Chiropractor Dolly Garnecki with patient Kayla Lisa, a 19-year-old Radford University student seeking to reverse her scoliosis through uncoventional care.
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

Judy Blume’s 1973 book Deenie plunged a generation of girls into panic over scoliosis, an all-too-common spinal curvature. But some Charlottesville area girls– unlike the book’s 13-year old title character– are opting for a therapy that controversially skips the notoriously bulky back brace and, as Deenie found, the cruel taunts of classmates.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” says local chiropractor Dolly Garnecki, who denounces braces and surgery as ineffective treatments that put scoliosis sufferers, typically teenage girls, through unnecessary pain.

Kayla Lisa was 11 when her parents learned that she (more)

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Robert Smith
PHOTO COURTESY UVA POLICE

A man wearing construction clothes allegedly grabbed a purse while in a UVA building June 29 and fled, plowing into a pursuing university employee with his car.

Robert Smith, 59, of 802-M Hardy Drive, is charged with malicious wounding, breaking and entering, and grand larceny.

According to police, Smith went into 918 Emmet Street, took the purse and was chased by its owner, who alerted others to the theft. Another UVA employee stood in front of Smith’s green Chevy Cavalier and went over the hood when Smith didn’t stop, says Lieutenant Melissa Fielding with UVA Police. The employee was treated and released at UVA Medical Center.

Police discourage standing in front of a fleeing suspect’s vehicle, says Fielding. “Get the license number, a description of the suspect, and the direction the car is headed,” she advises. “But any physical intervention is dangerous.”

On June 30, Smith was arrested at his home in a public housing project (which, incidentally, may soon be redeveloped), and was being held without bond at press time. He has no connection with the University of Virginia, says Fielding, and at age 59, is “outside the profile of our typcial larceny suspect.”

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Have you seen this man?
PHOTO COURTESY ALBEMARLE POLICE

Police are looking for a man who went on an $8,000 Nikon-camera-buying spree June 12 using stolen credit cards lifted earlier at Farmington Country Club.

The cards were used at Wal-Mart, Sears, Ritz Camera, Finish Line, and at Best Buy, where police retrieved security video. Police describe the person in the two released images as a white male between 5′4″ and 5′6″, about 150 pounds, and between 40 and 50 years old.

“Within a couple of hours of the theft,” says Farmington GM Phil Keister, “$8,000 was charged before the victim even realized the theft.”

After a call to the credit card company, the camera equipment spree was halted.

“The credit card company shut them down,” says Keister of the cards, noting that they were presented at a couple of additional locations.

The country club had hosted a golf tournament that day for members and guests. Is it possible the thief is a member?

“It’s entirely possible,” says Kiester. “The only people we can eliminate are women.”

It appears to Keister, however, to be at least a two-man job because no one who has seen the pictures recalls seeing that individual at Farmington.

“We looked at security photos from Best Buy,” says Kiester. “I would guess the person who stole the cards is not the person in the video.”

Keister says he thinks the thief is someone who would feel comfortable walking around the Farmington locker room and notes theft at the club is “pretty unusual.”

In 2002, Farmington locker rooms made the news when a naked man allegedly strolled into the women’s locker room and pretended it was an accident, the same M.O. that allegedly was used across the street at Boar’s Head Sports Club.

–last updated 11:31am June 29

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I-64 shooter Slade Woodson listens to testimony in court Tuesday.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

“If you were a monster, this would be easier,” said Judge Cheryl Higgins before pronouncing sentence on the teen who terrorized two counties for two days last year, closing Interstate 64 for six hours and Albemarle County schools on March 27, 2008.

“I’d like to apologize to all the people affected by this,” said Slade Woodson, 20, in Albemarle Circuit Court June 23 before Higgins sentenced him. “There’s no reason to justify what I did. If I could take it all back I would… I do take full responsibility for my actions.”

Still, Woodson appeared stunned after Higgins gave him 15 years. His attorney had suggested 8 to 10 years; Commonwealth’s Attorney Denise Lunsford requested 20 years. On the 14 counts Woodson faced, a maximum sentence could have put him away for 150 years.

Initiially, said Lunsford, police didn’t know if they were dealing with a gang initiation or another DC sniper. “I felt like with what happened to this community, 20 years were appropriate,” she said. “Mr. Woodson has a lot of support in the community. But it’s important for the community to see a substantial sentence and a deterrent.”

“I think he’s taking it hard right now,” said defense attorney Jessica Smith. (more)

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I-64 shooter Slade Woodson listens to testimony in court Tuesday.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Explosive testimony Tuesday afternoon rocked the sentencing hearing of Slade Woodson, the young man whose shooting spree terrorized a Central Virginia highway a year ago and who pleaded guilty in March.

“He told me he did stupid things when he got drunk,” testified Matthew Kurdziolek, a former jail roommate of Woodson, the teen whose shooting spree shut down Interstate 64 and Albemarle County schools a year ago. “He told me he wanted to kill somebody that night.”

The Albemarle Circuit Court was quiet as the convict who shared a room with Woodson at Middle River Regional Jail described what he allegedly learned about the evening of March 26-27, when Woodson, then 19, and Brandon Dawson, 15, fired into five cars on I-64, injuring two people, and into two occupied residences in Albemarle, as well as one in Waynesboro.

The two even had a plan, according to the inmate, that exploited (more)

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The old stone Albemarle County Jail stands behind an 18-foot brick wall that surrounds the structure.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

Now that the $20 million renovation of the old Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court is almost finished, another historic building in need of repair stands in sharp contrast to the new construction, boxed in as it is by a brand new parking garage: the old Albemarle County Jail. Although the J&DR court project was a joint venture between the County and the City, the price tag did not include any work on the old jail, and now it’s up to the County to figure out what to do with it.

According to Marc Wagner at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, the deteriorating jail is of far more historical significance than the nearby J&DR court house.

“The courthouse is interesting,” he says, ” but the jail is really unusual.” Indeed, with its huge block stone walls and thin barred windows, it looks like something out of the Middle Ages. But believe it or not, the City was still using it to hold prisoners in the 1970s.

“I used the wall as a backstop for hitting tennis balls when I was taking YMCA lessons at the McIntire Tennis Courts, since reborn as a skateboard park,” says Antoinette Roades, a local preservationist and historian, whose family lived right next to the jail in the 1960s. “If I hit a wild shot over the wall, a prisoner would throw it back.”

The Albemarle County Jail No. 5, as it was originally called, was built by George Wallace Spooner in 1876. Spooner, who also happened to be city manager, also built the Mount Zion Baptist Church on Ridge Street and was tapped to rebuild the Rotunda after it burned in 1895, a job he would eventually lose to architect Stanford White. In 1886, Spooner added the brick jailer’s house that stands today.

Clearly, Spooner wanted his jail to send a message. In addition to three-foot thick stone walls, reinforced steel doors, and an 18-foot brick wall surrounding the prison yard, the jail also featured an iron “cage” on the ground floor (more)

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

First came the accident. Then the bad publicity. Now, 18 months after Gerry Mitchell was struck in his wheelchair by an Albemarle County police cruiser and then ticketed by Charlottesville police in the ER, comes the lawsuit.

Filed Tuesday morning, June 16, in Charlottesville Circuit Court, Mitchell’s $850,000 suit alleges negligence, malicious prosecution, and intentional infliction of emotional distress and names the City of Charlottesville, Charlottesville Police Officer Steve Grissom, who wrote the ticket, and Albemarle County Police Officer Gregory C. Davis, who was driving the cruiser that struck him in a West Main Street crosswalk on November 5, 2007.

“When you think about the cover up, what they did was so unnecessary and horrible,” says Mitchell, reached hours after the suit was filed. “They basically are not being (more)

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New columns adorn the Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court on High Street. The brick columns shown here have since been covered with white stucco.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

In 2004, the City and County approved the renovation of the old Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court on High Street. The projected $12 million project also included a new 3-level, 91-space parking deck.

Today, the project is finally nearing completion, but at a cost that has rocketed to $19.9 million. That’s nearly three Downtown Mall renovation projects.

Built in 1902, the Colonial Revival building that housed the jail was originally Elks Lodge No. 389 and featured a library, a card room, a billiard parlor, and even a bowling alley. Early photographs of the lodge show the building with a big four-column portico on the front with a giant elk or deer head attached to its pediment.

A major fire in the late 1940s destroyed much of the building, and when it was later renovated, local architect Floyd Johnson chose not to rebuild the portico. Other distinguishing features include double fan arches over the front door and the window above, two pilasters corresponding with Doric columns, and a rusticated façade on which every fifth brick is indented.

What the Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court building looked like in 2002 .
PHOTO FROM CITY WEBSITE

Part of the reason the renovation has taken so long, and cost so much, is the fact that a section of the building collapsed during construction in March 2006. Construction was delayed not only by the costly mishap, but also by the costly litigation that followed.

“It’s the City’s position that it was the fault of the contractor and/or subcontractors,” said City attorney Craig Brown in May 2007. “But we’re hoping to have this whole thing resolved this week.”

Try two more years.

The City would eventually file a lawsuit accusing Kenbridge Construction and excavation company J.A. Walder of “cutting corners” to maximize profits on the City’s dollar, and claiming that the city had to hire a structural engineer to fix the building while Kenbridge refused to go back to work. Of course, Kenbridge fired back with its own lawsuit, accusing the city of supplying  “inaccurate or inadequate” plans, and then for good measure went after subcontractor Walder, accusing it of negligence. (more)

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