Year in Review, cat shooting means tougher gun laws, attorney vie for judgeship

ON THIS WEEK�S COVER:
The Year in Review 2006
It’s our annual double issue recapping the year that was and from arrested adolescents to zealous zoning, we’ve got the highs and lows in Charlottesville area news and culture from 2006. Plus, we give you the skinny on some of our most prominent citizens in Secrets of the HotSeat Sitters, our arts editors single out the best and worst of the year, and our own clairvoyant, the one and only Madam Hook, gazes deep into the future to tell you what 2007 has in store.

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With former governor Mark Warner bowing out in October and Senator George Allen losing his seat in November, it seemed as though the 2008 presidential election would come and go without a Virginian joining the race. But as of today, Jim Gilmore is lacing up his running shoes. In a series of interviews with various Virginia newspapers yesterday, the former governor announced, “it is my intention to run [for president],” and that he will form an exploratory committee to investigate the feasibility of a campaign. “A void exists,” he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “There is just no conservative right now who can mount a national campaign.”

Has “Gov. No Car Tax” got a chance? UVA professor and political pundit Larry Sabato isn’t so bullish. “The odds aren’t all that favorable but, (more)

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Online magazine Salon has named the man Senator George Allen dubbed “macaca”– UVA fourth-year Shekar Ramanuja Sidarth– its Person of the Year for changing history with a camcorder and introducting “Allen– and the rest of us– to the real America.”

Sidarth captured a moment that led to Allen’s defeat of a presumed safe seat and upset the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. Says Salon, “He becomes a symbol of politics in the 21st century, a brave new world in which any video clip can be broadcast instantly everywhere and any 20-year-old with a camera can change the world. He builds a legacy out of happenstance.”

3:45 Update: Time Magazine has also taken notice of Sidarth’s role as an unlikely political player and has named him one of 15� “online citizens” who are exemplary of how the Internet makes “You” the Person of the Year.

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On the same day that Albemarle Police announced three new felony charges against Elvis Gene Shifflett, Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo held a press conference to announce an investigation by State Police has exonerated the officers who shot Shifflett.

“These are split second decisions,” said Longo, adding that Sergeant Melvin G. Davis and Officer James Morris believed their lives or lives of others were in imminent danger when they shot at Shifflett as he tried to make his escape from Brookhill Avenue on October 20. Charlottesville Police will now conduct their own investigation of the officer’s conduct, to ensure officer’s followed the department’s protocol for use of deadly force.

Shifflett had been on the run since October 13, when he allegedly tried to shoot his ex-girlfriend, who is the mother of Shifflett’s 13-year-old child, as she emerged from Charlottesville Juvenile and Domestic Court.

Longo spent approximately 15 minutes during today’s afternoon conference detailing the events that led up to Shifflett’s shooting.

Police spotted Shifflett early in the morning on October 20, Longo said, and during pursuit, Shifflett wrecked the car off Rt. 20S near the Visitor’s Center and then fled, leaving a female passenger and a loaded semi-automatic in the car.

Charlottesville and Albemarle police officers, along with a K-9 unit, tracked Shifflett to nearby Brookhill Avenue in Albemarle County. Albemarle County Police officer Richardson saw Shifflett in the cab of a “flatbed wrecker,” said Longo, and called out to him to show his hands. Shifflett– who Longo said had been lying sideways in the cab of the truck– rose up and appeared to aim his hands at Richardson as if he was holding a gun. (more)

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On Wednesday, Gropen sign and display company employees Darrell Muler (standing) and King Scott were busy putting the finishing touches on The Woodlands latest marketing move– a swanky new sales office across from the Mudhouse, which will join the Ryan Homes sales office with an address on the Downtown Mall. The office opening came just in time for Wednesday’s groundbreaking for The Woodlands, a $60 million luxury gated condo resort community south of town on Sunset Avenue extended, which is being marketed almost exclusively to wealthy college students…or rather, their wealthy parents.

As readthehook.com/blog reported, the local Woodlands is one of seven nearly identical ‘Woodlands’ developments that the Atlanta-based Dovetail Companies have been promoting in college towns in Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Texas. Featuring 24-hour security, swimming pool, state-of-the-art weightlifting and cardio studio, movie theater, tanning salon, practice putting green, sand volleyball courts, and a shuttle bus to cart students to and from UVA, The Woodland’s appears more like a spring break destination than student housing.

Atlanta-based developer Nathan Metzger and partner Coran Capshaw did the same thing in 2003–opened an off-site sales office on the Mall (where the Charlottesville Community Design Center is now) when they were developing the Riverbend Apartments on Pantops and Walker Square in Fifeville. At the time, we were in the midst of a (more)

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There was no smile on Crozet native Kelly Dinelle Payne’s face when Richmond Circuit Court Judge Beverly Snukals sentenced the two-time drunk-driving killer to 46 years behind bars, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

“I could say I’m sorry, but it wouldn’t begin to scratch the surface,” Payne said, according to the TD. Payne’s grinning mugshot in March belied the seriousness of her crime: on March 7, driving her boyfriend’s truck in Richmond, she was involved in an accident.

She fled the scene and then struck and killed Ashokkumar M. Patel as he walked home from work. She left the scene of that accident as well.

Payne had already served jail time for killing a 13-year-old Tennessee girl while driving drunk. In total, she has 21 offenses on her record– six of them for drunk driving, and all related to her tendency to consume intoxicants.

Payne’s attorney, Dean Marcus, argued that Payne is no longer a threat, and asked Judge Snukals to reduce the sentence the jury had recommended to between 23 years four months and 29 years two months.

“This is not a mean person,” Marcus told the judge, according the Dispatch. “This is not somebody we have to worry about. This is not somebody who’s going to rob people or hurt people.”

Snukals, however, disagreed. “I think Ms. Payne is someone the court needs to worry about,” she said. Dean plans to appeal the sentence, according to the Dispatch, claiming that Payne’s conviction of both felony murder and manslaughter violates the Constitutional double jeopardy clause.

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