Ralph Leon Jackson, a 56-year-old man from Stuart’s Draft, has been arrested and charged with the attempted murder of a couple on the Blue Ridge Parkway yesterday. Police found him thanks to an anonymous tip, and had a SWAT team seize him at his house around dawn this afternoon. He’s made “incriminating statements,” say police, but there’s still no understanding of why he shot two complete strangers. If he’s the guy, a lot more information should be coming out over the next few days.
Council will hold the real estate tax rate at 95¢, Rachana Dixit writes in the Daily Progress. The same as the current rate, that means that, due to declining property values, the city budget will decrease by $1.7M in $141M. That puts the tax rate at 85% of its high in recent history, $1.11 in 2001.
Bajillions of cops are looking for a shooter on the Blue Ridge Parkway, lots of media outlets are reporting. They’re looking for a white male with long, gray hair driving a red sedan. He’s shot two people (possibly three, that’s not clear), both of whom are hospitalized at UVA. One of the victims is known to be an 18-year-old female; nothing more is known about the male victim. Based on the search that reporters have seen police conducting, they appear to believe, or have believed, that there’s a third victim that they need to find. Federal, state, and local police have closed the parkway between miles 0 and 13.
5:30pm Update: Courteney Stuart has a lot more information now. There are just two victims, the second being a 27-year-old male, Tim Davis, who is the host of WNRN’s “The Boombox” show using the name “DJ Prolapse.” The female victim’s brother says that they were shot in the back by a shotgun-wielding man in a car, out of the blue. The assailant got out of the car and pushed the two over the side of Rock Point Overlook, throwing rocks down on them. After he left the two for dead, the woman climbed back up and stopped a car, who helped. Davis is in critical condition, having fallen more than a hundred feet in addition to being shot. Police say they’re looking for a white guy in his fifties with long, gray hair.
The city is looking at eliminating funding for the McIntire Recycling Center, Rachana Dixit writes in today’s Daily Progress. Many of the materials that people can drop off there are collected curbside by the city, making the facility largely redundant. It’s jointly funded by the county, via the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority, since folks in the county need to drive their recyclables to McIntire. The catch is that it’s not clear that the facility could continue to exist without city funding, which would eliminate recycling for many Albemarle residents.
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