Crime and Public Safety
From Roanoke Police: On March 15, 2018 at 5.02 p.m. Roanoke Police responded to the 800 block of Jamison Avenue SE in reference to a report of shots fired. While responding the officers received another call that the victim was in the 700 block of Bullitt Avenue SE. This is where the officers located Tyreze Witherspoon, age 21. He had a gunshot wound to his arm. The shooting did take place outside a residence in the 800 block of Jamison Avenue. Tyreze ran to Bullitt Avenue after he was shot. Officers located cartridge cases outside the residence. Tyreze was transported to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital by Roanoke Fire and EMS for treatment. Detectives are currently investigating. No arrest have been made for the shooting.
ROANOKE, Va. (AP) – A Second Amendment advocacy group says it’s not working with a Virginia woman who says a social services department fired her for having a concealed weapons permit.
Virginia Citizens Defense League President Philip Van Cleave told The Roanoke Times that he had received a message from Chelsea Storm Durham but hadn’t responded. Durham had previously told the newspaper that she was working with the group to pursue a lawsuit against the Roanoke Department of Social Services after social media posts about her firing last Friday went viral.
Durham had said the department’s assistant director said a concern about “workplace safety” listed on her termination notice regarded the permit. A copy of the memo provided to WSLS-TV doesn’t specify the safety concern.
Roanoke has denied firing Durham over the permit.
A Lynchburg man and female teen face multiple charges for a Roanoke robbery that led to an overnight standoff at the Rodeway Inn. Police have charged 18-year-old Alex Joe and the juvenile with holding up a woman at gunpoint early today in the Market Square area. Officers later found the car matching the license description at the motel, and the two eventually came out of their room. Police in Lynchburg say the car the pair used was taken in a carjacking earlier that night.
From Roanoke and Lynchburg Police: On March 14, 2018 at 1:00 a.m., Roanoke Police responded to Market Square regarding a robbery. Officers located an adult female who advised that she was walking back to a downtown restaurant after withdrawing cash from an ATM machine. While walking, she was approached by a Toyota sedan that was occupied by a black male who exited the passenger side of the vehicle. The male pulled a mask over his face and approached the victim, pointing a handgun at her and demanding the cash and bank card that she was carrying. The male took the items from her and got back into the passenger side of the car which drive east on Campbell Avenue. The victim gave a tag number for the car and said that a black female was driving. The vehicle was located unoccupied in the parking lot of the Rodeway Inn. It was determined that the car was stolen in a carjacking in Lynchburg, Virginia on March 13, 2018 at 9:45 p.m.
Officers were able to determine a hotel room that was rented by the suspects. Officers were unable to get the occupants of the room to come out of their room. Additional members of the Roanoke Police Department responded and were eventually able to make personal contact with the occupants. The two were taken into custody without further incident. Child Protective Services was called to the scene to assist with a small child that was in the room.
The two were transported to the Roanoke Police Department where investigators from the Roanoke Police Department and Lynchburg Police Departments continued their investigations. Evidence from both incidents were recovered from inside the vehicle located in the parking lot.
Roanoke Police have charged Alex James Joe, age 18 of Lynchburg, with with Robbery and Use of Firearm for the incident occurring in downtown Roanoke. Lynchburg Detectives placed additional charges against Roe for the carjacking incident occurring in their jurisdiction. Joe is being held without bond in the Roanoke City Jail. The same charges are being placed by Roanoke Police against the juvenile female who was with Joe.
This is an ongoing investigation
After 44-thousand likes and 27-thousand retweets, news of a former Roanoke City Social Services employee getting fired late last week spread quickly. 22-year-old Storm Durham claims she was escorted out of work by three police officers after supervisors said she was a safety risk …just for having a concealed carry permit. The city has issued a release saying the dismissal in question was not based on anyone exercising their second amendment rights. Ms. Durham spoke to WFIR Overnight Report Lillian Boyd about the incident and the aftermath of going viral.
Today’s Longer Listen with Storm Durham is available on the WFIR News website. Ms. Durham’s Youtube Channel is called “The Conservative Storm.”
The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office says five people are in custody — and one more is being sought — for a series of break-ins and thefts in the Glade Hill, Hardy, and Wirtz areas. Investigators say the thefts began in mid-February and investigators were soon able to identify a pattern. Officials say they have located and identified much of the stolen property.
News release: The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office recently began an investigation into several break-ins and larcenies in the Glade Hill, Hardy and Wirtz communities of Franklin County. The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office Investigative Division worked diligently to identify the property and locations where the items were taken. Investigators were soon able to identify a pattern to the thefts. This hard work allowed the Investigators to quickly identify six suspects. All six suspects have been charged in relation to the above crimes. Alan Crook is being held in Franklin County Jail without bond. Austin Crook, Bradley Smith and Ethan Hundley are all being held at the Western Virginia Regional Jail. Smith is being held without bond. Travis Hicks was released on a $4,000.00 bond. Taylor Hardy has not been arrested and is currently wanted. This investigation is ongoing.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – A bill passed unanimously by the Virginia General Assembly is intended to give cities like Richmond a new tool to crack down on prostitution.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports the measure championed by Police Chief Alfred Durham lets cities require property owners to abate what the law calls criminal blight. In the case of prostitution, that’s defined as “the regular use of the property for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex acts.” The bill allows cities to pursue fines and civil actions against property owners who don’t address frequent complaints within 30 days. Del. Betsy Carr, a Democrat from Richmond who sponsored the House version of the bill, says it will be up to localities to implement a criminal blight ordinance locally and set penalties.
SALEM – With winter weather anticipated to impact portions of western Virginia, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) is advising drivers to plan ahead for travel as they may face slick, snow-covered roads, particularly during the nighttime hours on Sunday, March 11 and Monday, March 12.
VDOT strongly urges drivers to monitor weather forecasts and adjust travel around periods of snowfall, particularly early in the storm when roads can become snow covered and slick.
As the storm progresses, temperature will be a key factor with this winter weather event, as the precipitation is expected to start out as rain and transition to snow.
As pavement temperatures cool, snow is anticipated to accumulate on roadways. When the snow starts, drivers should pay particular attention to bridges and overpasses which may become slick first.
The interstate and primary roads (those numbered 1-599) are VDOT’s top priority for snow removal during a weather event. As long as the snow continues to fall, snowplow operators will be making multiple passes over these main routes and not working on low-volume secondary routes (those numbered 600 and above) or neighborhood streets.
Travelers can get real-time information on road conditions, traffic incidents and congestion on Virginia roads by using VDOT’s 511 free mobile app or the www.511Virginia.org website and phone system, which can help travelers plan their routes accordingly.
The Salem District includes the counties of Bedford, Botetourt, Carroll, Craig, Floyd, Franklin, Giles, Henry, Montgomery, Patrick, Pulaski, and Roanoke.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — As schools around the country brace for student walkouts following the deadly shooting in Parkland, Florida, principals and superintendents are scrambling to perform a delicate balancing act: How to let thousands of students exercise their First Amendment rights while not disrupting school and not pulling administrators into the raging debate over gun control.
Some have taken a hard line, promising to suspend students who walk out, while others are using a softer approach, working with students to set up places on campus where they can remember the victims of the Florida shooting and express their views about school safety and gun control.
Since the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, demonstrations have sprung up on school campuses around the country. But the first large-scale, coordinated national demonstration is planned for March 14, when organizers of the Women’s March have called for a 17-minute walkout, one minute for each of the 17 students and staff members killed in Florida.
National demonstrations are also planned for March 24, with a march on Washington, D.C.; and on April 20, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado.
No matter how schools decide to deal with the demonstrations, students have been reassured by Harvard, Yale, MIT, the University of Connecticut, UCLA and dozens of other colleges and universities that their participation won’t affect their chances of getting admitted.
But for middle-school and high-school administrators, figuring out how to allow the demonstrations during school hours has proven challenging. In some cases, it hasn’t gone smoothly.
In Needville, Texas, near Houston, Superintendent Curtis Rhodes was castigated on social media after he warned that students who leave class would be suspended for three days, even if they get parental permission.
“SHAME, SHAME, SHAME ON YOU,” wrote one woman.
In Garretson, South Dakota, administrators canceled a student walkout planned for April 20 after a Facebook posting about the plan drew more than 300 negative comments from adults.
And in Arizona, dozens of students at Ingleside Middle School, near Phoenix, were given one-day suspensions after they left campus on Feb. 27.
Layla Defibaugh, an eighth-grade student at Ingleside, said she wanted to participate in the walkout, but didn’t because of the threatened suspensions. She does plan to join the March 14 walkout, even it means getting suspended.
“It’s important for me to speak my mind on this topic,” she said. “At the end of the day, they shouldn’t be able to punish us for exercising our First Amendment rights.”
AASA, The School Superintendents Association, has fielded dozens of calls and emails from school administrators asking for advice, while the American Civil Liberties Union has received hundreds of inquiries from students about what their rights are and if they can be disciplined for participating in the protests.
The answer depends on each school’s code of conduct and disciplinary policies. Generally, the ACLU has been advising students that because they are required to go to school by law, administrators can discipline them for unexcused absences. But the ACLU also told students in an online training video that administrators can’t punish them more harshly because of the political nature of their demonstrations.
The superintendents association — which is supporting the April 20 walkout— has drafted a list of suggestions for school administrators, including holding a teach-in, a school-led walkout to a spot on campus, or a session on bullying.
“There are ways to engage and harness the students in civic engagement without compromising policies in place on attendance, participation and student safety,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate director for policy and advocacy.
Some schools have embraced the walkouts.
In Mooresville, Indiana, administrators met with 10 high-school student leaders to work out a plan. Mooresville High School Principal Brian Disney said the students plan to use the school’s public address system to read short statements about mental illness, the importance of kindness and standing up against all school violence before inviting all students to gather in a school hallway for 17 minutes of silence.
In Anne Arundel County, Maryland, administrators are still talking with students about how they can participate without violating school rules.
“I think we all realize that for folks who are teenagers right now, this could well be a defining moment in their lives. We want to very much encourage and empower student voices. That said, it has to be done in ways that are safe and appropriate,” said spokesman Bob Mosier.
Some schools are taking a middle ground, neither encouraging nor discouraging students from participating. In Henrico County, Virginia, near Richmond, administrators sent an email to parents saying they are not sanctioning the March 14 walkout, but feel obligated to manage the event because of its heavy promotion on social media. Middle-school principals asked parents to sign a Google document stating whether they give their children permission to participate. Schools plan to provide campus locations for the walkout.
In Somerville, Massachusetts, students say they won’t stop after a single walkout. They’ve started a weekly movement they hope will keep public attention focused on school safety and put pressure on lawmakers to pass stricter gun control laws. The walkouts will be held every Wednesday, said Anika Nayak, 16, a student organizer.
“We’re really just fed up with the lack of action that’s been taken in our country,” Nayak said.
“We don’t think enough people are listening.”
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — As schools around the country brace for student walkouts following the deadly shooting in Parkland, Florida, principals and superintendents are scrambling to perform a delicate balancing act: How to let thousands of students exercise their First Amendment rights while not disrupting school and not pulling administrators into the raging debate over gun control.
Some have taken a hard line, promising to suspend students who walk out, while others are using a softer approach, working with students to set up places on campus where they can remember the victims of the Florida shooting and express their views about school safety and gun control.
Since the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, demonstrations have sprung up on school campuses around the country. But the first large-scale, coordinated national demonstration is planned for March 14, when organizers of the Women’s March have called for a 17-minute walkout, one minute for each of the 17 students and staff members killed in Florida.
National demonstrations are also planned for March 24, with a march on Washington, D.C.; and on April 20, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado.
No matter how schools decide to deal with the demonstrations, students have been reassured by Harvard, Yale, MIT, the University of Connecticut, UCLA and dozens of other colleges and universities that their participation won’t affect their chances of getting admitted.
But for middle-school and high-school administrators, figuring out how to allow the demonstrations during school hours has proven challenging. In some cases, it hasn’t gone smoothly.
In Needville, Texas, near Houston, Superintendent Curtis Rhodes was castigated on social media after he warned that students who leave class would be suspended for three days, even if they get parental permission.
“SHAME, SHAME, SHAME ON YOU,” wrote one woman.
In Garretson, South Dakota, administrators canceled a student walkout planned for April 20 after a Facebook posting about the plan drew more than 300 negative comments from adults.
And in Arizona, dozens of students at Ingleside Middle School, near Phoenix, were given one-day suspensions after they left campus on Feb. 27.
Layla Defibaugh, an eighth-grade student at Ingleside, said she wanted to participate in the walkout, but didn’t because of the threatened suspensions. She does plan to join the March 14 walkout, even it means getting suspended.
“It’s important for me to speak my mind on this topic,” she said. “At the end of the day, they shouldn’t be able to punish us for exercising our First Amendment rights.”
AASA, The School Superintendents Association, has fielded dozens of calls and emails from school administrators asking for advice, while the American Civil Liberties Union has received hundreds of inquiries from students about what their rights are and if they can be disciplined for participating in the protests.
The answer depends on each school’s code of conduct and disciplinary policies. Generally, the ACLU has been advising students that because they are required to go to school by law, administrators can discipline them for unexcused absences. But the ACLU also told students in an online training video that administrators can’t punish them more harshly because of the political nature of their demonstrations.
The superintendents association — which is supporting the April 20 walkout— has drafted a list of suggestions for school administrators, including holding a teach-in, a school-led walkout to a spot on campus, or a session on bullying.
“There are ways to engage and harness the students in civic engagement without compromising policies in place on attendance, participation and student safety,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate director for policy and advocacy.
Some schools have embraced the walkouts.
In Mooresville, Indiana, administrators met with 10 high-school student leaders to work out a plan. Mooresville High School Principal Brian Disney said the students plan to use the school’s public address system to read short statements about mental illness, the importance of kindness and standing up against all school violence before inviting all students to gather in a school hallway for 17 minutes of silence.
In Anne Arundel County, Maryland, administrators are still talking with students about how they can participate without violating school rules.
“I think we all realize that for folks who are teenagers right now, this could well be a defining moment in their lives. We want to very much encourage and empower student voices. That said, it has to be done in ways that are safe and appropriate,” said spokesman Bob Mosier.
Some schools are taking a middle ground, neither encouraging nor discouraging students from participating. In Henrico County, Virginia, near Richmond, administrators sent an email to parents saying they are not sanctioning the March 14 walkout, but feel obligated to manage the event because of its heavy promotion on social media. Middle-school principals asked parents to sign a Google document stating whether they give their children permission to participate. Schools plan to provide campus locations for the walkout.
In Somerville, Massachusetts, students say they won’t stop after a single walkout. They’ve started a weekly movement they hope will keep public attention focused on school safety and put pressure on lawmakers to pass stricter gun control laws. The walkouts will be held every Wednesday, said Anika Nayak, 16, a student organizer.
“We’re really just fed up with the lack of action that’s been taken in our country,” Nayak said.
“We don’t think enough people are listening.”
SEATTLE (AP) — Recent mass shootings have spurred Congress to try to improve the nation’s gun background check system that has failed on numerous occasions to keep weapons out of the hands of dangerous people.
The problem with the legislation, experts say, is that it only works if federal agencies, the military, states, courts and local law enforcement do a better job of sharing information with the background check system — and they have a poor track record in doing so. Some of the nation’s most horrific mass shootings have revealed major holes in the database reporting system, including massacres at Virginia Tech in 2007 and at a Texas church last year.
Despite the failures, many states still aren’t meeting key benchmarks with their background check reporting that enable them to receive federal grants similar to what’s being proposed in the current legislation.
“It’s a completely haphazard system — sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t,” said Georgetown University law professor Larry Gostin. “When you’re talking about school children’s lives, rolling the dice isn’t good enough.”
In theory, the FBI’s background check database, tapped by gun dealers during a sale, should have a definitive list of people who are prohibited from having guns — people who have been convicted of crimes, committed to mental institutions, received dishonorable discharges or are addicted to drugs.
But in practice, the database is incomplete.
It’s up to local police, sheriff’s offices, the military, federal and state courts, Indian tribes and in some places, hospitals and treatment providers, to send criminal or mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, but some don’t always do so, or they may not send them in a timely fashion.
Some agencies don’t know what to send; states often lack funds needed to ensure someone handles the data; no system of audits exists to find out who’s not reporting; and some states lack the political will to set up a functioning and efficient reporting process, experts said.
“The system is riddled with opportunities for human error,” said Kristin Brown, co-president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
A proposal in Congress seeks to establish a structured system for federal agencies to send records to the NICS database. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas says the legislation — often referred to as “Fix NICS” — will save lives.
“We should start with what’s achievable and what will actually save lives, and that describes the ‘Fix NICS’ bill. It will help prevent dangerous individuals with criminal convictions and a history of mental illness from buying firearms,” the Republican said.
Often left out of the debate in Washington is the fact that similar legislation passed after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, but many records are still not being sent to the database.
The Justice Department even set up a new grant program that offered states help with their reporting system, but many didn’t even bother to apply. In 2016, only 19 states and one tribe received funds totaling $15 million. The number of states currently participating is 31.
Several states aren’t eligible for the grant because they haven’t set up a system that allows a person who was prohibited from having a gun due to mental health issues get their rights restored. The National Rifle Association has long-pushed for those types of restoration requirements, Brown said.
Important mental health records that would have kept Seung-Hui Cho from getting the guns he used to kill 32 people at Virginia Tech were never entered into NICS. The gunman who killed dozens at a Texas church in November was able to purchase weapons because the Air Force didn’t send his domestic violence conviction to the database.
And the father of a teenager who killed himself and four classmates at a Washington state high school in 2014 was able to purchase several guns, including the one his son used, because the Tulalip Tribal Court had not shared his domestic violence protection order with Marysville, Washington, authorities, who would have sent it to the background check system.
Since then, the tribe received a $333,841 grant to help improve its criminal records reporting.
The man who walked into a Carson City, Nevada, IHOP restaurant with an assault weapon in 2011 and killed four people had a history of mental illness, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and had been taken into custody by police in nearby California under the state’s involuntary commitment law. But under federal law, people are only prohibited from having a firearm if they have been “adjudicated as a mental defective” or committed to a mental institution.
The federal law doesn’t include involuntary commitments.
Some states have enacted their own laws that limit gun ownership based on mental health issues, but they’re all different, according to a report by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Experts say many agencies don’t know what type of mental health information to send to NICS. Brown said many agencies, hospitals and treatment providers are under the mistaken impression that federal medical privacy laws prevent them from sharing information with the system.
Carson City Sheriff Ken Furlong, who handled the IHOP mass shooting, said the biggest roadblock to creating a comprehensive NICS system is privacy concerns. Some are afraid that if they report their family members, they’ll be arrested, he said, and agencies feel stifled by privacy laws.
“When someone is in crisis, why are we waiting to respond?” Furlong asked. “We have a public safety responsibility to prevent something from happening before we have to use force.”
The federal legislation being considered in Congress might help ensure more criminal records reach the background check database, but it has limitations because Congress can’t force states to enact laws. And it doesn’t address gaps in mental health commitment reporting, said Gostin.
“Because mental health records are critical to the integrity of the system,” he said, “the bill leave a significant gap.”
Some states have passed their own laws requiring agencies to report to NICS, but few keep track of whether that’s happening and most don’t have penalties for failing to submit records.
“They’re not reporting but there are no repercussions,” said Cassandra Crifasi, with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. “What is there to encourage people to follow the law?”