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Tag: Virginia
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Virginia students were prepared for shooting, not aftermath
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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Students huddled inside laboratory closets and darkened dorm rooms across the University of Virginia while others moved far away from library windows and barricaded the doors of its stately academic buildings after an ominous warning flashed on their screens: “RUN. HIDE. FIGHT.”
Responding to the immediate threat of an on-campus shooting was a moment they had prepared for since their first years of elementary school. But dealing with the emotional trauma of an attack that killed three members of the school’s football team late Sunday left students shaken and grasping to understand.
“This will probably affect our campus for a very, very long time,” said Shannon Lake, a third-year student from Crozet, Virginia.
For 12 hours, she hid with friends and other students, much of that time in a storage closet, while authorities searched into Monday morning for the suspect before he was taken into custody.
When Lake and the others heard someone might be right outside the business school building, they all decided to go into the closet, turn off the lights and barricade the door.
“That was probably the most terrifying moment because it became more real to us, and reminded us of those practice school lockdowns as children. And it was just kind of a surreal moment where, you know, I don’t think any of us were really processing what was going on,” she said.
Police charged 22-year-old student Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. with three counts of second-degree murder, saying the three victims were killed just after 10:15 p.m. as a charter bus full of students returned from seeing a play in Washington. Two other students were wounded.
University President Jim Ryan said authorities did not have a “full understanding” of the motive or circumstances surrounding the shooting.
Police conducted a building-by-building search of the campus while students sheltered in place before the lockdown order was lifted late Monday morning.
Charlotte Goeb, a student who lives in an apartment about a half-mile (800 meters) away from the shooting scene, immediately checked her doors and shut off the lights after getting an alert from the school.
“I’m having a hard time coming to terms that this was happening,” she said. “Even though you spend all of your upbringing knowing this can happen.”
Ellie Wilkie, a fourth-year student, was about to leave her room on the university’s prestigious, historic Lawn at the center of campus when her group texts with friends began exploding with word of the shooting. But she didn’t barricade herself in right away.
“I think our generation has been so habituated to these being drills and this being commonplace that I didn’t even think it was all that serious until I got an email that said, ‘Run. Hide. Fight,’ all caps,” she said.
Wilkie moved a large trunk she uses for storage in front of the door and put her mattress on top of that. She turned off the lights, unplugged anything that might make noise, put her phone on do-not-disturb mode, got under the covers of her top bunk and texted her mom, who called back, terrified.
She picked up but told her mom: “I have to get off the phone now. I can’t be making noise in here.”
University Police Chief Timothy Longo Sr. said the suspect had once been on the football team, but he had not been part of the team for at least a year. The UVA football website listed Jones as a team member during the 2018 season and said he did not play in any games.
It was not immediately clear whether Jones had an attorney or when he would make his first court appearance.
Hours after Jones was arrested, first-year head football coach Tony Elliott sat alone outside the athletic building used by the team, at times with his head in his hands. He said the victims “were all good kids.”
Elizabeth Paul was working at a desktop computer in the Clemons library when she got a call from her mom about the shooting. She thought it was probably something minor until the computer she was using lit up with a warning about an active shooter.
She spent about 12 hours huddled with several others underneath windows in the library, hoping that if gunfire did erupt, they would be out of sight. She spent most of the night on the phone with her mom.
“Not even talking to her the whole time necessarily, but she wanted the line to be on so that if I needed something she was there,” Paul said.
Em Gunter, a second-year anthropology student, heard three gunshots and then three more while she was studying genetics in her dorm room.
She told everyone on her floor to go in their rooms, shut their blinds and turn off the lights. Students know from active shooter drills how to respond, she said.
“But how do we deal with it afterwards?” she asked. “What’s it going to be like in a week, in a month?”
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Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Ben Finley in Norfolk, Va.; Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Va.; Sarah Brumfield in Silver Spring, Md.; Hank Kurz in Charlottesville, Va.; Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire; and news researcher Rhonda Shafner; as well as videojournalist Nathan Ellegren and photographer Steve Helber in Charlottesville.
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Coach: Slain Virginia football players ‘were all good kids’
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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Three University of Virginia football players killed in an on-campus shooting were remembered Monday by their head coach as “incredible young men with huge aspirations and extremely bright futures.”
Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr., and D’Sean Perry were juniors returning to campus from a class trip to see a play Sunday night when authorities say they were killed by a fellow student.
The young men were members of the Virginia football team, journeying through periods of transition in their careers — whether it was bouncing back from a season-ending injury, changing positions on the team or transferring in from another school.
“They touched us, inspired us and worked incredibly hard,” head football coach Tony Elliott said in a statement.
Their absence was already being felt on campus, prompting American studies professor Jack Hamilton to tweet that he was “just stunned and devastated and completely at a loss.”
Hamilton had Chandler and Davis as students.
“In my experience, star athletes often tend to hang out with other athletes (understandable, given the time commitment),” Hamilton wrote. “But (Davis) seemed to go out of his way to make friends with non-athletes.”
As the tragedy reverberated throughout the campus, the head football coach was seen sitting alone at a table outside the university’s football offices, his head in his hands.
“They were all good kids,” Elliott said before getting into an SUV with several other coaches.
A couple hours later, teammate Aaron Faumui spoke briefly through tears.
“I don’t even know what to say right now,” said the college senior who plays defensive tackle. “I just want to say they were three young great men.”
The grief was felt widely, penetrating football programs across the country — in part because college athletes can move around more with the easing of transfer restrictions. Players from Wisconsin to Utah and Washington state mourned because they had played at Virginia.
“Can’t put into words the physical and mental pain that comes with losing not just teammates, but brothers,” tweeted Wayne Taulapapa, a running back who transferred from Virginia to the University of Washington. “You were never just football players, but rather examples of great and honorable young men.”
The shooting happened just after 10:15 p.m. Sunday as a charter bus full of students returned from seeing a play in Washington, D.C.. University President Jim Ryan said authorities did not have a “full understanding” of the motive or circumstances surrounding the shooting.
Police on Monday captured a university student, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., 22, whom they say is suspected of shooting the three football players and wounding two others. Jones had once played on the football team, but had not been a member of the team for at least a year, police said.
On Monday morning, Lavel Davis Sr. posted a message on Facebook: “Lord please help me.”
LAVEL DAVIS JR.
Davis was a 6-foot-7 wide receiver from Dorchester, South Carolina. He finished the 2020 season ranked No. 2 in the nation and No. 1 in the Atlantic Coast Conference for average yards per reception, among many other accolades.
An undisclosed injury sidelined Davis for the 2021 season but he returned this year, starting six of the first seven games. In the season opener against the University of Richmond, Davis caught four passes for 89 yards, including a 56-yard touchdown. He was on a watch list for 2022 Comeback Player of the Year.
Herman Moore, who developed a friendship with Davis as an alumni-mentor, said Davis was hoping to finish his college career on a high note after bouncing back from his injury.
Davis had aspirations for the NFL. But he was also thinking about life beyond sports, perhaps in business. The future, however, was yet to be decided.
“He wanted to be recognized as the best receiver in the nation,” Moore said. “And he felt he had all the tools and the athleticism to get it done.”
DEVIN CHANDLER
Chandler was a wide receiver from Huntersville, North Carolina. He recently transferred from Wisconsin. His accomplishments for the Badgers included a 59-yard kickoff return and 18-yard rush in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl against Wake Forest in 2020.
“Once a badger, always a badger,” Jim Leonhard, the University of Wisconsin’s interim head football coach, tweeted Monday.
“He had a lasting impact on his teammates, even after he left UW, which is a testament to the type of person he was,” Leonhard wrote. “His personality was infectious and he was a joy to be around. Our team is hurting for him and his family.”
Hamilton, the American studies professor, said on Twitter that Chandler had been in one of his large lecture classes.
“He nevertheless made a point to come to my office hours repeatedly, often just to ask questions about how things worked around UVA,” Hamilton wrote.
The professor later helped Chandler to declare his major in American studies
“He was an unbelievably nice person, always a huge smile, really gregarious and funny,” Hamilton wrote. “One of those people who’s just impossible not to like.”
D’SEAN PERRY
Perry was a linebacker from Miami, Florida. In September, Perry told the Daily Progress that he was called to the Cavaliers’ football offices. Linebackers coach Clint Sintim said he needed Perry to move from linebacker to defensive end.
Perry told the newspaper it was “no problem at all. It was a smooth transition.”
“Honestly, I feel like I can do both (linebacker and defensive end),” Perry said. “And I prepared myself well to work in space and pass rush during the offseason. … So, both positions I’m very comfortable with and I’m just trying to help the team win.”
Perry appeared in seven games this year and made seven tackles.
Michael Haggard, an attorney for Perry’s parents, issued a statement thanking the South Florida and the Charlottesville communities for “the outpouring of support during this impossibly tragic time,” according to NBC News.
“Right now, Happy and Sean will not speak publicly about the incident as their grief is only beginning, and out of respect for the University of Virginia community which has been terrorized by another mass shooting in the United States,” the statement said.
MIKE HOLLINS
Mike Hollins, a running back on the football team who was also shot, was in stable condition Monday, his mother Brenda Hollins told The Associated Press.
“Mike is a fighter — and he’s showing it,” she said after flying to Virginia from Louisiana. “We have great doctors who have been working with him. And most importantly, we have God’s grace and God’s hands on him.”
Like most college football players, Hollins has aspirations to play professionally, his mother said. But he has other dreams and goals, which include being an educator.
“We’re praying for the other families,” she said.
___
This story has been corrected to show that Jim Leonhard is the University of Wisconsin’s interim head football coach. He is no longer the team’s defensive coordinator.
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Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia. Associated Press news researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
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Virginia students were prepared for shooting, not aftermath
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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Students huddled inside laboratory closets and darkened dorm rooms across the University of Virginia while others moved far away from library windows and barricaded the doors of its stately academic buildings after an ominous warning flashed on their screens: “RUN. HIDE. FIGHT.”
Responding to the immediate threat of an on-campus shooting was a moment they had prepared for since their first years of elementary school. But dealing with the emotional trauma of an attack that killed three members of the school’s team late Sunday left students shaken and grasping to understand.
“This will probably affect our campus for a very, very long time,” said Shannon Lake, a third-year student from Crozet, Virginia.
For 12 hours, she hid with friends and other students, much of that time in a storage closet, while authorities searched into Monday morning for the suspect before he was taken into custody.
When Lake and the others heard someone might be right outside the business school building, they all decided to go into the closet, turn off the lights and barricade the door.
“That was probably the most terrifying moment because it became more real to us, and reminded us of those practice school lockdowns as children. And it was just kind of a surreal moment where, you know, I don’t think any of us were really processing what was going on,” she said.
Police charged 22-year-old student Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. with three counts of second-degree murder, saying the three victims were killed just after 10:15 p.m. as a charter bus full of students returned from seeing a play in Washington. Two other students were wounded.
University President Jim Ryan said authorities did not have a “full understanding” of the motive or circumstances surrounding the shooting.
Police conducted a building-by-building search of the campus while students sheltered in place before the lockdown order was lifted late Monday morning.
Charlotte Goeb, a student who lives in an apartment about a half-mile (800 meters) away from where the shooting scene, immediately checked her doors and shut off the lights after getting an alert from the school.
“I’m having a hard time coming to terms that this was happening,” she said. “Even though you spend all of your upbringing knowing this can happen.”
Ellie Wilkie, a fourth-year student, was about to leave her room on the university’s prestigious, historic Lawn at the center of campus when her group texts with friends began exploding with word of the shooting. But she didn’t barricade herself in right away.
“I think our generation has been so habituated to these being drills and this being commonplace that I didn’t even think it was all that serious until I got an email that said, ‘Run. Hide. Fight,’ all caps,” she said.
Wilkie moved a large trunk she uses for storage in front of the door and put her mattress on top of that. She turned off the lights, unplugged anything that might make noise, put her phone on do-not-disturb mode, got under the covers of her top bunk and texted her mom, who called back, terrified.
She picked up but told her mom: “I have to get off the phone now. I can’t be making noise in here.”
University Police Chief Timothy Longo Sr. said the suspect had once been on the team, but he had not been part of the team for at least a year. The UVA football website listed Jones as a team member during the 2018 season and said he did not play in any games.
It was not immediately clear whether Jones had an attorney or when he would make his first court appearance.
Hours after Jones was arrested, first-year head football coach Tony Elliott sat alone outside the athletic building used by the team, at times with his head in his hands. He said the victims “were all good kids.”
Elizabeth Paul was working at a desktop computer in the Clemons library when she got a call from her mom about the shooting. She thought it was probably something minor until the computer she was using lit up with a warning about an active shooter.
She spent about 12 hours huddled with several others underneath windows in the library, hoping that if gunfire did erupt, they would be out of sight. She spent most of the night on the phone with her mom.
“Not even talking to her the whole time necessarily, but she wanted the line to be on so that if I needed something she was there,” Paul said.
Em Gunter, a second-year anthropology student, heard three gunshots and then three more while she was studying genetics in her dorm room.
She told everyone on her floor to go in their rooms, shut their blinds and turn off the lights. Students know from active shooter drills how to respond, she said.
“But how do we deal with it afterwards?” she asked. “What’s it going to be like in a week, in a month?”
———
Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Ben Finley in Norfolk, Va.; Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Va.; Sarah Brumfield in Silver Spring, Md.; Hank Kurz in Charlottesville, Va.; Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire; and news researcher Rhonda Shafner; as well as videojournalist Nathan Ellegren and photographer Steve Helber in Charlottesville.
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University of Virginia shooting suspect in custody, university police announce
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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — The three students killed in a shooting at the University of Virginia were all members of the school’s football team, the school’s president said.
President Jim Ryan told a Monday morning news conference the shooting happened Sunday night on a school bus of students returning from an off-campus trip.
The suspect has been identified as Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., who is also student.
The incident occurred Sunday near a university parking garage. In addition to the three football players killed, two others were reported to have been wounded.
Police went on a manhunt Monday in search of the student suspected in the attack, officials said.
During a press conference in the 11 o’clock hour local time, the university police chief, Tim Longo, was given word that the suspect was in custody. He immediately returned to the microphone and reported that update to the assembled reporters.
Classes at the university were canceled Monday, following the violence Sunday night, and the Charlottesville campus was unusually quiet as authorities searched for the suspect, whom university President Ryan identified as Christopher Darnell Jones Jr.
A shelter-in-place order to the university community had been lifted less than an hour earlier after a law-enforcement search of the campus.
In a letter to the university posted on social media, Ryan said the shooting happened around 10:30 p.m. Sunday.
The university’s emergency management issued an alert Sunday night notifying the campus community of an “active attacker firearm.” The message warned students to shelter in place following a report of shots fired on Culbreth Road on the northern outskirts of campus.
Access to the shooting scene was blocked by police vehicles Monday morning.
Officials urged students to shelter in place and helicopters could be heard overhead as a smattering of traffic and dog-walkers made their way around campus.
The university police department posted a notice online saying multiple police agencies including the state police were searching for a suspect who was considered “armed and dangerous.”
In his letter to campus, the university president said Jones was suspected to have committed the shooting and that he was a student.
“This is a message any leader hopes never to have to send, and I am devastated that this violence has visited the University of Virginia,” Ryan wrote. “This is a traumatic incident for everyone in our community.”
Eva Surovell, 21, the editor in chief of the student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, said that after students received an alert about an active shooter late Sunday night, she ran to the parking garage, but saw that it was blocked off by police. When she went to a nearby intersection, she was told to go shelter in place.
“A police officer told me that the shooter was nearby and I needed to return home as soon as possible,” she said.
She waited with other reporters, hoping to get additional details, then returned to her room to start working on the story. The gravity of the situation sunk in.
“My generation is certainly one that’s grown up with generalized gun violence, but that doesn’t make it any easier when it’s your own community,” she said.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said agents were responding to the campus to assist in the investigation.
The Virginia shooting came as police were investigating the deaths of four University of Idaho students found Sunday in a home near the campus. Officers with the Moscow Police Department discovered the deaths when they responded to a report of an unconscious person just before noon, according to a news release from the city. Authorities have called the deaths suspected homicides but did not release additional details, including the cause of death.
On April 16, 2007, another Virginia university was the scene of what was then one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history. Twenty-seven students and five faculty members at Virginia Tech were gunned down by Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old mentally ill student who later died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
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UVA shooting: 3 killed, 2 wounded and community told to shelter in place with suspect still at large
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Charlottesville, Virginia — The University of Virginia was locked down and classes were cancelled on Monday morning as police searched for a student in connection with a fatal shooting the previous night. The university’s president confirmed in a letter to the community that three people were killed and two others wounded in the shooting on Sunday evening.
The suspect, identified as university student Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. by UVA President Jim Ryan, remained at large.
The warning for students and staff to shelter in place came late Sunday night following after a report of shots being fired on the campus. The university’s emergency management issued an alert on Twitter at 10:42 p.m. of an “active attacker firearm.”
“There has been a shooting on Culbreth Road and the suspect is at large and considered armed and dangerous,” Ryan said in a tweet, asking the university community to “please shelter in place.”
Ryan later sent out the letter with the message to the university community, saying he was “heartbroken to report that the shooting has resulted in three fatalities,” with two others being hospitalized and treated for unspecified wounds.
The UVA Police Department also posted a notice online saying multiple police agencies were searching for a suspect who was considered “armed and dangerous.”Ryan said in his Monday morning letter that only designated essential staff should come to work.
A UVA student who was in her dormitory room near Culbreth Road said she heard six shots fired, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.[ad_2]
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Shots fired at University of Virginia, police seek suspect
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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The University of Virginia issued a warning to students to shelter in place late Sunday night following a report of shots fired on the campus.
The university’s emergency management issued an alert on Twitter at 10:42 p.m. of an “active attacker firearm.”
Authorities did not immediately release additional information about possible casualties, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.
“There has been a shooting on Culbreth Road and the suspect is at large and considered armed and dangerous,” UVA President Jim Ryan said in a tweet, asking the university community to “please shelter in place.”
The UVA Police Department posted a notice online saying multiple police agencies were searching for a suspect who was considered “armed and dangerous.”
A UVA student who was in her dormitory room near Culbreth Road said she heard six shots fired, the Times-Dispatch reported.
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Trial set for re-enactor charged with leaving pipe bomb
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WINCHESTER, Va. — A federal trial for a former Civil War re-enactor accused of planting a pipe bomb at a Virginia battlefield and threatening to disrupt other events has been set for next year.
Gerald Leonard Drake, 63, had been on the docket for a jury trial in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia starting Dec. 16. Last week, however, a judge ordered that the proceedings be rescheduled for July to give defense attorneys more time to prepare, The Winchester Star reported.
A federal indictment unsealed last month accused Drake of planting a pipe bomb at Cedar Creek Battlefield, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of Washington, during an annual re-enactment in October 2017. The pipe bomb did not detonate and was rendered safe by police. But it resulted in the cancelation of the re-enactment after its discovery.
The indictment also charges Drake with writing letters threatening violence at subsequent Cedar Creek re-enactments as well as at an annual Remembrance Day Parade in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Drake has pleaded not guilty.
According to Judge Elizabeth Dillon’s order, his trial is now scheduled for July 10 to Aug. 4, 2023.
Drake is being held without bond in the Central Virginia Regional Jail, the newspaper reported. His attorney, Donald Pender of Charlottesville, filed a motion last week asking that Drake be released until trial.
The motion says that since a prior detention hearing, all firearms were removed from his home. It also says that Drake has dietary restrictions due to allergies, acid reflux and ulcers, and that the jail has stopped accommodating those restrictions.
“He is currently only able to eat bread, water, and some fruit. In addition, his dentures have recently broken, and the jail has been unable to fix them, which further limits what he can eat,” the filing says.
Christopher Kavanaugh, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, has said Drake falsely claimed connections to antifa — short for “anti-fascists” and an umbrella term for far-left-leaning militant groups — in his threatening letters to hide his actual identity and create additional political angst.
In reality, according to the indictment, Drake was a Civil War re-enactor who regularly participated in events at Cedar Creek until he was expelled from his unit in 2014. The indictment does not say that his expulsion motived his alleged misconduct.
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Virginia education tip line sees concerns from parents
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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginians have used an education tip line Gov. Glenn Youngkin set up to submit complaints about curriculum, remote learning, books, mask policies, teachers and other topics, according to a sampling of emails provided to news outlets as part of a settlement agreement.
Some positive feedback was included in the batch of approximately 350 documents provided this week to news outlets that sued the Republican governor in April seeking disclosure of the information. But the majority of emails expressed anger or frustration with teachers, administrators and school policies, particularly with COVID-19 protocols.
“My children are given busy work, with no new material being taught,” a parent from Spotsylvania County wrote in February, objecting to the number of remote learning days at her child’s high school.
Another parent wrote to the principal of her child’s school, copying in the tip line address, asking her to provide lesson plans and lesson objective sheets from her child’s 7th-grade teachers.
The parent wanted to ensure their child wasn’t “being taught divisive concepts (or in Biology not being taught divisive gender-bending LGBT-campaigns with overly-sexualized lesson content).”
The parent, whose name was redacted from the email, said it was only because of remote learning during the pandemic that parents discovered the school board’s “secret leftist, politically motivated agenda and Critical Race Theory -CRT brainwashing.”
Another parent objected to pay raises given to teachers.
“Though teachers did not step foot in the classroom during the 2020-2021 school year, the district allocated a whopping $32.7 million to give educators additional pay,” he wrote.
Youngkin, who campaigned heavily on education and a promise to give parents more sway in their children’s curriculums, introduced the tip line soon after he was inaugurated in January. That same month, he touted it during an interview as a way to ensure that his administration was aware of what was happening at the school level and enable it to “catalog” and “root out” instances of divisive practices.
A teachers union, Democrats in the General Assembly, some parents and other observers — including celebrities who caught wind of the tip line as it drew national news coverage — criticized the move as divisive, authoritarian and unfairly targeting educators.
Many of the emails to the tip line were supportive of Youngkin’s approach to education policy.
Mital Gandhi, a parent from northern Virginia, said he initially wrote to local education officials after he discovered that his school district eliminated Algebra I from the list of classes 6th-grade students could take.
Gandhi said he followed up with an email to the tip line and the Virginia Department of Education. A department administrator responded and said the state was not prohibiting local school systems from allowing 6th-graders to take Algebra I. Gandhi said his son and several other students in 6th grade are now taking the class.
Gandhi wrote that the tip line was a way of “leveling the playing field for parents and students.”
“What Gov. Youngkin has done is he has put more power to the parents,” he said.
One person disagreed with Youngkin’s approach and used the tip line to urge him not to ban “critical race theory” or controversial books.
“Please do not move us away from progress by supporting these backward notions of forward motion,” wrote one woman, who did not say whether she was a parent with children in the public school system.
Emails sent to the tip line Thursday bounced back. Macaulay Porter, a spokeswoman for Youngkin, said in a statement that the email was deactivated in September “as it had received little to no volume during that time.”
“Constituents are always able to confidentially reach out to the governor’s office through various constituent service methods,” she said.
News organizations filed requests for records related to the tip line, but the governor’s office had declined to provide them based on the administration’s contention that the emails were “working papers and correspondence” of the governor’s office and thus not required to be disclosed under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.
Youngkin and other governors have made routine use of the working papers exemption to withhold a wide range of records.
“The Governor wants constituents to be able to reach out to him without fear that their communications will not be kept confidential,” Porter said in a statement. She did not respond to a question about how the tip line was used by the administration or whether any significant issues came to light and were acted on because of the tip line.
A coalition of news organizations filed suit in April, alleging Youngkin was violating the public records law.
The news organizations reached a settlement agreement with Youngkin last month that called for the Department of Education to produce about 350 documents in its possession that included emails sent to the tip line. The governor’s office was not required to hand over documents sent to its office.
“This Settlement Agreement is entered into as the result of a compromise solely for the purpose of avoiding additional expenses and the risk of further litigation. It should not be construed as adopting or rejecting the position of any Party to the litigation,” the settlement agreement says.
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Cheney endorses another Democratic congresswoman, saying Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger is ‘dedicated to serving this country’ | CNN Politics
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Washington
CNN
—
Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney endorsed Virginia Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger on Saturday, weighing in on another highly competitive House race in the final days of the midterm election campaign.
Spanberger, a former CIA officer who was among the class of national security Democrats first elected in 2018, is locked in a tough contest with Republican challenger Yesli Vega to represent Virginia’s 7th Congressional District.
“I’m honored to endorse Abigail Spanberger. I have worked closely with her in Congress, and I know that she is dedicated to working across the aisle to find solutions. We don’t agree on every policy, but I am absolutely certain that Abigail is dedicated to serving this country and her constituents and defending our Constitution,” Cheney said in a statement.
“Abigail’s opponent is promoting conspiracy theories, denying election outcomes she disagrees with, and defending the indefensible,” she continued.
The move is Cheney’s latest endorsement of a member of her opposing party. The Wyoming Republican campaigned for Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin on Tuesday and endorsed her last week saying, “While Elissa and I have our policy disagreements, at a time when our nation is facing threats at home and abroad, we need serious, responsible, substantive members like Elissa in Congress.”
Spanberger has campaigned on issues like infrastructure and lowering prescription drug costs, while her opponent, Vega, has said she will work to keep the Biden administration in check if elected.
Virginia’s 7th District House race is rated as “tilt Democratic” by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.
CNN has reached out to Spanberger’s campaign for comment on the endorsement.
Cheney is leaving Congress at the end of her current term after losing the Republican primary for her at-large Wyoming seat in August. Her continued criticism of former President Donald Trump for his role in inciting the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was seen as a key factor in her defeat.
Cheney said last month that she would not remain a Republican if Trump is the GOP nominee for president in 2024.
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Teacher Fired For Refusing Student’s Preferred Pronouns Asks Court To Restore Suit
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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Lawyers for a high school French teacher who was fired after he refused to use a transgender student’s pronouns argued before the Supreme Court of Virginia Friday that the school violated his constitutional right to speak freely and exercise his religion. An attorney for the school said the teacher violated the school’s anti-discrimination policy.
Peter Vlaming sued the school board and administrators at West Point High School after he was fired in 2018. Vlaming appealed a lower court’s ruling dismissing the lawsuit and asked the Supreme Court to reinstate it.
Vlaming’s lawsuit was brought by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group that has filed six similar lawsuits — three in Virginia, and one each in Ohio, Kansas and Indiana.
ADF attorney Christopher Schandevel told the high court that Vlaming was not fired for something he said, but “for something he couldn’t say.”
“This is a case about compelled speech,” he said.
Schandevel told the justices that Vlaming tried to accommodate the student by using his masculine name and avoiding the use of pronouns, but the student, his parents and the school told him he was required to use the student’s male pronouns.
In his lawsuit, Vlaming said he could not use the student’s pronouns because of his “sincerely held religious and philosophical” beliefs “that each person’s sex is biologically fixed and cannot be changed.” Vlaming also said he would be lying if he used the student’s pronouns.
Justice Thomas Mann pushed back against the argument that using the boy’s new name but not his pronouns would allow the teacher to avoid discriminating against him.
“What’s the difference?” he said.
“So why is (Vlaming’s) right not to lie more important than (the student’s) right to basic education and to not be discriminated against,” Mann said.
Alan Schoenfeld, an attorney who represents the school board and school administrators, said Vlaming’s speech was part of his official teaching duties and his refusal to use the student’s pronouns clearly violated the anti-discrimination policy.
”A public school employee is not at liberty to declare he will not comply with school policy,” he said.
Justice Wesley Russell Jr. said that if Vlaming treated all students the same by using their names, “how does that discriminate?”
Schoenfeld said it’s “inevitable” that pronouns would come into play in a classroom setting. Vlaming once inadvertently referred to the student as “she” in class, but immediately apologized.
After the hearing, Vlaming said he had hoped that he and the school board could have come to an agreement.
“I can disagree with my students without provoking my students. I’m there to teach French,” he said.
The justices did not indicate when they expect to issue a ruling.
In another Virginia case filed by the ADF, the state Supreme Court last year affirmed a lower court ruling that required Loudoun County Public Schools to reinstate a teacher who was suspended after he spoke at a school board meeting in opposition to a proposed policy requiring teachers to use the pronouns used by transgender students. Litigation over the school district’s policy on pronouns is still pending.
In a federal lawsuit filed by the ADF in Ohio, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that Shawnee State University violated the free speech rights of philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether when they disciplined him for refusing to use a transgender student’s pronouns. In a settlement, the university agreed to pay $400,000 in damages and Meriwether’s legal fees.
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Kansas mom gets 20 years for leading Islamic State battalion
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A Kansas native who led an all-female Islamic State battalion when she lived in Syria has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, the maximum possible sentence, after her own children denounced her in court and detailed the horrific circumstances and abuse she heaped on them.
Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, admitted that she led the Khatiba Nusaybah, a battalion in which roughly 100 women and girls — some as young as 10 years old — learned how to use automatic weapons and detonate grenades and suicide belts.
One of Fluke-Ekren’s daughters was among those who said she received such training. The daughter and Fluke-Ekren’s oldest son, now adults, both urged the judge to impose the maximum sentence.
They said they were physically and sexually abused by their mother, and described the mistreatment in detail in letters to the court. Fluke-Ekren denied the abuse.
The daughter, Leyla Ekren, said “lust for control and power” drove her mother to drag the family half way across the world to find a terrorist group that would allow Fluke-Ekren to flourish, during a victim impact statement she gave at the hearing.
She said her mother became skilled at hiding the abuse she inflicted. She described a circumstance where her mother poured an off-brand lice medication all over her face as a punishment and it started to blister her face and burn her eyes. Fluke-Ekren then tried to wash the chemicals off her daughers’s face, but Leyla Ekren resisted.
“I wanted people to see what kind of person she was. I wanted it to blind me,” she said as her mother sat a few feet away, resting her head on her hand with a look of disbelief. After her children testified, she glared in their direction.
Fluke-Ekren’s status as a U.S.-born woman who rose to a leadership status in the Islamic State makes her story unique among terror cases. Prosecutors say the abuse she inflicted on her children from a young age helps explain how she went from an 81-acre (33-hectare) farm in Overbrook, Kansas, to an Islamic State leader in Syria, with stops in Egypt and Libya along the way.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Raj Parekh said Fluke-Ekren’s family sent her to an elite private school in Topeka and that she grew up in a stable home. Parekh said Fluke-Ekren’s immediate family was unanimous in its desire to see her punished to the maximum extent possible, a circumstance the veteran prosecutor described as extremely rare.
“There is nothing in Fluke-Ekren’s background that can explain her conduct, which was driven by fanaticism, power, manipulation, delusional invincibility, and extreme cruelty,” Parekh said.
Fluke-Ekren asked for just a two-year sentence so she could raise her young children. She said at the outset of a lengthy, weepy speech that she takes responsibility for her actions before rationalizing and minimizing her conduct.
“We just lived a very normal life,” she told the judge about her time in Syria, showing pictures of her kids at a weekly pizza dinner.
She denied the abuse allegations, and tried to accuse her oldest son of manipulating her daughter into making them.
She portrayed the Khatiba Nusaybah as something more akin to a community center for women that morphed into a series of self-defense classes as it became clear that the city of Raqqa, the Islamic State stronghold where she lived, faced invasion.
She acknowledged that women and girls were taught to use suicide belts and automatic weapons but portrayed it as safety training to avoid accidents in a war zone where such weapons were common.
Judge Leonie Brinkema, though, made clear she was unimpressed by Fluke-Ekren’s justifications. At one point, Fluke-Ekren explained the need for women to defend themselves against the possibility of rape by enemy soldiers. “Sexual violence is not OK in any circumstance,” she said.
Brinkema interrupted to ask Fluke-Ekren about the daughter’s allegation that she was forced to marry an Islamic State fighter who raped her at the age of 13.
“She was a few weeks away from 14,” Fluke-Ekren responded in protest, later saying, “It was her decision. I never forced her.”
Parekh described Fluke-Ekren as an “empress of ISIS” whose husbands rose to senior ranks in the Islamic State, often to be killed in fighting.
Even within the Islamic State, people who knew Fluke-Ekren described her radicalization as “off the charts” and other terrorist groups refused her plans to form a female battalion until she finally found a taker in the Islamic State, Parekh said.
Fluke-Ekren’s actions “added a new dimension to the darkest side of humanity,” Parekh said.
In addition to forming the battalion, Fluke-Ekren admitted that while living in Libya, she helped translate, review and summarize documents taken from U.S. diplomatic facilities after the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi.
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The spelling of Leyla Ekren’s first name has been corrected.
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Robert Horan, prosecutor of teenage DC sniper, dies at 90
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FILE Fairfax Commonwealth attorney Robert Horan Jr. leaves the Fairfax County Courthouse on Tuesday, June 22, 2004 in Fairfax, Va. Horan Jr., who secured a murder conviction of D.C. sniper Lee Boyd Malvo during his four-decade tenure as the top prosecutor in Virginia’s largest county, died on Friday, Oct. 28, 2022 at his home in Clifton, Va. He was 90. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File
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School bus driver charged with drunken driving on field trip
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CENTREVILLE, Va. — A bus driver for an elementary school in the nation’s capital has been charged with driving while intoxicated after his bus veered into a ditch while returning from a field trip to a farm in northern Virginia.
Nine children were treated at the scene for minor injuries, Fairfax County Police said.
The bus was carrying 44 children and four adults back Thursday to Murch Elementary School in Washington, D.C., after a field trip to Cox Farms in Centreville, Virginia — a popular field trip destination in the region.
Police said the bus hit a rock and veered into a ditch off a road in the northern Virginia county.
The 48-year-old driver from Suitland, Maryland, was charged after police say he failed a field sobriety test and had a blood-alcohol content of .20, more than double the legal limit of .08.
Police say the driver’s license had already been revoked in Virginia from a prior drunken driving conviction.
Officers also said they found a combined 18 safety violations on the two buses carrying children to the field trip and that none of the operators were properly licensed to operate a school bus.
D.C. Public Schools said in a statement that it plans to undertake a review of the transportation vendors it uses for field trips and other extracurricular activities.
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Coast Guard: 13 rescued from sinking vessel off Virginia
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PORTSMOUTH, Va. — Thirteen people were rescued from a sinking fishing vessel early Friday more than 60 miles (96 kilometers) off the coast of Virginia, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard responded to a spot 63 miles (101 kilometers) southeast of Chicoteague after receiving a call for help around 2 a.m., relayed by another vessel, according to Petty Officer 1st Class Jonathan Lally, a Coast Guard spokesperson.
The fishing vessel and a container ship were involved in an incident and the fishing vessel was taking on water, Lally said. Officials are looking into the possibility that two vessels collided, he said.
Another vessel rescued 12 people and a 13th person, the captain of the sinking vessel, was hoisted by Coast Guard helicopter, he said.
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Richmond can take down its last-standing Confederate statue, judge rules
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The city of Richmond, Virginia, may be saying goodbye to its last-standing Confederate statue, a Virginia circuit court said Tuesday, ruling in favor of the city in a lawsuit over whether Richmond was allowed to remove the monument and the remains of the general buried beneath it.
The 130-year-old monument, which currently stands in the center of the Laburnum Avenue and Hermitage Road intersection, depicts Confederate General A.P. Hill, who was killed during the Third Battle of Petersburg in 1865. Hill’s remains are buried beneath the statue.
Richmond Circuit Court Judge David Eugene Cheek Sr.’s ruling clears the way for Richmond to donate the statue and pedestal to a history museum, as well as relocate his remains to a cemetery in Culpeper, Virginia, a court order reviewed by CBS News said.
“We’re gratified by Judge Cheek’s ruling. This is the last stand for the Lost Cause in our city,” Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said in a statement to CBS News.
Julia Rendleman for The Washington Post via Getty Images
While Hill’s descendants —the plaintiffs in the case— did not object to relocating the general’s burial remains or taking the statue down, they wanted discretion over where the actual statue would be relocated. They claimed that the plot of land the monument is on constituted a cemetery — not a city-owned war memorial.
The court did not agree, arguing that the monument should be classified as a war memorial, not a cemetery.
According to Richmond law, in order for a plot of land to be designated as a cemetery, it needs to be “used ‘exclusively’ for providing a final resting place for deceased persons.” That definition also suggests “that a cemetery must contain the remains of more than one person.” The A.P. Hill monument does not check either box.
As a result, only the city should determine where the statue would be moved, the judge explained in the court order analysis.
In August 2020, the Richmond City Council approved an ordinance which allows the city to remove Confederate statues from its own property, according to the court documents.
Under Stoney’s leadership, and in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, protestors and contractors in the city have taken down several Confederate monuments, including those of General Stonewall Jackson and Confederate naval leader Matthew Fontaine Maury.
“We look forward to a successful conclusion of the legal process, which will allow us to relocate Hill’s remains, remove and transfer the statue to the Black History Museum and, importantly, improve traffic safety at the intersection of Hermitage and Laburnum,” Stoney said in his statement.
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Richmond gets court win in lingering Confederate statue case
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RICHMOND, Va. — A judge has sided with Richmond officials in a lawsuit over whether the Virginia city can remove a final Confederate monument and the remains of a rebel general interred beneath it.
Circuit Court Judge David Eugene Cheek Sr. said in a ruling Tuesday that city officials — not the descendants of A.P. Hill — get to decide where the statue goes next, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and TV station WRIC reported. The city plans to give the statue to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, which the plaintiffs found objectionable.
The plaintiffs, who were indirect descendants of Hill, did not oppose the removal of the general’s remains to a cemetery in Culpeper, near where Hill was born. But they argued that the ownership of the statue should be transferred to them. They hoped to move it to a battlefield, also in Culpeper, according to the news outlets.
“We’re gratified by Judge Cheek’s ruling,” Mayor Levar Stoney said in a statement.
The city, which was the capital of the Confederacy for most of the Civil War, began removing its many other Confederate monuments more than two years ago amid the racial justice protests that followed George Floyd’s murder. Richmond conveyed them to the Black History Museum earlier this year. But efforts to remove the A.P. Hill statue, which sits in the middle of a busy intersection near a school where traffic accidents are frequent, were more complicated because the general’s remains were underneath it.
Scott Braxton Puryear, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Times-Dispatch that he wasn’t sure if his clients would appeal. The statue won’t be removed before the window for an appeal expires, the newspaper reported.
“We look forward to a successful conclusion of the legal process, which will allow us to relocate Hill’s remains, remove and transfer the statue to the Black History Museum and, importantly, improve traffic safety,” Stoney’s statement said.
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Father of teen killed in school shooting says he has to plan a funeral instead of the girl’s sweet 16 | CNN
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CNN
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Alexandria Bell was just a month away from her 16th birthday – a milestone she was supposed to celebrate with her father, who lives out of state.
“My daughter was planning on coming out here to California and celebrate her birthday with me on November 18,” Andre Bell told CNN affiliate KSDK.
“But now we have to plan her funeral.”
Alexandria was one of two people killed Monday at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis.
Teacher Jean Kuczka, 61, also was killed when a gunman armed with almost a dozen high-capacity magazines opened fire in the school.
“I really want to know: How did that man get inside the school?” Bell told KSDK.
“It’s a nightmare,” he said. “I am so upset. I need somebody – police, community folks, somebody – to make this make sense.”
As the shooting unfolded in St. Louis, a Michigan prosecutor who just heard the guilty plea of a teen who killed four students last fall said she was no longer shocked to hear of another school shooting. “The fact that there is another school shooting does not surprise me – which is horrific,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said.
“We need to keep the public and inform the public … on how we can prevent gun violence. It is preventable, and we should never ever allow that to be something we just should have to live with.”
Alexandria was a member the Saint Louis Dazzling Diamonds dance group. Her fellow dancers created a poster with Alexandria’s image that is now part of a growing memorial in front of the school.
Her friend Dejah Robinson said the two were planning to celebrate Halloween together this weekend.
“She was always funny and always kept the smile on her face and kept everybody laughing,” Robinson said, fighting back tears.
The slain teen’s father said his daughter could make every day better.
“Alexandria was my everything. She was joyful, wonderful and just a great person,” Bell told KSDK.
“She was the girl I loved to see and loved to hear from. No matter how I felt, I could always talk to her, and it was alright. That was my baby.”
Robinson, who attends another school, said she wants lawmakers to act on gun control.
“They been knowing what’s happening, and they could have been did something,” she said. “But clearly they ain’t doing nothing and they won’t.”
Kuczka, a health and physical education teacher, was looking forward to retiring in the next few years, her daughter Abigail Kuczka said.
“Jean was passionate for making a difference and enjoyed spending time with her family,” her daughter said in a statement sent to CNN.
Alexis Allen-Brown was among the alumni who fondly remembered Kuczka’s impact on her students. “She was kindhearted. She was sweet. She always made you laugh even when you wasn’t trying to laugh,” Allen-Brown said.
“She made you feel real, inside the class and out. She made you feel human. And she was just so sweet.”
In her biography on the school’s website, Kuzcka said she had worked at Central VPA High School since 2008. “I believe that every child is a unique human being and deserves a chance to learn,” she wrote in her bio.
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US Army reports ‘barricade situation’ at base outside DC
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FORT BELVOIR, Va. — A “barricade situation” has drawn the FBI and other law enforcement officials to a U.S. Army base outside the nation’s capital Sunday, according to the official twitter account of Fort Belvoir in northern Virginia.
The base tweeted shortly before 1 p.m. that its law enforcement officials, local police and the FBI had responded “to a barricade situation” Sunday morning.
“The situation is ongoing, & we cannot comment further at this time,” the base tweeted.
It provided no other details except to say some of the gates to the installation remained open.
Fort Belvoir sits on about 8,800 acres of land along the Potomac River in Fairfax County and is located about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Washington.
The base is home to several Army command headquarters, elements of the Army Reserve and Army National Guard and nine Department of Defense agencies, according to a Department of Defense website that serves the military community. The installation has 2,154 family housing quarters and seven child youth service facilities, according to Fort Belvoir’s 2022 strategic plan.
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Virginia mother indicted for murder in son’s death after he allegedly consumed THC gummies
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A Virginia woman this week was indicted by a grand jury on murder and felony child neglect charges after her four-year-old son died earlier this year from eating a large amount of THC gummies, authorities said. Dorothy Annette Clements, 30, was taken into custody Thursday, the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office reported in a news release.
Clements’ young son, Tanner, died on May 8, two days after he had been found unresponsive at his home, the sheriff’s office reports. Doctors informed detectives that his toxicity level showed a high amount of THC, which led investigators to determine that the boy had “ingested a large amount of THC gummies,” the sheriff’s office said in its release.
Detectives also learned from doctors that the boy could have been saved had his mother acted sooner, the sheriff’s office said.
“The attending doctor told detectives that if medical intervention occurred shortly after ingestion, it could have prevented death,” the release read.
Before being indicted, Clements told CBS News affiliate WUSA9 that she had no idea the gummies she bought actually contained THC. She eventually realized her son had eaten one gummy, but did not believe it would harm him. She also claimed she called the Poison Control Center.
However, the sheriff’s office said her statements were not consistent with the evidence authorities found at the home.
Clements is being held without bail in the Rappahannock Regional Jail.
The accidental consumption of cannabis edibles by children is on the rise in the U.S., according to the National Capital Poison Center.
The number of children under 12 who have ingested edibles at home jumped from 132 in 2016, to almost 2,500 last year, according to numbers from the American Association of Poison Control Centers.
Children are often more susceptible to unintentional cannabis exposure because edibles are presented in colorful, attractive packaging that resembles candy or other snack foods.
“Cannabis edibles may be in packaging that is remarkably similar to snack foods that are popular among children and adolescents, including Doritos, Nerds, and Cheetos,” the National Capital Poison Center writes on its website. “While the packaging does state that the product inside contains cannabis or THC, this information is often in small print and cannot be easily read or understood by young children.”
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