Category Archives: Virginia

Virginia governor clears path for ‘extreme’ bill allowing police to seek menstrual histories

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Glenn Youngkin blocks bill passed in Democratic-led state senate to ban search warrants for menstrual data on tracking apps

The Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, appears to have thwarted an attempt to stop law enforcement obtaining menstrual histories of women in the state.

A bill passed in the Democratic-led state senate, and supported by half the chamber’s Republicans, would have banned search warrants for menstrual data stored in tracking apps on mobile phones or other electronic devices.

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Virginia basketball coach fired for impersonating 13-year-old in game

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  • 22-year-old assistant coach stepped in when player absent
  • Two other coaches have been fired from school’s program

A 22-year-old Virginia basketball coach has been fired after being accused of attempting to pass herself off as one of her 13-year-old players during a game.

According to Norfolk’s WAVY TV 10, when one of the members of the Churchland junior varsity girls basketball team in Portsmouth was out of town earlier this month, Arlisha Boykins stepped in and impersonated the absent player in their game against Nansemond River.

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Virginia school ‘couldn’t be bothered’ to stop boy with gun, teacher’s lawyer says

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Abigail Zwerner, seriously wounded in attack by six-year-old, plans to sue school district as superintendent sacked

Concerned teachers and employees warned administrators at a Virginia elementary school three times that a six-year-old boy had a gun and was threatening other students in the hours before he shot and wounded a teacher, “but the administration could not be bothered” and didn’t call police, remove the boy from class or lock down the school, a lawyer for the teacher said.

Diane Toscano, an attorney for Abigail Zwerner, told reporters on Wednesday she had notified the Newport News school board that the 25-year-old Richneck elementary school teacher plans to sue the school district over the 6 January shooting, which left Zwerner with serious injuries.

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Finding who can be held to account after a six-year-old shoots a teacher

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Where does the responsibility lie in the recent shooting in Newport News, Virginia, for a country so inured to gun violence?

The shooting of a Virginia teacher by her six-year-old student last week left the town of Newport News and the rest of the US shaken and shocked.

Even in a country long used to the sort of school shootings that are rare in much of the rest of the world, the astonishingly young age of the shooter prompted a bout of public agonizing in the US about its gun violence problem.

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No fight or warning before six-year-old boy shot teacher, say Virginia police

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Police chief gives first detailed description of last week’s classroom shooting that has shocked US

The shooting of a Virginia teacher by a six-year-old boy in her classroom last week happened without warning, and with no fight or physical struggle, authorities have said.

“What we know today is that she was providing instruction. He displayed a firearm, he pointed it and he fired one round,” said the Newport News police chief, Steve Drew.

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Shooting of teacher by six-year-old a red flag for US, says mayor

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Boy taken into custody after wounding of teacher, whose condition is said to be showing signs of improvement

The shooting of a teacher in the city of Newport News in Virginia by a six-year-old student should be a red flag for the US, the city’s mayor has said, as the teacher’s condition showed signs of improvement.

The mayor, Phillip Jones, said the condition of the teacher, identified by local media as Abby Zwerner, was “trending in a positive direction” in hospital.

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Virginia: school chief ‘in shock’ after teacher shot by student, six

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Newport News superintendent George Parker urges gun control after attack that left school teacher with life-threatening injuries

The superintendent of the public school district in Newport News, Virginia, has called for increased gun control while condemning a shooting at a campus there Friday in which a first-grade student deliberately shot his teacher.

In a news conference on Friday, the superintendent George Parker said that he was “disheartened” and “in shock” after the attack left a Richneck elementary school teacher with “life-threatening injuries”.

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Six-year-old intentionally shot teacher in Virginia school, police say

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Authorities said they had arrested the boy for shooting a female teacher at Richneck elementary school in Newport News

A six-year-old child deliberately shot a teacher at an elementary school in Virginia on Friday afternoon, according to police.

Police said in a statement that they have arrested the boy accused of shooting a female teacher at Richneck elementary school in Newport News, Virginia, a city in the south-eastern part of the state.

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Richmond removes last city-owned Confederate statue after two-year purge

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The effort to remove Gen AP Hill’s monument was complicated as his remains were interred beneath it

The city of Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy for most of the civil war, removed its last city-owned Confederate statue on Monday, more than two years after it began to purge itself of what many saw as painful symbols of racial oppression.

It took just minutes to free the statue of Confederate Gen AP Hill from its base, before a crane using yellow straps looped under the statue’s arms lifted it onto a bed of tires on a flatbed truck. After the statue was removed, the crew got to work removing the base.

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Triple homicide suspect was sheriff’s deputy who drove across US to meet girl, police say

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Suspect met teen online and ‘catfished’ her before killing three members of her family, according to officers

The suspect in a triple homicide in southern California who died in a shootout with police was a Virginia law enforcement officer who police believe drove across the country to meet a teenage girl before killing three members of her family.

Austin Lee Edwards, 28, also probably set fire to the family’s home in Riverside, California, on the day of the shooting on Friday before leaving with the girl, the Riverside police department said in a news release.

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Walmart shooter purchased handgun legally the same day, authorities say

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Gunman bought firearm at a local store, police say, and took it to the Virginia branch where had worked since 2010

The gunman who killed six people on Tuesday at a Walmart store in Chesapeake, Virginia, purchased the handgun legally the same day, authorities said.

The 31-year-old suspect bought the 9mm handgun at a local store, according to police. He took it to the Walmart branch where he had worked since 2010 shortly before the store was due to close. Investigators have said he was carrying several magazines of ammunition, and killed himself with the weapon before authorities arrived.

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Names of six victims released in shooting at Virginia Walmart

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Walmart employee says gunman, who police say killed himself, was manager who opened fire on workers gathered in break room

Six people were killed when a gunman opened fire at a Walmart store in southern Virginia late on Tuesday, in the latest mass shooting to strike the US, this time shortly before the Thanksgiving holiday. The gunman killed himself, police said.

A witness, Jessie Wilczewski, told a local TV station, WAVY, the gunman began shooting at a group of about 14 employees gathered in a meeting room at the start of their shift in the store, located in the city of Chesapeake.

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University of Virginia: ‘heartache and devastation’ after football team killings

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Ex-player allegedly shot three team members dead and wounded two on bus Sunday as students returned from a play in Washington

People struggling to grasp why a former University of Virginia football player allegedly shot three team members dead on a bus last Sunday have found few answers, though the suspect’s father has said his son had become “paranoid” as he faced potential school discipline.

Christopher Darnell Jones Jr’s father also apologized to the families of D’Sean Perry, Lavel Davis Jr and Devin Chandler, who were killed, as well as two others who were wounded.

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Three US tourists found dead in Mexico City Airbnb from carbon monoxide

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Friends, who were there to celebrate Day of the Dead holiday, died from apparent carbon monoxide poisoning last week, officials say

Three American tourists were found dead last week in a Mexico City Airbnb apartment they were renting after apparent carbon monoxide poisoning, Mexican authorities confirmed to Reuters on Wednesday.

Friends Kandace Florence, Jordan Marshall and Courtez Hall were visiting the Mexican capital to celebrate the Day of the Dead holiday, according to US news site WAVY, based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where Florence and Marshall were from.

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Virginia seeks to strip transgender school students of protections

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State education department issues guidance reinstating bathroom and locker room restrictions and curbing pronoun changes

Virginia is attempting to roll back major protections for school students who are transgender, according to the latest set of guidelines announced by the state’s education officials.

The state’s department of education announced on Friday that it had rewritten a number of policies around the treatment of transgender students, issuing guidance for school districts to follow that ease up accommodations from the previous administration.

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Panel says Confederate memorial at Arlington cemetery should be dismantled

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The commission presented its final report on Confederate-honoring military bases and assets that should be renamed

An independent commission is recommending that the Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery be dismantled and taken down, as part of its final report to Congress on the renaming of military bases and assets that commemorate the Confederacy.

Panel members on Tuesday rolled out the final list of ships, base roads, buildings and other items that they said should be renamed. But unlike the commission’s recommendations earlier this year laying out new names for nine Army bases, there were no suggested names for the roughly 1,100 assets across the military that bear Confederate names.

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Virginia lawsuits indicate pattern of schools ignoring reported sexual assaults

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Two lawsuits are back in front of federal judges, drawing scrutiny to schools’ failure to support students who report assaults


A pair of lawsuits that for years has plagued Virginia’s largest school system with allegations that it ignored students’ accusations of sex assaults are back in front of federal judges.

One of the lawsuits includes allegations of horrific abuse suffered by a student at a Fairfax county middle school and was the basis for a 2014 federal investigation.

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‘Final resting place’: sacred Indigenous objects returned to Australia from US university

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Warlpiri delegation from Yuendumu, north-west of Alice Springs, has collected the seven objects from University of Virginia

Seven sacred Indigenous objects have been returned to central Australia from an American university.

A delegation of Warlpiri men from Yuendumu, north-west of Alice Springs, collected the objects after they were repatriated from the University of Virginia last week.

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Depp-Heard trial verdict: jury rules in favor of Johnny Depp

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The focus of the case was a 2018 editorial Heard wrote calling herself ‘a public figure representing domestic abuse’

The jury in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial has ruled in favor of Johnny Depp, finding that a Washington Post editorial she wrote defamed her former husband.

The jurors’ unanimous decision on Wednesday capped a seven-week trial in a Virginia courtroom which featured dozens of witnesses and experts weighing in on whether Depp was abusive to Heard – or vice versa – during their 15-month marriage.

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Depp-Heard trial: jury to resume deliberations on Tuesday

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Closing arguments ask jurors to consider what their verdict in defamation case will mean for domestic abuse victims

The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial headed toward its conclusion on Friday as the dueling parties offered closing arguments after a seven-week trial that has gripped public attention and become something of a litmus test for the state of gender relations.

Seven of 11 impaneled jurors selected for the trial when it started in April spent a couple of hours beginning to deliberate a verdict after the conclusion of those closing arguments, but they won’t return a verdict for a few days at least. They were sent home Friday afternoon until Tuesday in advance of Monday’s Memorial Day holiday.

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