Across Virginia
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A northern Virginia man has pleaded guilty to illegally obtaining $2.5 million in federal coronavirus loans and using the money to buy an airplane and luxury car.
Didier Kindambu, 49, of Leesburg, pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court in Alexandria to bank fraud.
Prosecutors say Kindambu applied for two loans under the federal Paycheck Protection Program for his companies, Papillon Holding and Papillon Air. He submitted fraudulent documentation that his companies employed dozens of workers with millions of dollars in annual payroll when in reality he had few, if any employees.
He received $2.5 million in loans and spent the money on a Lexus, a Cessna turboprop aircraft, jewelry and other personal expenses, according to prosecutors.
He is scheduled for sentencing in August. Sentencing guidelines call for a four-year term, but in court papers Kindambu’s lawyer, Kevin Carroll, said his client is hopeful of receiving a substantially shorter term. In a statement, Carroll said in a statement that Kindambu “looks forward to making the necessary restitution to the government and taxpayers.”
Governor Northam says Virginia will soon unveil enlarged and upgraded systems to handle future COVID-19 vaccination registrations. It follows growing complaints about the way the program has been handled so far. Northam says the confusion and frustration many Virginians have felt about when and how they can sign up are understandable, and the state health department is a developing a statewide system to improve the process. Northam says vaccine deliveries from the federal government have been inconsistent to this point, but states have now been told to expect more doses – and just as importantly, a consistent supply of them. WFIR’s Evan Jones has more:
Northam’s promise of more COVID vaccines – and a better system to administer them – comes in the shadow of news reports ranking Virginia at or near the bottom of all states in several respects. They include doses per 100,000 residents and percentage of those doses actually administered. Several Virginia localities have complained to Northam about the state’s handling of the program.
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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Facing escalating criticism over the state’s rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam outlined a series of policy changes and initiatives Wednesday that he said would make the process smoother and more transparent.
While the latest federal data show Virginia has made improvements in getting more shots into arms, Northam acknowledged there’s still much work to be done.
“I feel the frustration out there. I also, as a medical provider, feel the urgency. We are doing everything that we can to save lives,” Northam said at a news conference in Richmond.
“That confusion is justified because the answer has not been clear,” Northam said. He did not provide a date when the system would become available but said it would be soon. Currently, the state directs people to call their local health department or visit its website for information.
The governor also announced that the state health department would be publishing additional data about vaccine distribution and usage on its online dashboard and seeking to fill in significant gaps in demographic information about who has received the doses so far.
Further, he said his administration had worked with hospital systems to shift inventory so that health providers can get 40,000 additional shots into arms by Sunday. Just over 600,000 shots have been administered in Virginia so far.
The latest available data from the CDC’s COVID data tracker shows Virginia’s inoculation rate compared to other states has improved. The state, which had generally been hovering in the bottom 10 in terms of doses administered per 100,000 people, had risen to the middle of the pack by Wednesday. Northam noted Virginia was ranked 26th and on par with most of its neighbors, though not on pace with West Virginia, which has been doing exceptionally well.
He said that while Virginia would begin to receive about 16% more doses starting with the orders it will place on Thursday, supply is not expected to immediately catch up with demand.
He said it’s imperative that Virginians keep following social distancing measures and also announced that he is extending for at least another 30 days a number of coronavirus-related restrictions, including a prohibition on public gatherings with more than 10 people and a curfew that requires most Virginians to stay at home between midnight and 5 a.m.
According to the latest numbers released this morning by the Virginia Department of Health there are 108 new confirmed or probable coronavirus cases and three new deaths, being reported in the Roanoke Valley. 53 new cases and 2 new deaths in Roanoke City, 37 new cases in Roanoke County, 8 new cases and 1 new death in Salem, and 10 new cases in Botetourt County.
According to the latest numbers released this morning by the Virginia Department of Health there are 131 new confirmed or probable coronavirus cases being reported in the Roanoke Valley. 55 new cases in Roanoke City, 44 new cases in Roanoke County, and 16 new cases in both Salem, and Botetourt County. No new hospitals or deaths are being reported in the Roanoke Valley.
ROCKY MOUNT, Va. (AP) – A Rocky Mount police officer charged in the storming of the U.S. Capitol in Washington earlier this month says he and a fellow officer who accompanied him are being fired from their jobs. The Roanoke Times reports that Rocky Mount police sergeant Thomas “T.J.” Robertson received a letter from the city citing “conduct unbecoming an officer” as the reason for his firing. The letter states he will be terminated Tuesday. Robertson said fellow officer Jacob Fracker is also being terminated. The town manager declined to comment on Robertson’s statements Saturday but said the officers had been suspended without pay Friday.
GOOCHLAND, Va. (AP) — Protestors marched to the courthouse in a Virginia town on Friday to demand the release by Virginia State Police and local authorities of bodycam footage of the fatal shooting of an 18-year-old.
The marchers went to the Goochland County Circuit Court, which houses the Goochland Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office, news outlets reported. The circuit court closed at noon on Friday in advance of the march and said it would reopen on Monday.
Authorities have declined to release the video footage publicly, but the family of Xzavier D. Hill of Charlottesville says it has seen the video.
According to Virginia State Police, Xzavier D. Hill of Charlottesville was shot and killed on Jan. 9 after a chase that led to a crash on Interstate 64. According to state police, Hill displayed a firearm at the scene of the crash.
The march led officials in the Goochland Schools to delay dismissal of classes from Goochland Elementary, Goochland Middle and Goochland High School. Assistant Superintendent Andrew R. Armstrong said the delay was to keep school buses off the roads while people were marching in the vicinity of the three schools. Armstrong said there were no threats to students or staff.
FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — A relatively static population means Virginia’s legislative maps will be less affected by redistricting than any time since World War II, according to a leading member of the state’s new redistricting commission.
Sen. George Barker, D-Fairfax, told commission members at their first meeting Thursday evening that preliminary data show northern Virginia in line for a modest increase, and communities on the North Carolina border losing some representation, but nothing like the upheaval from past decades, when northern Virginia was home to some of the fastest growing suburbs in the country.
The relative stability in population means that redrawing the legislative boundaries “will not be as difficult to do as in the past when there have been these radical shifts,” Barker said.
Barker is one of 16 members on the newly created Virginia Redistricting Commission. Voters established the commission in a referendum last fall. It takes the once-a-decade process of redrawing legislative boundaries for Congress and the state Legislature out of the General Assembly’s hands in hopes of reducing partisan gerrymandering.
In an interview Friday, another commission member, Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax, said that while population shifts might not be significant, that won’t automatically translate to a simpler job for the commission. He said the commission is tasked with drawing fair lines under criteria very different from the partisan motivations that drove past redistricting.
“The old maps were drawn on old criteria,” he said.
The 16-member commission is comprised of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. It includes eight legislators and eight citizens nominated by legislators.
The commission faces a daunting task in drawing new lines, given the fact that Virginia is one of only two states that has state legislative races in 2021.
The lines can’t be redrawn until new census data is provided to ensure that the state’s population is evenly distributed among the districts.
In past decades, the Census Bureau has given Virginia and New Jersey, the other state with 2021 legislative races, an early release of population data so the new lines can be drawn in time.
This year, though, census data has been delayed by lawsuits, difficulties completing the count during the coronavirus pandemic and battles over whether the census should address citizenship issues. That has called into question whether the new lines can be drawn in time for primary elections in the summer and the general election in November.
A legislative attorney assigned to work with the redistricting commission told the committee it was “not likely” the commission could complete its work in time to meet deadlines for new districts in the 2021 election.
Barker, who played a key role in drawing the state Senate maps in 2010, provided some hope it could be done. He told the commission that a member of President Joe Biden’s transition team reached out to him. He said the Biden team is well aware of Virginia’s needs, and he urged the feds to provide Virginia its full data by mid-April to early May, if possible.
Simon, though, was pessimistic about meeting the timeline that would be required to allow elections this year under new boundaries. He said Barker “is the only person I’ve spoken with who is optimistic about getting the census data in time.”
Once the commission receives the needed census data, it is supposed to draw the new boundaries within 45 days.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A panel of Virginia legislators advanced a bill Friday to remove a statue of Harry F. Byrd Sr., a staunch segregationist, from the state Capitol grounds.
The decision came amid a yearslong effort in history-rich Virginia to rethink who is honored in the state’s public spaces. Byrd, a Democrat, served as governor and U.S. senator. He ran the state’s most powerful political machine for decades until his death in 1966 and was considered the architect of the state’s racist “massive resistance” policy to public school integration.
“It is my deep belief that monuments to segregation, massive resistance, and the subjugation of one race below another, like this statue, serve only as a reminder to the overt and institutional racism that has and continues to plague our Commonwealth,” the bill’s sponsor, Del. Jay Jones, said when introducing the measure.
The bill moved out of the House committee on a party-line vote of 13-5, with all Republicans voting against it. It still must clear both chambers of the General Assembly, but with Democrats controlling the statehouse and Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam backing the measure, it is almost certain to pass.
Northam highlighted the bill in an address to lawmakers earlier this month, saying the state should no longer celebrate a man who fought integration.
Rita Davis, counselor to the governor, spoke on behalf of the administration Friday.
“Had Mr. Byrd had his way, I would never have the opportunity to be before you because I am Black,” she said. “Certain members of the General Assembly would never be able to serve because they’re not white.”
She said the question before the committee was “not whether we should remove Mr. Byrd’s statue from Capitol Square, but rather, why on earth would we keep it in Capitol Square?”
In the 1950s, Byrd’s political machine implemented a series of official state policies that opposed court-ordered public school integration and even closed some public schools rather than desegregate them.
“If we can organize the Southern states for massive resistance to this (court) order, I think that in time the rest of the country will realize that integration is not going to be accepted in the South,” Byrd once told fellow Democrats, The Associated Press has previously reported.
The larger-than-life statue erected in 1976 and located a stone’s throw from the Capitol depicts Byrd with a copy of the federal budget. A nearby plaque says the statue was dedicated in appreciation of Byrd’s “devotion throughout a long public career to governmental restraint and programs in the best interest of all the people of Virginia.”
Attempts by the AP to reach members of the Byrd family have not been successful. No one spoke against the bill Friday.
For several years, Virginia has been in the midst of a reevaluation of its historical landscape, from its hundreds of Confederate monuments, to buildings and roads named after people who espoused views on race now considered abhorrent.
The death of George Floyd over the summer and the social justice movement that followed accelerated the discussions. Lawmakers evicted a Confederate statue and busts from inside the Capitol in July, and the city of Richmond removed some of the state’s most prominent Confederate monuments from its public spaces. Other localities in more conservative, rural areas held referendums this fall and voted to keep their statues.
In an unusual twist, a similar measure to remove the Byrd statue was filed last year by a freshman Republican lawmaker.
Republican Del. Wendell Walker introduced the bill, apparently with the aim of needling Democrats who were pushing for the removal of Confederate monuments, saying “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
But when met with agreement from across the aisle on removing the statue, Walker asked that the bill be killed, and Democrats acquiesced.
Jones, who is Black, said he sent Walker, who is white, an invitation to co-patron this year’s bill. Walker had not responded as of Friday, Jones said.
Jones’ bill directs the state Department of General Services to remove the statue from Capitol Square and store it until the General Assembly determines what should be done with it.
The same panel on Friday also advanced a measure that would make official an earlier recommendation that civil rights hero Barbara Johns represent Virginia in the Statuary Hall collection at the U.S. Capitol instead of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. No one voted against the measure.
Lawmakers started the process last year with a measure that convened a committee to study whether Lee – whose statue had stood with George Washington’s statue since 1909 as Virginia’s two representatives in the Capitol – should be replaced.
That committee decided Lee should go (his statue was removed in December and taken to a Richmond history museum ), and voted to replace him with Johns.
Johns, who died in 1991, protested conditions at her all-Black high school in the town of Farmville in 1951, and her court case became part of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. The ruling struck down racial segregation in public schools, and then continued to be met with resistance from white politicians like Byrd.
Johns’ sister, Joan Johns Cobbs, told the committee her family was grateful for the choice to honor Johns.
“I am so appreciative that Barbara is being considered because what she did in 1951 was very courageous,” she said.
According to the latest numbers released this morning by the Virginia Department of Health there are 117 new confirmed or probable coronavirus cases, 1 new hospitalization , and 3 new deaths being reported in the Roanoke Valley. 45 new cases, 1 new hospitalization and 2 new deaths in Roanoke City, 52 new cases in Roanoke County, 2 new cases in Salem, and 18 new cases, and 1 new death in Botetourt County. The total number of coronavirus related deaths in Virginia has surpassed 6 thousand.
From Roanoke City Fire-EMS: On Wednesday, January 20th, at 5:13pm, Roanoke Fire-EMS was dispatched to the 3900 block of Grandview NW for a fire. Units arrived to find heavy smoke inside a residential structure. Personnel located the fire in the basement of the residence. No injuries were reported. Two adults were displaced as a result of the fire.
The cause of the fire was ruled incendiary and started due to a resident’s inappropriate use of a pyrotechnic flare device inside the basement of the home. The Roanoke Fire Marshal’s Office has identified the individual, but no charges have been filed at this time. There is no ongoing threat to the community.