The week in review

Most epochal: The 10th anniversary of September 11.

Most torrential: A five o'clock thunderstorm September 12 brings hail, a tree on top of a car on JPA, and a stalled car on flooded Old Ivy Road.

Wettest: McCormick Observatory records more than five inches of rain between 9pm September 5 and 5:30pm September 7.

Biggest loss of a community leader: Mary Ann Elwood, first female president of the Charlottesvile Regional Chamber of Commerce, first female chair of the Charlottesville Democratic Committtee, and co-founder of Book Buddies in city schools, dies September 12 at age 78. She received the Paul Goodloe McIntire Citizenship Award in 1998.

Saddest loss: Elizabeth Hewlett Hahn, 49, who anchored the NBC29 evening news programs about 20 years ago and went on to various Richmond careers in the fields of advertising, teaching, and creative writing, dies August 31 after a lengthy illness.

Highest profile arrest: Former mayor Blake Caravati, 60, is charged with assault of a family member September 9.

Wildest wings: A 26-year-old man is shot around 1am September 12 at Wild Wings Café on West Main, and is discovered walking up the street with a bullet lodged in his neck. The victim is in stable condition, and no arrests have been made at press time.

Biggest disparity: William Thompson gets three years in prison August 30 for driving drunk and killing newlywed winemaker Daniel Neumeister. The next day in federal court, Rodney Wayne Barnes gets 22 years for selling cocaine and heroin across state lines.

More varying sentences: Richard Allen Smith Jr., 25, will serve just four years for throttling and bludgeoning to death his friend, Pierre-Louis Rigaut, 23, in July 2010 at Graves Mountain Lodge. However, Demonte Burgess, 20, picks up 10 years for attempted malicious wounding and three other firearms charges for an incident at Wilton Farms on top of 29-year sentence he got in July for the unrelated shooting death of Miguel Lugo Salazar in January 2010, the DP reports.

Biggest dog-shooting sentence: Previous felon Brian Tichner, half of the duo originally charged in January with fatally shooting "Mattie," an Earlysville family dog, gets a three-year sentence, according to the Newsplex. The alleged triggerman Justin Tyler Riggs, pled to a two-year sentence last month.

Biggest brother: Charlottesvile plans to start busting non-helmet wearing, bike-riding kids 14 and younger, who face a $25 fine that can be dismissed for first timers who can prove they own a helmet.

Biggest grant: Nonprofit Charlottesville Tomorrow hires a community engagement coordinator named Jennifer Marley with a $102K grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation. The expanding, public-meeting-covering organization (and unofficial cheerleader for the dam plan) partners with the Daily Progress, whose employees recently were asked to take another 15 unpaid furlough days before the end of the year.

Uncoolest county: Albemarle supes vote 4-2 September 7 to ditch the county's membership in the Cool Counties initiative, a voluntary nationwide plan to reduce energy usage and carbon emissions.

Latest setback for former High's Ice Cream suspect: The $200 million lawsuit against the city of Staunton filed by William W. "Gus" Thomas Jr., the Spottswood man originally charged in the notorious double slayings, is thrown out of federal court, the News Leader reports. Thomas was acquitted of one death in 1968, but maintains that he remained a conspired-against suspect until 2008, when Sharron Diane Crawford Smith, 60, confessed on her deathbed.

Latest threat to children: SpongeBob SquarePants, according to a recent study that shows four-year-olds who watched the fast-paced cartoon show performed measurably worse on mental function tests than those who watched slower-paced Caillou or those who drew pictures. UVA psychology prof Angeline LIllard, the study's lead author, says SpongeBob shouldn't be singled out, and that other fast-paced shows can affect learning. Nickelodeon responds that SpongeBob is aimed at 6-to-11 year olds, not four year olds, according to the AP.