It was an emotional Thursday morning as the young Lithuanian woman accused in a near-fatal summertime hit-and-run heard directly from the construction worker she allegedly crippled. Ironically, the July 17 incident at mile marker 103.2 on eastbound Interstate 64 occurred within sight of the massive granite marker that reminds drivers of the lives lost by Virginia highway workers.

Dabbing her welling eyes with tissues provided by a sheriff’s deputy, 22-year-old Vitalija Vasciunaite also covered her mouth and cried quietly as Jose Porfirio Martinez-Quinteros testified about the car that invaded the coned-off eastbound right lane where he had just finished jack-hammering concrete forms.

“It happened so suddenly,” the Spanish-speaking Martinez-Quinteros said through a translator. “I heard two of the cones being hit, and I looked up and saw the lights, and then it hit me. It actually threw me 20 feet.”

Martinez-Quinteros, who reportedly hasn’t worked since (more)

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State Senator Robert Hurt has brought out the big gun in the 5th District congressional race to unseat Congressman Tom Perriello, and for Republicans, there really isn’t more of a hometown favorite than former governor and senator George Allen.

It was from Earlysville that Allen first ran for the House of Delegates in 1979, and his deep roots in this community were apparent when he walked into Hurt headquarters at Albemarle Square Wednesday and greeted many of the 40-plus party faithful by name. (more)

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The steady nature of the overnight rainfall combined with the parched earth of the summer’s severe drought seemed to limit flooding from the remnants of Tropical Storm Nicole. The Twitter feed of the Newsplex’s weather department reports that the storm delivered 1.83″ of rain from midnight to 9am. The Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority instituted a call for voluntary water conservation one week ago when the urban reservoirs were around 67 percent of capacity. Yesterday, they were down to 65 percent, but when the figures for Thursday get posted, they’ll probably be higher.

Update: The October 1 report shows both the Rivanna and Sugar Hollow reservoirs full and the Ragged Mountain Reservoir, which can’t fill itself without a pipeline or a massive rainfall, still 3.3 feet below capacity.

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A hastily organized press conference to address three recent alleged attacks on UVA students may have raised more questions than it answered, as UVA Dean of Students Allen Groves and UVA Police Lt. Melissa Fielding admitted they did not know the identities of two of the three assault victims— and couldn’t be sure, therefore, if assaults had even occurred.

September 28, three days after new UVA president Teresa Sullivan’s “Day of Dialogue” to address violence in the wake of the Yeardley Love murder, Groves sent a message to approximately 23,000 UVA email addresses cautioning students to be extra vigilant in the wake of the alleged ssaults. (more)

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Martha Jefferson Hospital announced today it will merge with Sentara, a regional health care system based out of the Hampton Roads area.

Like Martha Jefferson, Sentara is a not-for-profit. Unlike Martha Jefferson, Sentara already has nine hospitals, including the recently purchased Potomac Hospital in Woodbridge and the July-announced merger with Rockingham Memorial Hospital in Harrisonburg.

“They certainly have been on a tear acquiring hospitals,” says Tom Brown, an attorney with McGuireWoods specializing in healthcare mergers.

Especially attractive to Martha Jefferson, which has revenues of $230 million, is that Sentara, with earnings of $3 billion, has the assets to capitalize the Charlottesville hospital.

Martha Jefferson President Jim Haden says the final numbers for a cash infusion from Sentara will be worked out over the next few months, but he stresses that it was the cultural fit, not the size of Sentara’s bank account, that was most appealing in their union.

“Our goal has always to become a better hospital,” he says, especially in maintaining quality and safety. And to get there, Martha Jefferson needs additional help, he adds.

For instance, Sentera is ranked number one in the country for its integrated systems, says Haden. And the move to electronic medical records is looming.

“It’s not a matter of more hardware,” says nephrologist and board member Kevin McConnell. “but where you use the data.” That could mean pinpointing a cluster of flu outbreaks, or cameras in patients’ homes, a high-tech revival of the near-obsolete house call.

“How do we work out the system so that we can take care of patients in their homes?” asks McConnell, who acknowledges that the desire to provide preventative care and keep people out of the hospital offers a “cognitive dissonance” coming from a hospital.

Martha Jefferson’s Board of Directors began looking for a merger in 2008 and considered five different healthcare systems before settling on Sentara— without a request for proposal.

“Three years ago I thought it was a crazy idea,” says Dr. John Ligush, head of the Martha Jefferson medical staff. “Now I wish we’d done it three years ago.”

According to the release, Sentara has never had a layoff and has no plans for layoffs here. Martha Jefferson Hospital will retain its name and a board of directors to handle local issues. And donations to Martha Jefferson will stay in the community, assures Haden.

Approval of the deal will take about six months.

With healthcare reform, more hospital mergers are likely. “What’s happening is very common,” says attorney Brown. “Hospitals account for one of the least consolidated industries in the country.”

For Martha Jefferson, the deal represents the end of an era. Founded in 1903 as the Martha Jefferson Sanatorium and taking a site near Locust Avenue the following year, it has recently been constructing a new home on Pantops Mountain.

In 2007, several years after announcing that it would leave the city for an 88-acre site at Peter Jefferson Place office park, Martha Jefferson began inviting proposals from developers and revealed just a week ago that it was selling its 8-acre Locust Avenue site for $6.5 million.

The seemingly low price for prime downtown real estate has raised some eyebrows. “That was the best bid we received,” says Haden. And time was a factor with the impending move to Peter Jefferson Place next year. “We didn’t want to leave an empty building,” he says.

The not-as-high-as-expected sale of the property and the merger with Sentara have prompted some speculation that Martha Jefferson is facing financial difficulties.

Not true, says Peter Brooks, a Martha Jefferson board member who serves on its finance committee. “Martha Jefferson is in a very strong position financially,” he says.

Even with building a new $275 million hospital, he says costs have been below projections. Brooks, too, has heard talk that Martha Jefferson is hurting. “It just plain upsets me because it’s just not true,” he declares.

Sentara was founded in 1888 as the Retreat for the Sick in Norfolk. It now provides care at more than 100 sites in Virginia and North Carolina, and its health plan, Optima Health, has 420,000 members.

And according to Martha Jefferson’s McConnell, Sentera’s girth will serve the local hospital well. “Sentara’s size allows them to be heard,” he says. “The government is interested in hearing from health systems about what is working and what isn’t. The larger you are, the better chance to be heard.”

Updated 11:45am.
Updated 4pm.

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The woman with a knack for getting under the skin of law enforcement is back in jail, and she claims the Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney is “manipulating the system” to keep her incarcerated.

Hook readers may recall that Elisha Strom was arrested in late August for allegedly stalking an Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agent, but that’s not the charge that landed her in jail near the end of September. Instead, the incarceration stems from her chronicles of JADE, the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement task force.

Ever since Strom debuted her blog, I HeArTE JADE, in late 2008, she’s found herself a target. Last year, she was jailed for publishing the address of an officer, something Virginia considers a Class 6 felony. (Noting that the information was publicly available, the ACLU claimed the law was unconstitutional.) Strom ultimately pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of obstruction of justice with a six-month suspended sentence. On October 15, 2009, she was arrested for violating the terms of that plea and convicted in May. She appealed.

Thinking that the penalty for violating a court order is 10 days and believing (more)

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There’s no electronic security system that can prevent this home invasion, and once they get inside, calling 911 won’t get you anywhere. Fortunately, these invaders are non-violent, but that doesn’t mean they’re welcome guests.

Known as Halyomorpha halys– or more commonly, the brown marmorated stink bug– these recent entomological arrivals from Asia have likely already come knocking on your door, looking for a warm, dry home for winter, and keeping them out is easier said than done.

“It’s horrible,” says Maryann Altman, who lives off Route 20 South about two miles from downtown and who says this is the second year the brown bugs have swarmed her house. This year, however, seems decidedly worse, and Altman now uses a broom to sweep piles of them away from her door when she takes her three young children outside. While she’s managed to keep the numbers down to a couple dozen inside, she says she can no longer even open screened windows to let in a breeze. (more)

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Almost five months after the University of Virginia reeled from the brutal murder of one of its own, an air of mourning still pervades the Lawn. Columns of the Rotunda are clad in black veils on one end, and on the other, a preponderance of black-clad students, faculty, and staff stream into Old Cabell Hall for the start of the university’s Day of Dialogue: Toward a Caring Community.

The day is a continuance of a discussion that started May 3, said UVA President Teresa Sullivan. That was when the death of fourth-year Yeardley Love, a beautiful lacrosse star, rocked the university community and became a national story. Her former boyfriend, George Huguely, another lacrosse player, is charged with her murder.

“In a real sense, we are picking up from where we left off last May,” said Sullivan. “Those of us who weren’t in Charlottesville last May experienced Yeardley’s death from a distance, and even at a distance, it was heartbreaking.”

The September 24 Day of Dialogue was initiated (more)

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The soon-to-vacated North Downtown campus of Martha Jefferson Hospital has been sold to the developer of the Gleason condo complex with a price— $6.5 million— that appears smaller than other downtown deals. But a pair of local investors don’t smell any sweetheart dealing.

“It does sound cheap,” says realtor Roger Voisinet. “But on the other hand, there are some daunting expenses to convert it.”

Voisinet notes that making it an assisted-living facility would probably entail the lowest conversion cost, but he wasn’t sure whether there’s a market for another one of those in town. And Developer Richard Spurzem notes that just holding such a mammoth place can chew up resources.

“It’s a huge amount of land,” says Spurzem. “You gotta (more)

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The dismay that avid social networker Marijean Jaggers felt when she discovered her distinctive mango-colored kayak had been stolen soon turned to joy when one of her Twitter followers found the purloined boat at a nearby sporting goods store. Case closed? Not quite.

Instead, the mystery deepens. Why did it take seven weeks to get the kayak back? Why have no arrests been made, even though police know who accompanied the seller? And why do police say they’re unable to determine that Jaggers is the owner, despite a folder full of documentation?

“It was a big purchase for the Jaggers family,” says Jaggers, producing the receipt she and her husband received for the $850 Pamlico tandem kayak purchased in 2007 from Appomattox River Company in Farmville.

Along with receipts, Jaggers has photos of the kayak showing her husband, Mark, in it. “It’s something we do together,” she says. “It’s symbolic.”

Just three hours after (more)

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With Netflix and YouTube grabbing eyeballs, and with blockbusters expanding their hold on the movie-going public, the problem stymieing indie filmmakers has only intensified. Getting an independent film distributed is tough.

Enter the Charlottesville-New York firm called ATO Pictures. In its first foray in feature film distribution, the company teams up with Samuel Goldwyn Films to bring Mao’s Last Dancer to Charlottesville’s Vinegar Hill Theatre on September 24.

Dave Matthews and Coran Capshaw co-founded ATO, so it appears there are deep enough pockets to overcome some of the hurdles like distribution and financing that face the foundering indie industry.

“We saw this in Toronto and fell in love with it,” says ATO CEO and co-founder Temple Fennell. “We didn’t produce it; we acquired it.”

ATO’s strategy veers sharply from the studio formula geared to the male-12-to-29 audience, explains Fennell. “We’re really focusing on the 30-plus market,” he says. “When they look at the paper on Friday night, there’s very little there for them.”

ATO is also taking a page from the DMB/Capshaw playbook (more)

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Oliver Kuttner and his Edison2 team won the $5 million top prize in the Progressive Automotive X Prize on Thursday, September 16, for their Very Light Car. Click photo for slideshow.

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