Breaking news: Gene Lummus charged
WLOSers said Ashvegas Harley motorcycle dealership owner Gene Lummus was charged on Thursday with assault with a deadly weapon and communicating threats. Somebody took out a warrant claiming that Lummus threatened him and ran at him with a 2X4. There’s a court date set in January. Lummus has been around Ashvegas for years and owns the big Harley dealership out in Swannanoa. More on this…
Cuevas blows the weather forecasting – again
Dozens of motorists were involved in fender-benders Thursday morning after an odd weather phenomenon – freezing fog. It’s been down in the 30s at night and warming up into the mid 60s during the day, and Thursday morning the conditions created heavy fog that froze on some roadways. It was mess, with four- and five-car pile-ups and all kinds of mess.
But did Mike “Cuervo” Cuevas or any other weather-guesser at WLOS predict these conditions or warn motorists? Not at all. Nope. This is just a forecast of things to come from the weather soothsayers – they have absolutely no clue what will happen, not even when they try to guess the weather less than 24 hours out.
It’s going to be a long winter.
WLOSers decide to cover murder trial
WLOSers decided to start covering the second-degree murder trial of Bracken Shue, charged in the death of Jennifer Williams after a wreck earlier this year. According to testimony, Williams was a passenger in Shue’s truck while Shue was racing Billy Taylor down Mills Gap Road one night. Cherub Charu brought us the details.
This trial has one helluva lot of drama. Follow these tidbits:
Jennifer Williams had just finished months and months of chemotherapy and apparently had beaten cancer just before the fatal wreck. According to court testimony, the force of impact when the truck she was in hit a tree caused her seat belt to slice her in half. That’s a horrible circumstance.
The Billy Taylor that was racing is the son of the Billy Taylor that owns Taylor Ranch. Bracken Shue is somehow related to the owner of David’s Mattress stores in town. So you’ve got a couple of prominent local families involved.
According to testimony, Bracken Shue’s sister is/was the girlfriend/fiance of the younger Billy Taylor. So the families were intertwined, but they’re now at odds in trial, with each trying to blame the other for causing the wreck.
It will be interesting to see what the jury has to say in this case.
Needle-sticker
Carolyn “Little Red” Ryan went out to Andrews High School to talk to a young woman who says a girl in school had gone around sticking people with a fabric needle and then telling them they had AIDS. The family of the girl who talked to Carolyn said the school hadn’t done anything about it.
But school officials said they took the kids who got pricked to the health department to get tested for disease. Parents were contacted. They didn’t say what, if anything, had been done to the girl pricking people. She was a minor, Carolyn said, so school officials couldn’t say much other than they consider it a prank and are dealing with it.
In other news…
Dive teams recovered a body from a pond at the Cleghorn Country Club in Rutherford County. Police think it’s that of a missing Spartanburg man… A legally blind man will who has worked hard at Western Carolina University will be the commencement speaker at the upcoming December ceremony… Transylvania County spent $260,000 on video cameras for Rosman and Brevard high schools recently and they hope it will cut down on crime and misbehavior. Sheraldo did that little video trick all WLOSers do when they do any story involving security cameras – they put themselves on the security camera monitor, then film that… Biltmore Church of God is collecting coats… McDowell County school kids collected cans of food for the hungry… Greystone Inn ranked high on some ranking of fancy inns around the country… Pat “Simple” Simon played a video game called Ultimate Battle that’s made by the people of the “Left Behind” book series. The game is supposed to help convert kids to Christianity, but in the game, you can play the anti-Christ… Somebody at WLOS got an Elmo doll… There was a meth lab raid in Rutherford County… WLOSers had a clarification on the pencil-stabbing story, but we couldn’t tell what they were correcting… There’s a new county manager in Madison County… No encephalities was found in skeeters tested in Transylvania County this year… An old prison was demolished in Henderson County… Rocker Warren Haynes handed out keys to two more Habitat for Humanity houses that he helped raise money to build… and John “Punnyman” Le did an OK report on a wreath-laying ceremony out at the veterans cemetery in Black Mountain. USA Today had a much better story about the ceremony and its start on their front page today.
In news you already knew…
Be careful crossing the street. That was the essence of Russ “Beefcake” Bowen’s report following up the tragic death of 13-year-old Larry Bass, a young man hit and killed on Highway 70 in Swannanoa earlier this week.
One of Bass’s parents had dropped him off at a convenience store and he was crossing the five lane highway on foot when one car clipped him, then another ran him over and killed him. Russ said there have been four pedestrian deaths in Ashvegas this year.
So Russ quoted a state trooper, with his hat pulled too low, who said look both ways before crossing, wear bright-colored clothing or reflective gear and remember that most pedestrian accidents happen between 5 and 9 p.m. and 75 percent occur where there isn’t a crosswalk.
Thanks Russ.
4 Comments
Cuevas may be a meteorologist (the others, except Cobweb, are still working through their online program), and all of them may add their own little touch to their forecasts, but Accuweather’s name wouldn’t be splashed all over everything, and the news director wouldn’t be leaving to take a newly created position at Accuweather, if the WLOS weather guessers weren’t highly dependent on said Accuweather for most of their meteorological information.
Cuevas did predict thick fog and temperatures down around freezing, I was watchin the 6pm news the night before. I think Cuevas is the only Meteorologist at the station and does his own forecasting.
"To be fair" — where’s the fun in that?
But as long as we’re bitchin’ about teevee weather forecasts, how about the Wx Channel’s "Local on the 8s"? You get about four different predictions for the upcoming day’s high and low: one on the daypart breakdown, one on the map, sometimes another one on a different version of the map, and yet another temp on the actual forecast graphic with audio. Talk about covering your bases — just give out three or four different predictions for the same day; that way you’ve got a better chance of being right.
To be fair, not a single other station that covers our area predicted freezing fog either, as its a relatively rare phenomenon.
And considering that rougly 70% of stations use the accuweather service, almost all stations get the same info to make their weather "preidctions". It’s not like WYFF has its own weather station where a team of scientist are pinning down emerging weather patterns. Just like at WLOS, their Weather guy strolls in late, takes a peak at the accuweather print out, and procedes to BS about whatever it says.