Courtesy of The Hook, here is the video of Gerry Mitchell being hit by an Albemarle County Police cruiser:
Presumably the delay in releasing this video was to work out royalty payments to the Black Eyed Peas.
cvillenews.com
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
An Amtrak train hit a car at the 2nd Street crossing this afternoon, Henry Graff reports for NBC 29. The car was dragged about 100 feet and, luckily, nobody was hurt. The driver says that the crossing arm hadn’t come down, while the train’s engineer says that it did. The driver has been charged with failure to obey a railroad crossing signal. Amtrak trains are generally going pretty slowly at that spot, because they’re so close to the station. (I used to live on South and 1st, with an apartment directly over the tracks.) There are several thousand such accidents each year.
I can’t help but feel a bit skeptical of Amtrak’s claim that the gate was down. Like many people, I read Walt Bogdanich’s 2004 “Death on the Tracks” series in the New York Times, for which he won a Pulitzer. Bogdanich revealed that rail crossing guards are routinely broken, engineers routinely lie and claim that they were working fine, and the railroads send out repairman to fix the problem faster than federal inspectors can arrive. There are hundreds of such fatal accidents every year, dozens of which aren’t ever reported to the National Response Center.
Photo kindly provided by “gman.”
After evaluating running the city bus service without charging fares, city council is likely to keep fares for the immediate future, Seth Rosen writes in the Progress. Financial reality means that council has to pick their priorities, and they’ve got an eye towards adding new routes and having buses come more often. Eliminating fares would eliminate $315k from CTS’ $5.25M annual budget, and likewise obligate them to provide $190k to JAUNT, who would be left unable to charge for rides in CTS’ service area. All of this is leading up to a hoped collaborative transit venture with Albemarle County, turning CTS into CATS.
29 N. is being widened, again. Traffic backs up pretty terribly along the section north of Wal-Mart for hours each day, often stretching clear to Ruckersville. So another lane is being added between Polo Grounds and Airport Road, which will surely be finished just in time to get terribly backed up again, what with the new developments approved for just north of there on 29. It seems like it was just yesterday that we dealt with years of beastly traffic while 29 was expanded to its current size. NBC 29 has thoughtfully provided a Google map of the section of the highway:
The addition was approved by the Metropolitan Planning Organization last week, and will be paid for with $2M in federal funds. Suckers for punishment can listen to the audio of the meeting, courtesy of Charlottesville Tomorrow.
The city is dropping their citation of Gerry Mitchell for jaywalking, WINA reports. Commonwealth’s attorney Dave Chapman found a technicality on which he could drop the charges: §46.2-925 specifies “pedestrian control signals exhibiting the words ‘Walk’ or ‘Don’t Walk’,” and thus Mitchell’s crossing was legal, since the intersection only exhibits walk and don’t walk icons. The ill-advised ticketing came after Mitchell was hurled from his wheelchair when a police car collided with him.
Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
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