The red lights on Rio Road Westbound will not be monitored by cameras.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

As recently reported, while weather and utility work delayed the installation of red-light cameras at the intersection of Rio Road and 29 North, Albemarle County’s high-tech attempt to curb red-light running will finally commence on Friday, November 12. There will be a 30-day grace period, during which violations will only be observed, but after that County police will start mailing out $50 tickets based on photographic and video evidence the cameras capture.

However, there’s one important detail that hasn’t been reported: the cameras won’t be monitoring the entire intersection. Say what?

According to a joint County/VDOT engineering safety analysis on the intersection, three cameras will monitor only two approaches: the through lanes of 29 Southbound and the two left-hand turn lanes, and the through lanes of Rio Road Eastbound and the left and right turned turn lanes.

“We are obviously hoping for a ‘halo effect’ that will impact driver behavior at all approaches to the intersection,” says county spokesperson Lee Catlin.

According to County police Lt. Ernie Allen, the camera systems can only be installed (more)

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The smash trimmed the canvas— but not the enthusiasm— of the Virginia Dance Company, whose members gathered before 8am Thursday to tout their Sunday night “iDance.”
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

A University Transit Service bus driver who reportedly failed to secure the brakes on the vehicle while attending to some sort of cleaning operation resulted in extensive damage to a sidewall of historic Beta Bridge on Wednesday, October 21. The Bridge, which carries Rugby Road over the CSX railroad tracks, has long served as a canvas for student messages uttered in paint.

Moments after this photo was taken the following morning, a two-bulldozer crew from the Charlottesville Public Works Department arrived to stop traffic and— with industrial-strength chains— pull down the damaged section.

A photo and video captured by the Newsplex shows that the bus missed the adjacent fire hydrant (currently wearing a silver coat of paint) by what appears to be just an inch or two. The Newsplex is also the source for the cause of the crash.

Too many layers to count.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

According to the unofficial UVA historian Coy Barefoot, Beta Bridge got its first documented freelance paint job in 1926, three years after the steel-reinforced concrete structure was built. The current paint layers— as revealed in the massive bus-caused crack— appear at least two inches thick.

Most poignantly, the bridge served as a months-long condolence to Virginia Tech after the 2007 massacre on the Blackburg university’s campus.

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Another rescue took place November 1, 1959, from the top of a mountain.
PHOTO BY ED ROSEBERRY

Phil Bradley knows what it’s like to wonder if rescue will ever come or if you’ll die without anyone even knowing you’re there. He’s watched the 33 trapped miners in Chile emerge from deep in the earth, and says, “I can empathize with those people.”

Bradley is the sole survivor of Piedmont Flight 349, which crashed into Bucks Elbow Mountain nearly 51 years ago. The 26 other people on that flight died, and Bradley lay alone on that mountain for 36 hours before rescuers found him.

“I know they were there a lot longer than I was— 17 days before they were found,” says Bradley of the miners during the more than two weeks when no one knew they were alive.

Bradley was aboard the doomed flight on Friday night, October 30, 1959. “The first night I didn’t think about [rescue],” he says, nor did he too much the next day.

“Sunday morning, it was nice, warm and pretty, and I could see planes flying over,” recalls Bradley, in a telephone interview. Finally, after two bone-chilling nights surrounded by dead bodies and occasionally burning wreckage, he heard people coming down the mountain— which surprised him, because he’d expected rescuers to come from below.

Bradley, who grew up in Clifton Forge and now lives in an exurb of Charlotte, North Carolina, is a retired labor organizer; and it was a union mission to Oklahoma City that (more)

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Dan Neumeister, here in Melk, Austria, attended a motorcycle race in the Czech Republic on his honeymoon this summer.
PHOTO COURTESY ADRIANE NEUMEISTER

On what appeared to be a glorious day during grape harvest time, winemaker Dan Neumeister climbed aboard his beloved Suzuki TL 1000R motorcycle after meeting his bride for lunch. The weather was clear, and the skies were bright on October 4, but the Crozet resident was about to encounter William T. Thompson of Ruckersville.

Police say that a drunk Thompson lost control of his Ford Taurus on the two-lane road, and swerved into Neumeister, before rolling the Taurus over and over. Thompson, age 58, was airlifted to UVA Medical Center and has been charged with driving under the influence— and now faces a manslaughter charge, say police. Around 2pm, Daniel Mark Neumeister, 31, died at the scene.

Neumeister was the award-winning winemaker for Sugarleaf Vineyards in North Garden, and his 2008 Petit Manseng was served at the White House at the 2010 Governor’s Ball.

“Everybody would use the word ‘passionate’ to describe him,” says Sarah Gorman at Cardinal Point Vineyard and Winery. “Dan didn’t have formal oenology training. He was an active learner who took the time to learn the chemistry and the details to make fine wine.”

“Passionate,” echoes Sugarleaf owner Lauren Bias. “Humble, dedicated, enthusiastic.”

Sugarleaf hired Neumeister in 2002 to tend its just-planted vineyard. “He fell in love with the craft,” says Bias. “It was (more)

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Greg Briehl is in critical condition in a Richmond hospital.
PHOTO COURTESY GREGORY BRIEHL

Gregory John Briehl had come a long way since his arrest in 2006 for the child porn possession and surreptitious filming of women in his home, which cost him jail time and his reputation as a pastor and counselor.

He remarried— to Ruth Graham, daughter of world-famous evangelist Billy Graham— and seemed to be getting his life back on track, say those close to him. He was headed to Richmond to take care of some business Tuesday morning when a bag of trash fell from a garbage truck in the passing lane of a busy highway. And now he’s fighting for his life.

Virginia Waste Services driver Ricky Howell, 46, had pulled his 2004 Mack truck over in the left lane of Route 288 south and partially on the shoulder to retrieve the bag of trash that had fallen into the left lane. He was climbing out of the truck when Briehl’s 1999 Land Rover approached and smashed into the rear of the truck.

The Route 288 accident was reported at 9:25am September 28 on (more)

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Vitalija Vasciunaite follows her mother out of a conference room.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

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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The gunfire in Glenmore that hit a woman has been deemed accidental.
PHOTO FROM GLENMORE WEBSITE

Albemarle police say they’ve identified the source of the bullet that randomly struck a Glenmore woman in her backyard, and point to unnamed target shooters more than half a mile away. It’s a painful reminder of how far bullets can travel.

“You should always have a backstop,” says Albemarle Sheriff Chip Harding, who recently taught a hunter safety class. “It doesn’t help the cause of hunters to have someone shooting irresponsibly.”

The shooting occurred around 8pm Sunday, August 29, when 61-year-old Justine Joscelyne was watering nandinas at her Darby Road residence in the gated Glenmore subdivision. Pierced in her right breast and suffering both an entrance and exit wound, she was treated for non-life-threatening injuries and released later that evening.

Albemarle police spokesman Lieutenant Shawn Schwertfeger says the alleged shooter was part of a group of four sharing a shotgun and a rifle at a makeshift firing range in the yard of a residence in the 3700 block of Richmond Road. And although no slug was recovered, Schwertfeger says he believes the stray projectile came from the rifle.

Virginia has laws that prohibit shooting across roads or at houses, with increased penalties when (more)

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A stray bullet flew into the swanky Glenmore subdivision Sunday night.
PHOTO FROM THE GLENMORE WEBSITE

The Glenmore subdivision website touts the “simple joys of Southern living.” In some quarters, shooting guns is such a joy, but that’s one aspect of Southern life Justine Joscelyne never considered she’d encounter in the gated community east of Charlottesville.

It happened on Sunday evening around dusk.

“I was in the backyard watering my plants and felt this intense pain,” says Joscelyne of the August 29 incident. “It was a shock. The bullet went through my right breast.”

Joscelyne, 61, says because of the way she was standing, the bullet didn’t damage internal organs— but left her with both an entrance and exit wound.

“I’d been out in my yard about 40 minutes,” she says. “I’d heard popping sounds and thought it was fireworks. I’m certain it was outside Glenmore.”

Joscelyne’s husband, Trevor, who is president of the Glenmore Community Association, took her (more)

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What Washington & Lee University officials are calling a “close call” should be a wake-up one for UVA students planning to celebrate this weekend. During a W&L party in Lexington last weekend, a deck on a house with as many as 80 people on it collapsed, injuring nearly 30 students and sending 22 of them to the hospital. Luckily, no one was seriously injured in the May 14 incident.

According to the North American Deck and Railing Association, that’s not always the case. Since 2000, there have been more than 30 deck collapse fatalities, and 75 percent of the people on collapsing decks get injured or killed. What’s more, there are 40 million decks in the country more than 20 years old.

“Every weekend, somewhere in the country, a deck collapses or someone falls through a deck rail,” says Joe Loferski, a Virginia Tech professor of wood science who has been researching the causes of deck collapses since 2000.

A nearly identical disaster occurred during a weekend party at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2008, when (more)

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Matt King, right, was an avid athlete working on his Ph.D. in mathematics.
PHOTO COURTESY CROSSFIT CHARLOTTESVILLE

The driver of a Charlottesville City waste water truck will not be charged in the Monday, April 19, accident in which 23-year-old UVA grad student and bicyclist Matthew King was killed as he rode west on West Main Street.

The investigation, conducted by City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County police, Virginia State Police, and the Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office, concluded that King struck the truck as it turned right from West Main onto Fourth Street, according to a press release.

According to a City report, multiple witnesses testified that (more)

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Artist Gerry Mitchell, one year after the crosswalk incident.
FILE PHOTO BY WILL WALKER

In November 2007, wheelchair-bound pedestrian Gerry Mitchell was tossed into the street when he was struck in a West Main Street crosswalk by an Albemarle county police cruiser, then ticketed by Charlottesville police. At a hearing set for Friday, May 21, attorneys for the City and the ticketing officer, Steve Grissom, plan to ask a judge to toss the $850,000 suit Mitchell filed last year.

“Maintaining a police force is a governmental function, and accordingly, the city is immune from liability for a police officer’s negligence in and intentional acts during performance of his duties as a police officer,” writes the city’s attorney, John Zunka, in the motion to dismiss, which cites the legal concept of “sovereign immunity”— the idea that government can do no wrong, at least legally. Zunka did not return a reporter’s calls for comment.

Mitchell’s attorney, Richard Armstrong, however, says he is confident Judge Thomas Wood— appointed to the case when Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Edward Hogshire recused himself— won’t (more)

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A warning comes just past where the bicyclist was struck on West Main.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

A vehicle owned by the City of Charlottesville was involved in an accident that killed a bicyclist April 19 shortly after 9am on West Main at 4th Street NW.

Matthew Steven King, a UVA grad student studying mathematics, was taken to UVA Medical Center and died from injuries sustained in the collision at approximately 9:31am.

The city vehicle involved was a Public Works vacuum truck that hauls water and wastewater, according to city spokesman Ric Barrick.

The truck and King were both traveling west on West Main. A witness says that King was riding on the sidewalk and rode onto the street and into the path of the truck making a right turn on 4th Street, according to the Newsplex.

That location is within feet of where an Albemarle County police officer struck wheelchair-bound Gerry Mitchell in 2007.

“This is a terrible loss of a promising young man,” says UVA spokeswoman Carol Wood. “Matt was a very fine student who will be missed by his family and friends and his many friends in the Math Department.”

A vigil is planned for King at 5pm Friday, April 23, in front of West Main Restaurant.

UPDATE 11:48AM
UPDATE 10:25am April 20 with name of victim and correction of wrongly directioned 4th Street NW.

UPDATE 2:54pm: Video posted by the Newsplex shows a truck that looks a like the Public Works Department vehicles that can vacuum out the city’s storm sewer system.

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