End-of-week news roundup

Jungle rhythms
We watched with intrigue from our couch, and from the front lines of downtown Ashvegas, as Russ “Beefcake” Bowen brought us the story of the Friday night drum circle in Pritchard Park.

Police shut down the drum circle early last Friday night because of noise complaints. So Russ, looking trim in a pressed dress shirt and tie and coiffed hair (hey John Le, take a note or two), was broadcasting live from the drum circle last night.

The Russ report at 6 was a bit of a pain because of horrible noise and video feed quality. Or maybe the noise was done on purpose. But can’t you WLOSers fix that crap? Russ shouted his story to us despite the din, telling us “here’s a taste” of what people can hear. The “controversy’s been escalating,” Russ said to pump up the story.

But in fact, Russ said, the cops are working with the drummers and the complainers to make sure everything’s cool. Last night, cops were at complainers’ downtown condos or whatever to hear from their point of view. Russ said “four to six” people have complained. Russ also said that none of the complainers wanted to talk on camera, so they remained anonymous.

At the scene, Russ studied the crowd and interviewed exactly one drummer and one older woman who was watching. And one downtown resident who said he didn’t mind the drums. Earlier, it looked like he interviewed one policeman. Russ described the drum circle crowd as a “microcosm” of Ashvegas, and noted that the drumming has been a “decade-long tradition” in our fair city.

Here’s the bottom line: if you move into a downtown condo, remember that you live in a downtown condo. Ashvegas is a city. And it’s growing. There’s going to be noise. And the drummers have a permit and every right to do what they’re doing. There’s no other city in all of North Carolina where such an eclectic mix of people can come together and dance and drum and watch and just have fun.

So leave ’em the hell alone.

Baby death investigation
WLOSers, never afraid to convict someone before they’ve even been charged with a crime, brought us a tale of a family demanding answers in the investigation of the death of Jadin Gaddis. Cherub Charu was on the story.

The baby died last July and an autopsy showed that the 9-week-old infant had suffered trauma to the head. The autopsy also showed burn marks on the baby’s body and broken ribs, Charu said. The child died when it was pulled off life support.

Broadcasting from the Arden apartment complex where the baby and parents lived, Charu quoted “friends of the family” as saying that they wanted “justice for Jadin.”

Charu quoted them extensively as saying the parents were the only two people to have access to the child and they want somebody arrested. They want answers. They all but said outright that the parents killed the child.

Charu made no mention of trying to contact the parents for their side of the story. She said she talked to the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Department, who referred her to District Attorney Ron Moore, who said he’s looking into it.

Date rape drugs
The women’s advocacy group “Our Voice” says they’re seeing more instances of the use of date rape drugs in drinks. So don’t leave your drinks unattended, people. Watch it being poured. And if you leave a drink and come back to it, get a new one. Personally, we just like slamming our drinks all at once so you never have to worry about date rape drugs.

How to defuse dynamite
Sheraldo, who we haven’t seen in awhile, told us how to defuse dynamite – put it in a barrel of fuel oil to stabilize it, then burn it up. That’s what the bomb squad did the other day when somebody found some dynamite on a porch at a Spruce Pine apartment complex, Deerpark Apartments. Sheraldo showed us a robot that the cops like to play with to handle bombs, but then Sheraldo noted that they didn’t use the robot in this case. Nice.

Smells like rotten eggs
We’re describing Michelle Boudin’s infotainment report about a crew that hit a natural gas line while working on a water line in Hendersonville. The rotten egg smell also describes the natural gas, but that’s beside the point.

Michelle put together an in-depth piece on how a lady’s hair salon was all atitter over the gas line break. It made a whooshing sound, smelled bad and forced some people to close their windows, Michelle told us. “It was a shock to the senses,” she said. Eventually the line was fixed and the hair salon ladies got to go home. Whew.

Encephalitis follow-up
Remember that girl that got encephalitis earlier this week from a mosquito bite? Well, WLOSers said her family thinks the breeding ground could have been an abandoned pool or construction sites in her neighborhood. They want that shit cleaned up.

Lightning strike follow-up
Remember that Tennessee family that got hit by lightning at the Biltmore Estate last week? Well, they’re doing fine and the Biltmore Estate is thinking about adding some more lightning detection equipment on the grounds. Whatever that is. Julie Blunder, who brought us the story, didn’t dig any deeper.

Right now, people in offices at the Biltmore Estate can use their computers to check the weather, and everyone on the grounds has a radio so they can talk to the people with the computers to get updates, Blunder told us. O, and the radios work as weather radios, too. But that doesn’t really help people out on the grounds now, does it?

Fly fishing etiquette
Bob Caldwell says be nice to one another when you’re out on the water, whether your paddling or fishing. Though Bob, a fisherman, wasn’t really nice to the paddlers in his story. He kept calling them “floaters,” which is what we leave in the toilet on a Saturday morn.

Lake Lure cleanup
Lake Lure is still a mess, weeks after heavy rains flooded the area. It happened right before July Fourth, if you’ll recall.

Now debris floats in the lake and piles of it are blocking the boat houses of some of the rich and famous and old retired people who live on the lake. They want that shit cleaned up. The town said that it’s working as hard as it can to clean the 720-acre lake. The town has already spent $15,000 on clean-up and has two people working on it. They’ve also taken away dozens of truck loads of trash, a town official told WLOSers.

So shut up and relax, old farts. Your lake property will get cleaned when it gets cleaned.

In other news…
Thomas the Tank Engine is in Dillsboro, like it is all the time. Not sure why it’s a story every time… Ashvegas police are looking for an armed robbery suspect. Friday, somebody robbed the Smokers and Players shop on Emma Road in West Ashvegas. The Smokers and Players shop in Woodfin was also recently robbed. What exactly is the Smokers and Players shop? We’ve seen one on Haywood Road, also. Looks kinda shady… Some 44-year-old dude was arrested for sexually molesting two girls between the ages of 12 and 14. The molestation included sexual intercourse, WLOSers told us… There was a storm sometime Friday in Henderson County. Carolyn “Little Red” Ryan brought us the story of a tree that fell on a car there… The state board of community colleges is recommending that Blue Ridge Community College President David Sink be suspended while the state investigates allegations that some money was misused for the college’s baseball program.