Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Red Cross arrest
The former accounting director at the Asheville-Mountain chapter of the American Red Cross here in Ashvegas has been arrested and charged with embezzling $165,000 from the organization. Carolyn Ryan brought us the “breaking” news at 6.
Ryan said the money was taken between 2006 and ’07 in what was described as an “elaborate scheme,” although police offered no details. Ryan said this may not be the first time the suspect has embezzled money – watch the news at 11.
Guilty in the first degree
A jury decided that John Beavers was guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Dr. Brian Ling last year. The jury, which started deliberations late Monday, came back with its verdict about 12:30 p.m. Tuesday. Charu said Beavers was headed to a life sentence at Central Prison in Raleigh.
Health Adventure to expand
The Health Adventure, that popular kid museum here in Ashvegas, announced plans Tuesday to double its size and move from downtown to the corner of Broadway and Catawaba. Jeremy Butterfield said the cool new building won’t be open to the public until 2010. And the place will have a new name: Momentum. Ummmm… OK. We think the new name sucks. But that’s just us.
In other news…
The statewide burning ban was lifted Tuesday. Sheraldo talked to a camper about safe campground cooking… There will be a hearing Tuesday in Cherokee to start sorting through 21 complaints about the recent elections there. Principal Chief Michele Hicks won re-election by 30 votes, and his challenger, Patrick Lambert, says there were voter irregularities, irregularities such as people not on a polling place list being allowed to vote. Lambert says he’s not accusing anybody of doing wrong, it’s just that there were some issues. Hicks said he saw no reason to question the results.
In other news while we’re in Cherokee…
Some construction crew hit a natural gas line and that forced a partial closure of Hwy. 441 and the evacuation of a few businesses. Everything was back to normal by noon.
Home destroyed by fire
Kassandra Pride said a “historic” home was destroyed in an early morning fire Tuesday on Midland Drive in north Asheville, but she never explained why she called the home “historic.” The mansion – at 11,000 square feet, this place was the epitome of a posh north Asheville villa (pnav, for short) – lost it’s third floor and roof and a fire appeared to start in a room recently renovated to be a 24-seat in-home theater. Damn. Fire investigators are still looking into it.
Man loses weight
John Le, who is still doing his “Absolute Le” reports, profiled a Brevard dude named Jimmy who has lost 170 pounds in the last year. At one point, the short-order cook weighed in at nearly four bills. But he was inspired by his young son to lose the weight, and that in turn inspired the wifey to lose a cool 60 lbs. Good for them.
And some final tidbits
The Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy saved some more land from development. This property was down in Henderson County, in the Green River watershed. Russ Bowen reported it for us… Buncombe County commissioners are considering requiring all pets to be micro-chipped so that we can all keep track of the little buggers… And the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Department says somebody is running a scam where the caller says he’s raising money for a fallen officers fund. The sheriff’s department wants everybody to know that they don’t solicit money over the phone. The scam came to light when the caller actually phoned – wait for it – a sheriff’s deputy.
I thought the Health Adventure move was a done deal a long time ago. I never liked the name "Health Adventure" it always sounded like something that was named on a whim and just stuck.Momentum, on the other hand, sounds like something Lyndsey Nagle would come up with "It describes a new paradigm in children museum use-ology."