The week in review
Worst slaying: Clark Elementary third-grade teacher Dawn Reddick is gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Newark July 29, shielding a seven-year-old boy she didn't know from flying bullets, the Newsplex reports.
Worst flashback: Three teen girls attending a camp at Virginia Tech report seeing a man who possibly was carrying a gun August 4 around 9am, leading to a cancellation of classes at the university that was the scene of the worst campus mass murders in 2007. No one fitting the young women's descriptions, which police deemed credible, was found, and the alert ended around 3pm, WSLS-TV reports.
Sharpest dispute: Carey Hicks, 47, of Crozet is found knifed in the stomach and crouching in bushes August 6 on Harris Road, according to NBC29 reports. Police say he was stabbed during an altercation on nearby Bent Creek Road, and they've arrested Linda Doig, 50.
Worst trend: A woman is stabbed in the shoulder early August 8 in Southwood Mobile Home Community, NBC29 reports.
Most horrifying day at the beach: Free Union teen Matt Mina, 17, is buried under six feet of sand August 3 while digging a trench on Newport Beach, where he was visiting California relatives. The recent Western Albemarle High grad was under the sand for 20 to 30 minutes, and recounted his ordeal on NBC's Today show.
Most lost is found: The location of the Charlottesville time capsule buried in 1962 that no one could remember quite where has been pinned down to the Charlottesville Circuit Court, thanks to film footage Tom Hartsell discovered that his parents had shot. NBC29 has the story.
Latest in the Fairway Ave slaying: Jada Dickerson is sentenced to 16 years in prison for her role as an accomplice in the 2008 minivan shooting of Shawn Luck. Dickerson led police to the weapon used by Curtis Montague, who got 88 years. Candace Williams received 18 years.
Latest in Mount Solon's Gommorah: Kimberly Crilley, the 48-year-old woman convicted of having sex with a 14-year-old boy (who was shot in the leg by her husband when he broke into the couple's home) is sentenced to three years in prison and will have to register as a sex offender, NBC29 reports.
Most horrifying: Recently-hired Buena Vista football coach Joseph "Matt" Wheeler is among the 72 arrested in the international "Dreamboard" child porn ring, according to the Roanoke Times. Over the course of two years, Wheeler, 31, allegedly posted 78 offending images, but he denies producing any of the invitation-only site's 123 terabytes of violent pornography.
Biggest deal: SNL Financial is acquired by private equity firm New Mountain Capital, which has assets of $9 billion, according to a release. SNL founder Reid Nagle says he is the second largest stockholder in SNL after New Mountain, but he did not translate terms of the sale into a dollar figure.
Biggest blow to the Nelson economy: Virginia State Police swoop in with ABC agents August 2 to confiscate 5,400 pot plants in Nelson County worth an estimated $16 million. A "significant" plot of 5,204 plants is seized, along with another couple hundred here and there, according to a release. The effort was part of the Governor’s Initiative Against Narcotics Trafficking– GIANT– to thwart marijuana agriculture in the state.
Best pizza: Crozet Pizza's white mushroom pie makes it onto Food Network Magazine's top 50 in the country in its September issue, the Newsplex reports.
Better late than never: Cismont resident Sissy Spacek, 61, finally gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame August 1, ABC reports, nearly 40 years after she burst onto the big screen in Badlands in 1973. Her star is number 2,443, and she was accompanied by her family and Hollywood buddies David Lynch and Bill Paxton.