Ashvegas took a day to recover from the big Bele Chere festivities, so we’re just now getting you caught up on the news. We’ll break down Bele Chere in an upcoming post, and we’ll put up lots more cool Bele Chere pix, but for now, let’s take a quick look at the news:
Gator aid
That was the tag that John “Punnyman” Le put on his story about a three-foot-long alligator being caught in the French Broad River over the weekend.
A wildlife officer and a couple of Brevard College students went out and caught the gator after spotting it on an earlier rafting trip. Le said the gator feasted on frogs and hit out in trash along the river.
The wildlife official told Le that somebody who was keeping the gator illegally (you’re not allowed to have these guys as pets) probably dumped it in the river because it was getting too big. It’s about four years old and would not have survived winter, the official told us.
Le had cool video of the gator thrashing about. The gator’s named Wiley and will be sent off to a wildlife preserve someplace to live happily ever after.
In other news
It’s hot outside… Somebody taking a lunch break outside Highwater Clays on Riverside Drive in Asheville walked down to the edge of the French Broad River and found a human skeleton. Police are working to identify it… A retaining wall in downtown Spruce Pine is giving way. A business owner is pissed. The hill being held back has come tumbling down before… A paramedic responding to a call for help in a Wolf Laurel gated development was shot in the chest when she arrived. The dude was “extremely impaired,” according to police… Two Hendersonville dudes in a trailer park got into an argument and one shot the other to death. Shot him five times with a .41 caliber handgun, according to police… Some residents in Black Mountain don’t like a developer’s plans to build a subdivision near the golf course there. The Goodson Cove development will have some 65 homes and townhomes. The developer wants the town to annex the development… And remember that mysterious Fairview shooting, where police said two men fired a shot through the window of a home, entered, then fought with a boy in the living room and the boy got shot in the hip? Well, police say the dad in the family had a bad business deal in Utah where a lot of people lost money. Cops are checking this out as a possible reason for the shooting.