Category: Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina Local News

The Durham County Sheriff’s Office said it disciplined a detention officer and a civilian contractor Friday night.

According to Durham County Sheriff Clarence Burkhead, 45-year-old Nicole Locke, who was a sergeant at the detention center, was arrested Friday and charged with the following crimes:

• Two counts of felony conspiracy.
• One felony count of providing a phone/electronics to inmates.
• One count of misdemeanor conspiracy.

Deputies said Locke was released on a $15,000 unsecured bond.

According to Locke’s arrest warrant, Locke provided components to a cell phone to an inmate in August.

While going through the arrest warrant, WRAL News discovered the inmate who received the cell phone was the same inmate accused of having sex with two former detention center workers.

Both of the former employees were charged and WRAL News is not publicly identifying the inmate.

The second person, 31-year-old Briana Bowie, a former nurse contracted with the detention center, was also arrested and charged with one count of felony conspiracy to sell Schedule VI controlled substance.

In Bowie’s arrest warrant, Bowie is accused of bringing marijuana into the detention center and giving it to an inmate. The warrants then said the inmate planned to sell the drugs inside the detention center.

The sheriff said Locke and Bowie are no longer associated with the detention center.

“I will not stand for any activity which contradicts our mission in the care and custody of the people who are confined to the Durham County Detention Facility. Be it a Sheriff’s Office employee or a contractor,” he said in a statement provided to WRAL News. “We must hold everyone who interacts with our residents to a high standard.”

North Carolina elections officials say they’re working long hours to make sure victims of Hurricane Helene can cast a ballot in this year’s elections — and that so far, voter turnout in the 25 counties under Helene-related disaster orders is actually higher than the state average.

The updates come as early voting is set to enter its final week, and as some Republicans seek to use the damage from Helene as pretext for invalidating North Carolina’s election results, if Democrat Kamala Harris wins the presidential race in this key battleground state.

On Thursday, U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, R-Maryland, cited Helene in saying Republican leaders in North Carolina should hand the state’s Electoral College votes to Republican Donald Trump — regardless of how the state votes — according to reporting from Politico. Harris, the leader of the hard-line Freedom Caucus, is one of the most influential Republicans in Congress.

The western part of the state is a Republican stronghold, and Harris said that could give GOP officials something to point to, to try invalidating the results of the election if Trump loses. He was backing a conservative activist who, WRAL reported Wednesday, said at a rally in Selma that any loss by Trump will signal an “illegitimate election.”

That raised alarms for Democrats, in addition to some Republicans. U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross, D-N.C., slammed Harris’ comments as “un-American” on Friday.

Politico also reported that U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry — a North Carolina Republican who’s the former Speaker of the House and represents several of the western counties hit by the storm — said the Freedom Caucus leader doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“It makes no sense whatsoever to prejudge the election outcome,” McHenry, who isn’t running for reelection, told Politico. “And that is a misinformed view of what is happening on the ground in North Carolina, bless his heart.”

Harris on Friday said his comments were taken out of context, the Associated Press reported.

Karen Brinson Bell, who leads the North Carolina State Board of Elections, told reporters Friday that voting in western North Carolina has gone better than expected so far, and that officials are working overtime to make sure voters in the area aren’t disenfranchised.

Nearly 31% of registered voters in those affected counties have already cast a ballot. Brinson Bell said that’s more than that region saw by this point in 2020. It’s also more than the statewide turnout of about 29.4%.

On Friday, WRAL asked Trump running mate JD Vance about the Trump campaign’s concerns with western North Carolina, and whether a Kamala Harris victory in North Carolina should be thrown out if she wins. Vance took questions during a rally in Raeford.

“Should the state results be challenged? I think that what we should try to do instead is make sure that every voter’s vote counts in the state of North Carolina,” Vance said. “You know, all across the state of North Carolina — whether we’re talking about Charlotte or New Bern or the western part of the state.”

A member of the Freedom Caucus from North Carolina, Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, is running against fellow U.S. Rep. Jeff Jackson for attorney general. Whoever is attorney general in 2025 could attempt to overturn election results; as a member of Congress in 2020 Bishop signed onto an effort by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. But a spokesman for Bishop’s attorney general campaign on Friday strongly criticized his fellow Freedom Caucus member’s suggestion to pre-determine the results of the election in North Carolina in favor of Trump, calling it “absurdity.”

“He does not agree, and he communicated that forcefully to Rep. Harris today,” Bishop spokesman Pat Ryan said. “North Carolinians are very much exercising their right to vote, including in the Helene-impacted counties. And Republican voters are leading early voting for the first time in memory. Our election is just fine.”

Brinson Bell spoke to reporters Friday about the progress that’s been made in responding to the storm, praising “the dedicated election professionals across our state and the dedicated poll workers who staff these voting sites” — a team of thousands of workers, some of them volunteers and some full-time professionals, who are running elections in the state’s 100 counties.

“The fact that things are going smoothly is also a testament to the voters and campaigners who have shown civility and a recognition that every eligible voter deserves a peaceful opportunity to exercise their right to vote,” she said.

More than 2.3 million North Carolina voters have cast ballots as of Friday morning. North Carolina set an all-time record for voter turnout in 2020, with 5.5 million people — 75% of the state’s registered voters — participating in that year’s election. So far, Brinson Bell said, the state appears to be outpacing its 2020 numbers.”We are setting records in North Carolina,” she said. “The first day of early voting is the largest first day that we’ve seen, including 2020.”

Voting in western NC

Earlier this month state lawmakers approved $5 million more for elections in the disaster stricken areas. They also signed off on a number of policy changes the elections board had recommended to ensure voting went as smoothly as possible in the western counties affected by the storm, most of which lean heavily Republican.

Those actions were bipartisan, passing the Democratic-controlled elections board and the Republican-controlled state legislature by unanimous votes.

The legislature passed another bill this week aimed at adding more early voting sites in McDowell and Henderson counties, which again passed with bipartisan support. There were questions about whether county officials would be able to find usable sites and enough new volunteers to staff them, considering early voting has already begun and training for election volunteers happened weeks ago. But on Friday, Brinson Bell expressed confidence that they’d figure out how to make it work.

“I’m glad that the legislature has such confidence in our abilities, because this is a quick pivot that we’re going to have to pull off,” she said. “But these are dedicated election professionals who are, you know, committed to carrying out the law as it is written, and so that is what we will do.”

Brinson Bell said the election infrastructure in western North Carolina has been holding up better than expected: The 25 affected counties have, combined, been able to operate 76 of the 80 early voting sites they planned to use before the storm hit. And while officials originally thought they’d need to bring in 15 large tents from the military for temporary polling places on election day itself, cleanup work and road repairs have gone faster than expected and they now expect to only need half that number of makeshift precincts.

She also acknowledged that the storm has displaced thousands of people. An estimated 6,000 are living in temporary shelters, and many more have taken up with family or friends. One of the main changes the legislature approved, on the election board’s recommendation, was to allow those people to more easily cast a mail-in ballot. Brinson Bell said she wanted to remind people in the disaster-affected counties that that’s an option.

“If you are not going to be able to vote in your home county during the early voting period or on election day, you must act quickly,” she said. “You should request an absentee-by-mail ballot now — and I do mean now — to be delivered to wherever you are currently staying temporarily.”

A wild horse with a long-standing reputation in Corolla has passed on, leaving those who oversee the Corolla Wild Horse Fund to say their goodbyes.

‘Flint,’ a stallion who was alive and enjoying life until this year at the Outer Banks, died recently after spending nearly 40 years on the island.

Onlookers noticed Flint had been slowing down after having lost a significant amount of weight. Veterinarians discovered Flint had no functional teeth and was struggling with a severe sinus infection. It would have been tough for Flint to survive through the winter without intervention, which would have been painful for him.

“Flint, after 40 years of life on this beach, has become a legend now,” read a CWHF post in tribute of Flint. “His story certainly did not die with him; it lives on in his countless offspring and the mark he left on the herd, and in the memories of him that we will share for many, many years to come.”

Based on his teeth and physical traits, officials said Flint was likely in his late 30s.

Flint, who the fund called a foundational stallion, was buried in a remote spot in the woods next to his son, Danny. Those who take care of the horses said Flint’s longevity was a sign of a life well-lived and a token of how he’ll be remembered.

One day after a multistate E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers was publicized, a major supplier of onions in that region has issued a recall.

Though federal regulators have not confirmed the source of the outbreak, which has so far killed one person and sickened 49, initial investigations have suggested that the fresh slivered onions served mainly atop the Quarter Pounder were a “likely source of contamination.”

Taylor Farms, the sole supplier of those onions to the affected McDonald’s locations in 10 states, issued a recall Wednesday of several yellow onion products because of “potential E. coli contamination,” according to a notice from U.S. Foods, which distributes the products to many restaurants.

The notice instructed restaurants to immediately stop serving the specified onions — diced, peeled and whole — and destroy them.

Some Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC restaurants are pulling onions from meals out of an “abundance of caution” after an E. coli outbreak tied to McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers, Yum Brands said Thursday.

“As we continue to monitor the recently reported E. coli outbreak, and out of an abundance of caution, we have proactively removed fresh onions from select restaurants,” Yum Brands said in a statement.

Yum Brands owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC.

The items were voluntarily recalled by Taylor Farms Colorado out of an “abundance of caution,” a spokesperson for U.S. Foods said in an email. Taylor Farms did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Food safety specialists Lynette Johnson said when you peel back the layers, there’s no need to worry, as most of the cases have been in the midwest and have not reached North Carolina.

“We need to understand where our products come from,” she said. “But does it mean that we need to go out and, one, not buy onions at this point in North Carolina? No.”

McDonald’s and the Food and Drug Administration said preliminary reviews linked the outbreak to those slivered onions, but health officials and McDonald’s said they had not ruled out possible contamination of the quarter-pound beef patties used for the popular menu item. The Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also investigating the source of the contamination.

The outbreak has sickened people across the Mountain West, though most cases have been clustered in Colorado.

McDonald’s has stopped using slivered onions, and has halted sales of Quarter Pounders at restaurants in Colorado, Kansas, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico and Oklahoma. McDonald’s has said that its other hamburger items are not affected by the recall.

E. coli outbreaks are not uncommon in the United States, said Barbara Kowalcyk, director of the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security at George Washington University.

Every year, there are between 20 to 50 E. coli outbreaks, a spokesperson for the CDC said. In 2024 alone, 13 cases have been linked to organic walnuts and 11 cases were linked to raw cheddar cheese.

What worries experts about this outbreak is that this particular strain of the bacteria can cause a life-threatening condition called hemolytic uremic syndrome which damages blood vessels in the kidneys.

The condition is most common in young children and there is no treatment to stop the disease from progressing once it has started. Federal health officials said one of the people hospitalized with the disease was a child. Of the 49 people with a confirmed case of E. coli, the youngest was 13.

“If you had to pick the characteristics you would not want to have in your food-borne disease group, this is a good set,” said Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota.

One silver lining of this outbreak, Kowalcyk said, is that parents don’t generally buy the large hamburgers for young children.

Osterholm said that while beef used to be the frequent source of E. coli outbreaks (dangerous strains of the bacteria often lives in cow intestines), several high-profile outbreaks have sparked food safety changes that has made beef a less likely culprit.

For example, after a 1993 E. coli outbreak related to undercooked Jack in the Box hamburger patties — which sickened hundreds, killed four children and left others with kidney failure — the FDA raised the recommended internal temperature for hamburgers.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Losing a home in a natural
disaster once is traumatizing enough.

Twice is something Josie
Borg tells WRAL she’d worried she and her family may not make it through.

“Last time we were really
surprised what 8 inches can do to your house and this time it’s eight feet of
water,” said Borg. “It’s just a whole different scenario.”

Borg is in her third
trimester, carrying her fourth child.

She and her family now
have no place to live after their home flooded in Hurricane Helene.

The family lives along the
Pigeon River in Clyde, about thirty minutes west of Asheville. The
late-September storm forced the family out of their home in the middle of the
night.

“The sirens stared going
off at about 3 a.m. which means the river breaches the bank about two miles
from us, then the evacuation sirens were at 5,” Borg recalled.

Borg and her husband,
three children under the age of 10, and four animals fled to a nearby shelter
when the river crested 19 feet.

“It was just surreal. We
had to put our kids in creates and go in and we were stuck there because the
roads were terrible,” the mother said.

Borg said it was a few
days later when they learned how badly damaged their property was.

“It’s not fixable,” the
mother cried.

The experience for the
family is the worst kind of déjà vu.

Tropical Storm Fred
displaced the family in 2021. The home flooded 12 inches at it’s highest points.

Borg said they had to tear
out all of their drywall and flooring and live in a trailer parked in their
yard for two years.

“The main thing when
you’re in this situation — my situation — and totally displaced, is you have
to keep paying on this and you also have to find some place to live,” said
Borg.

The mother shared the
family was still dealing with the financial toll of Fred when Helene hit.

“It financially
annihilated us last time,” Borg shared.

The family is now asking
for the public’s help in raising funds to save their home. The couple
evacuated temporarily to Tennessee but returned to Clyde the week after the
storm hit to walk through their property.

Borg told WRAL the
family’s mortgage requires them to have FEMA-approved flood insurance. Still,
she shared they didn’t get a dime of aid in 2021.

“They came to my house and
they just said, ‘No.’ We didn’t get the $750 last time, we got absolutely
nothing,” said Borg.

The
mother says the only aid they received came through the Office of State Budget
and Management.

“We
were paying like $1,200 to live in an apartment in between campers and they
reimbursed us that,” said Borg. “That really saved us. That program alone last
time made it so we could get back into our house.”

Borg
is worried if any aid will come this time around and if it will be enough.  

WRAL
asked Governor Roy Cooper about statewide assistance programs.

Cooper shared, “One of the
things we want to make sure we do in this storm is to turn on every spigot of
local, state, federal private and non-profit resources that we can in order to
be able to make sure people in western North Carolina recover.”

He continued, “I’ve been
in Canton since this storm and have talked with them about trying to access
those resources.”

What exactly those state
resources will be and how quickly families like Borg’s could see a payment is
unclear.

WRAL also asked FEMA about
its $750 Serious Needs Assistance Payment. The agency said the purpose of the
funding is to assist those with immediate needs in the wake of a disaster.

FEMA’s top official Deanne
Criswell told WRAL there are several factors that go into determining if
someone is eligible. She also shared the agency just launched a new program
this week to better reach those in impacted areas.

“We’ve started to do auto
dialer out to the people in these impacted communities where we’ve expedited
this that haven’t actually gotten the $750 or our displacement assistance,
where we thought they could’ve gotten displacement assistance and they stayed
with friends and family or so forth,” explained Criswell.

The FEMA administrator
said the purpose of the calls was to walk impacted survivors through available
and double check they are getting everything they are eligible for.

Borg told WRAL her husband
did receive one of these phone calls and was asked about their housing needs.

She also shared they had a
home visit, but haven’t yet been connected with any assistance.

Criswell says aid can hit
a survivor’s bank account within 48 hours so long as they are eligible and
complete the necessary paperwork.

Borg shared simply
applying is another headache she and her neighbors are struggling with.

“It’s a lot of work. All
these people, you’re in the middle of a disaster trying to survive, half these
people don’t have power or internet, but you’ve got to do all these phone calls
and you’ve got to get on the internet and do these appeals,” she shared. “It’s
near impossible to navigate it.”

Borg says she’s trying to
remain hopeful that relief will come. In the meantime, navigating “What’s Next”
remains an emotional – and financial – struggle.

“There’s
definitely a different feel here because we’re just outside that big booming
population. It does make it so that we get kind of left behind,” said Borg.
“People are going to stop talking about Helene and these people will be
struggling.”

Borg
said an adjuster did come to their home but the family hasn’t yet been informed
of a decision.

The mother and her husband
say they’re also trying to determine where they will deliver their new baby and
what bringing the baby home will look like.