Top Floyd County stories of 2008
Crime, normally not a hot topic in Floyd County, became a hot issue locally in 2008 with the first murder in many years, a fatal shooting of a neighbor by the county’s animal control officer, a massive, multi-state manhunt by a local fugitive and criminal charges filed against a former Commonwealth’s Attorney.
But the year brought good news as well with the Floyd County High School girls’ varsity basketball team, led by the high-scoring Britney Avancina (right) capturing a state championship and the varsity football team coming ever so close.
So, from a purely subjective point of view, here is what we saw as the top stories in Floyd County over the past year:
- Murder and drugs: Joshua Hairston, an 18-year-old Collinsville resident, told police he went to the Check home of Sean Michael Neumann on June 5 to buy drugs but said Neumann threatened him with a knife and he emptied his 357 Magnum at the man. The 39-year-old Neumann died from four gunshot wounds. A Floyd County grand jury indicted Hairston on capital murder charges and the young man faces trial early next year.
- Tragic death. A month before the death of Neumann, Animal Control Officer Garland "Bucky" Nester found one of his cows had wandered off the property and tried to coax the recalcitrant animal back on his land. When that failed, an Nester reportedly pulled out his weapon and fired at the cow. One of the bullets struck neighbor Paul Belcher, who was coming to help Nester with the cow. Belcher died from the gunshot wound and a Floyd County grand jury later indicted Nester on charges of involuntary manslaughter and reckless use of a firearms. The county fired Nester and the former animal control officer, who once taught firearms safety to county residents, faces a jury trial in February.
- A former prosecutor on the wrong side of the law: Former Commonwealth’s Attorney Gordon E. Hannett Jr. stirred a lot of controversy during his one elected term as county prosecutor. He took Circuit Judge Ray W. Grubbs to court for appointing a replacement prosecutor when Hannett was called to active duty in Iraq with his Army reserve unit but the State Supreme Court rejected his complaint and backed the judge. He came under fire for plea bargains which let drug dealers and sexual offenders avoid jail time. He lost every jury trial as a prosecutor and then lost his bid for re-election in the GOP primary. Now Hannett faces six criminal charges for petty larceny and computer crimes for what State Police investigators say was removal of equipment, programs and data from county-owned computers before he left office. He is scheduled to appear in court on January 15.
- On the run: Steven Dale Branscome, grandson of former county sheriff George Branscome, became Virginia’s most-wanted fugitive in March and April after he shot a State Trooper following a chase into West Virginia. More than 400 police officers from around the Commonwealth descended on Floyd County to help in the chase, setting up roadblocks, speeding down winding country roads in armored personnel carriers and patrolling the steets of Floyd with assault weapons and full battle attire. Locals knew Branscome was long gone but the cops kept the heat on in Floyd County until Branscome was captured just outside Texarkana, Texas. He was on his way to Mexico.
- Third time was a charm: The lady Buffs varsity basketball team traveled to Richmond for the third straight year in March to try and win the state championship. They lost out the previous year in the final and the year before in the semi-finals. But the third time was a charm as the team overpowered Lancaster 64-50 to take the crown.
That’s the top 5. Other major stories of the year included the boys’ varsity football team’s 13-1 season to make it to the state final; the changing face of Floyd, which saw the closing of Lemon’s Jewelry, the retirement of longtime furniture retailer Vernon Baker and the efforts to revitalize the downtown area. Floyd County residents bucked the national trend and voted mostly for Republican presidential nominee John McCain while Democratic winner Barack Obama carried Virginia and the country. The economic woes that gripped the nation came home as well with an increasing number of Floyd Countians facing a future without paychecks or economic stability.
Our best wishes for a Happy New Year as we head into 2009.
A fresh look at the Friday Night Jamboree
A short video from last Friday night’s Jamboree at the Floyd Country Store. What makes this video special is that it was filmed not with a standard video camera but with Canon’s remarkable 5D Mark II digital SLR that combines a 21.1 megapixel sensor for still photography with high definition video. Both the video and [...]
Jammin’ on a Sunday afternoon
A solitary dancer enjoys the music during the Sunday afternoon jam session at the Floyd Country Store. Musicians gather and jam each Sunday from 2 – 5 p.m.
Post Christmas blues
The wrapping paper from Christmas Day is still on the floor but the news about how bad the season was has already hit the news.
Reports The Wall Street Journal:
Price-slashing failed to rescue a bleak holiday season for beleaguered retailers, as sales plunged across most categories on shrinking consumer spending, according to new data released Thursday.
Despite a flurry of last-minute shoppers lured by the deep discounts, total retail sales, excluding automobiles, fell over the year-earlier period by 5.5% in November and 8% in December through Christmas Eve, according to MasterCard Inc.’s SpendingPulse unit.
When gasoline sales are excluded, the fall in overall retail sales is more modest: a 2.5% drop in November and a 4% decline in December. A 40% drop in gasoline prices over the year-earlier period contributed to the sharp decline in total sales.
But considering individual sectors, "This will go down as the one of the worst holiday sales seasons on record," said Mary Delk, a director in the retail practice at consulting firm Deloitte LLP. "Retailers went from ‘Ho-ho’ to ‘Uh-oh’ to ‘Oh-no.’"
The holiday retail-sales decline was much worse than the already-dire picture painted by industry forecasts, which had predicted sales ranging from a 1% drop to a more optimistic increase of 2.2%.
Like many others, we cut back on Christmas spending but still enjoyed a good family Christmas. It should never be the size of the gift or the amount it cost. What matters is the thought behind the gift.
Still, many retailers who depend on holiday sales face an uncertain future as we head into the new year. Estimates from economists say at least 62,000 businesses will close next year.
Some say the current economic crisis threatens more than just the economy. It puts the American Dream at risk and may force Americans to rethink their entire way of life.
Disturbing things to considere as we head into the New Year.
The future of journalism?
According to the Knight Citizens News Network, web sites like this one represent a big part of the future of community journalism. I’m flattered that they chose to feature Blue Ridge Muse as part of their "learning modules" but I’m not sure how a 61-year-old ink-stained newspaperman ended up as an example of the "new media."
God knows the print media that has been a major part of so much of my adult life is fading away. The Journal Register Company is shutting down several of its weekly newspapers, effective immediately. The Tribune Co., owner of The Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, is in bankruptcy. In Detroit, the newspapers cut their home delivery to just three days a week. Some newspapers have closed down their print operations and now deliver news only on the Internet.
A Pew Research Center study during the 2008 Presidential campaign revealed that most Americans get their political news from television and the Internet.
For someone who still writes for a newspaper, this is a bitter pill. But I also publish a political news web site that has been on the Web since 1994 and have far more readers there than the combined circulations of all the newspapers I’ve worked for during the last 43 years.
The times, they are a-changing.
Time to put NASCAR out of its (and our) misery?
Nextel Cup Race at Martinsville in 2005. Empty seats were a sign of the future.
Robert Weintraub, writing for Slate.com, is willing to say publicly what others have been thinking privately: That NASCAR, which abandoned any pretense of being a real competitive sport long ago, needs to just go away.
As a lifelong NASCAR fan who grew up here in the home county of stock car racing legend Curtis Turner, I have to admit that I didn’t watch more than two or three races this past season and I haven’t been to a NASCAR race since Martinsville in 2005. Under the mismanagement of Mike Helton and Brian France, NASCAR has become little more than motorized wrestling,, a pre-packaged, rule-manipulated farce that limits competition and guts the life out of what once was an exciting, competitive sport.
NASCAR has lost its soul, selling it to the devil of commercialism and television, abandoning the fan base that built the sport.
There was a time when I would have cried over the thought of NASCAR sinking into the sinkhole of history.
No more.
Beating the competition
Jim Echols, city editor for The Roanoke Times when I joined the staff there in 1965, gave me what he called "The Three Gs" of newspaper reporting.
- Get the story;
- Get it by deadline;
- Get it before the competition.
Those three rules stuck with me for four decades of reporting. Even now, as a part-time, contract reporter and photographer for the weekly Floyd Press, I try to remember Jim’s "Three Gs."
Writing for a weekly means a more relaxed deadline — once a week as compared to every day. But it also means a lag time of up to seven days between the time you discover a story and the day it is published.
Whenever we do beat the competition (primarily the Times in Roanoke and the TV stations), it is cause for a little celebration.
For example: On Friday, December 12, an aonymous tip left on my voice mail said the Virginia State Police had filed criminal charges against former Floyd County Commonwealth’s Attorney Gordon Hannett. I checked the court database and found that, yes, six charges — three for petty larceny and three for computer crimes — were filed earlier that day.
By Monday, I nailed the story down and wrote it for the Thursday, December 18 edition of the Press. That left three days to worry about either the Times or the TV stations stumbling across the story. They didn’t and the Press broke the story on Thursday. I followed up with a post here on Muse and it appeared first in The Times because they link to the headlines here. They finally had a story on Friday.
It wasn’t the first time we beat the competition to a big story here in Floyd County. Hopefully, it won’t be the last.
Getting into the game
A Floyd County High School Buffaloes fan gets into the music between the the junior varsity and varsity boys’ basketball game this week.
Former Floyd County Commonwealth’s Attorney Hannett charged with larceny, computer crime
The topic of conversation this morning over over breakfast and coffee will most likely be the six charges of petty larceny and computer crime issued by the Virginia State Police against former Floyd County Commonwealth’s Attorney Gordon Earl Hannett Jr.
Details can be found in the story I wrote for this week’s edition of The Floyd Press.
Each of the charges, all Class 1 misdemeanors, carry a maximum sentence of 12 months in jail and a $2500 fine. They mean the man who once served as the chief law enforcement officer in Floyd County will, on January 15th of next year, will appear before a judge in General District Court not as a prosecutor but as a criminal defendant.
Because Hannett is a former county employee, a special prosecutor — Grayson County Commonwealth’s Attorney Douglas Vaught — will handle the case and a Special Agent from the Virginis State Police headed up the investigation. Because the charges Hannett faces involve computers owned by the government of Floyd County and county officials may be witnesses in the case, no county official can or will talk about the case.
Prosecuting a former public official is a tricky business and Vaught and the State Police are refusing to discuss details of the case. Court records show that Special Agent G.K. Harth filed the charges: three counts of petty larceny and three counts of "disabling computer software" under Virginia’s Computer Crimes law. I’ve learned from other sources that one or more of the charges stem from removal of a hard drive from a computer assigned to the Commonwealth’s Attorney office. The hard drive also contained programs and data from Hannett’s tenure as Commonwealth’s Attorney.
Hannett’s time as Commonwealth’s Attorney was marked with controversy. He challenged Circuit Judge Ray W. Grubbs’ appointment of Stephanie Shortt to serve as interim prosecutor while he served in Iraq with his Army reserve and appealed each loss of that challenge all the way to the State Supreme Court which upheld Shortt’s appointment. Republican bosses dumped Hannett in favor of former Montgomery County Prosecutor Eric Branscom, who beat Hannett handily in the GOP primary and then lost in the general election to Shortt. Hannett’s lackluster record as a prosecutor, which included an unbroken string of losses in jury trials, became a key issue in the GOP primary election in 2007.
Stay tuned. The Floyd County justice system moves into the New Year by fulfilling the old Chinese proverb that "may we live in interesting times." Besides, Hannett, former Animal Control Officer Garland D. Nester goes to trial on manslaughter and reckless use of a firearms charges.
Chasing down the great Penguin caper
A neighbor tipped me off to a potential story. A petite, angry brunette was seen chasing two runaway penguins down a hillside near Sandy Flats Road on a Monday afternoon.
Could be a story there, the neighbor said. Runaway penguins are not something you see every day in the hills of Southwestern Virginia. Or most other places unless you call the North or South poles home.
But there was more. The neighbor said there might be evidence of penguin abuse.
So I took a drive along Sandy Flats Road Tuesday afternoon. Just down the hill from the intersection with Harvestwood Road, I saw them: Two six-foot penguins imprisoned in a gazebo in a front yard.
My front yard.
Could it be? Was my wife the angry brunette seen chasing down penguins and then tying them up and gagging them as prisoners in a gazebo?
I’m an investigative journalist. I had to get to the bottom of the story. The angry brunette, aka Amy Thompson, was not home. Probably out establishing an alibi for her crimes.
So I interviewed neighbors. Yes, some of them saw it all.
"Oh, it was terrible," one said. "Those poor penguins were struggling to be free, only to be captured and possibly tortured."
Could happen, I thought. Amy is half-Irish, half-Lebanese. Terrorism runs in her veins. Torture too.
Through interviews and investigations, I pieced the whole, horrible story together. Amy Thompson, aka the dominatrix of penguins, purchased two six-foot tall inflatable penguins to put up in our front yard as Christmas decorations.
She staked them down in the front yard and inflated them with electric compressors and went inside the house, content with the illusion that the penguins would stay put.
But nature has a habit of interfering with the intrusions of humans and the penguins swayed in the wind, worked themselves loose, rolled down the hill, freed from their stakes and their compressors, escapees into the wind as they deflated. Not far behind, an angry, screaming Amy, chasing down the runaway Christmas decorations.
When Amy returned, I confronted her with the evidence and she came clean. Yes, she chased down the penguins and tied them down inside the gazebo, confident that they cannot, once again, escapes the bounds of captivity,.
She showed no remorse for her actions so I must turn her in.
I’m calling the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Inflatable Penguins.