fled in his car with Amity Grey, whose family later said was in a relationship with Price and that the two had plans to get married.
During the police chase that followed, Price appeared to keep Grey in the car against her will, Hamel wrote. She opened her door and appeared to try to get out at one point.
Price then apparently lost control of the car, which tumbled off an embankment. Grey was killed.
Perry chased Price on foot. The trooper was not wearing a body camera, but he later told authorities that Price had struck him in the chest with an object that caused him to fall backward.
“As he looked up, (Perry) saw Price standing above him, raising a ‘pipe-like object,’” Hamel wrote. “Fearing that he was about to be struck again or disabled or worse, he fired the rifle from his hip three times.”
A metal pole that was consistent with a shower rod was found near Price’s body, Hamel wrote. A police dashboard camera captured the initial part of the foot chase as well as Perry identifying himself as “state” police and commanding Price to “drop the weapon.”
A toxicology report found THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, as well as amphetamine in Price’s system.
Perry’s race has not been released. Price was white.
In 2017, Price was judged not guilty by reason of insanity after striking his mother with a baseball bat, court records stated. He was released from a mental hospital in 2020 under the supervision of a community services board.
Hamel noted that Price’s release was revoked at one point because of his illegal use of amphetamines. He was released again. And the community services board reported that Price continued to use the drug as recently as two months before his death.
But the community services board also said that Price was showing signs of improvement. He was working in construction, living in an apartment and keeping his appointments with his case manager and others overseeing his care.
Price’s diagnosis included schizoaffective disorder, which is characterized primarily by schizophrenia symptoms that include hallucinations or delusions.
Price was among a small group of people who are not held not responsible for crimes because of mental illness.
“The majority of people do well,” Michael J. Vitacco, a psychiatry professor at Augusta University in Georgia, told The Associated Press last year. “The combination of mandated treatment and follow-up is very much protective for the community.”
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Republican leaders in Virginia said Friday they want to change the law so the state no longer follows California’s stringent rules for vehicle emissions.
Virginia is currently on a path toward adopting California’s new rules for transitioning to zero-emission vehicles because of 2021 legislation that involved adopting the West Coast state’s emissions standards, attorneys and state officials said this week. The legislation, intended to help address climate change, was a top priority of environmental advocates and passed at a time when Democrats were in full control of Virginia’s government.
But Republicans in the House of Delegates, who opposed the legislation and now control that chamber, and GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin said Friday they would push to unlink Virginia’s standards.
“House Republicans will advance legislation in 2023 to put Virginians back in charge of Virginia’s auto emission standards and its vehicle marketplace. Virginia is not, and should not be, California,” House Speaker Todd Gilbert said in a statement.
Youngkin said he was “already at work to prevent this ridiculous edict from being forced on Virginians.”
California regulators on Thursday approved a plan requiring all new cars, trucks and SUVs sold in the state to run on electricity or hydrogen by 2035, with one-fifth allowed to be plug-in hybrids. The policy doesn’t ban cars that run on gas, allowing drivers to keep their existing cars or buy used ones.
The policy approved by the California Air Resources Board is the world’s most stringent set of rules for transitioning to electric vehicles. It will require new charging infrastructure and a more robust energy grid, and is likely to reshape the U.S. auto market.
Virginia is among 17 states that have adopted some or all of California’s tailpipe emission standards that are stricter than federal rules. California, the nation’s most populous state, has had the authority to set its own for decades under a waiver from the federal Clean Air Act.
Victoria LaCivita, a spokeswoman for Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares, said in a statement that the 2021 law bound Virginia to California’s regulations and that Miyares is hopeful the General Assembly repeals it.
Environmental attorneys also agreed that under current law, Virginia would have to get in line with California.
That’s a good thing, said Walton Shepherd, Virginia policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. He called the 2021 “clean cars” bill the “single biggest climate action” Virginia has undertaken. Federal data show the transportation sector is Virginia’s largest source of heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
“It’s a really great development for consumers, relief from high gas prices and clean air,” he said of the new rules.
Trip Pollard, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said automakers prioritize sending their electric vehicles to states that have adopted California’s standards, meaning better “consumer choice” for drivers who want an EV.
Pollard said it was “unfortunate” but not surprising that Republicans wanted to undo the law, given that they tried unsuccessfully to do so earlier this year.
“We certainly will be arguing strongly to members of both parties that this is something Virginia should stick with,” he said.
Democrats control the state Senate by a single vote. A caucus spokesperson had no immediate comment Friday beyond noting that every Democratic senator supported the bill in 2021.
(Update from VSP 8-29 PM) Virginia State Police are investigating an officer-involved shooting in Blacksburg, which occurred last Friday in the 3000 block of Yellow Sulfer Road. The incident around 2:00 a.m. when Blacksburg Police received a call for a “Welfare Check” at the residence. Officers and deputies from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office arrived on scene, and attempted to de-escalate the incident. The male subject at the residence was speaking with officers, when the subject went into the residence and returned with a firearm, discharging it at the officers; they returned fire, striking the subject. 29 year old Joshua Amodeo of Blacksburg died at the scene. No officers or deputies were injured in the incident.
From Blacksburg Police: At approximately 2:00 a.m. on August 26th, Blacksburg Police officers and Montgomery County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a call on Yellow Sulphur Road in Blacksburg. At the scene, a male subject fired on the officers and deputies; the officers and deputies then returned fire. First aid was immediately administered by the officers and deputies and Blacksburg Rescue responded to the scene. The subject is deceased and all the responding officers and deputies were uninjured. The Blacksburg Police Department and the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office are following their protocols for officer involved shootings. The Virginia State Police are conducting the investigation of this shooting. Any further questions should be directed to the Virginia State Police public information office
A study of the most equitable school districts shows Roanoke County Public Schools 4th in Virginia. WFIR’s Ian Price has details on how some other local school districts are placed.
Click here to see full results for the most equitable school districts study.
(Update 8/24 9am) (update) One person has been hospitalized with serious injuries following that house fire yesterday in the 15 hundred block of Andrews Road in Northwest Roanoke. When they arrived on scene, emergency crews found heavy smoke coming from the basement. No word on a possible cause. One person was transported to the hospital with serious injuries; a dog perished in the fire. The cause of the fire is undetermined at this time; damages to the home and its contents are now estimated at $40,000.
One person has been hospitalized with serious injuries following a house fire this morning in the 15 hundred block of Andrews Road in Northwest Roanoke. When they arrived on scene, emergency crews found heavy smoke coming from the basement. No word on a possible cause.
A nonpartisan group is looking to push ranked choice voting in Virginia, and their efforts have garnered bipartisan support. WFIR’s Clark Palmer explains.