Search for lost boy topped 2011 headlines
Posted on Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 1:00 pm
A search for a lost Caroline boy, made complicated by the fact that he is autistic, was the top story of 2011.
The search for Robert Wood Jr. headed a list of the top 10 news stories for Caroline County for the year just ended.
The Progress staff reviewed a list of over two dozen stories that were culled from a year of headlines and picked the top 10, listing them in order of priority.
No. 2 on the list was the spectacular crash of a discount bus on Interstate 95 that killed 4 people and injured 53 others. No. 3 was an earthquake – its epicenter in Louisa County – that rattled the Eastern Seaboard, including Caroline.
Rounding out the top five stories was the request by Vulcan Materials and Black Marsh Farm for a permit to allow sand and gravel mining, and the double-whammy of back-to-back storms that caused widespread wind damage and flooding.
The other top stories of the year, in order, were the groundbreaking for a YMCA, the case of former deputy Clyde Davenport, how redistricting and local elections reshaped county government, the mysterious news that surfaced after the death of a Caroline man, and a shooting incident on I-95 involving a State Trooper.
What follows is a summary of each of the top 10 stories of 2011.
1. Hunt for Robert Wood Jr. galvanized region
Robert “Robbie” Wood Jr., a younger brother, their father, and their father’s girlfriend were walking in North Anna Battlefield Park in Hanover County, just west of Doswell, on a Sunday afternoon in October.
The young Wood, 9, who is autistic and not able to communicate verbally, ran off and became lost. Authorities were notified and began looking for him.
The disappearance of the Ruther Glen boy galvanized the region. In the days that followed, several thousand volunteers showed up to help search, reporting for duty at a staging area at King’s Dominion. The search was overseen by the Hanover County Sheriff’s Office.
A lone Good Samaritan who was not part of the search effort found the boy in a nearby quarry the following Friday. He had spent five nights alone in the area.
Robbie, who was hospitalized following his ordeal, suffered numerous scrapes and had a hole in his esophagus, probably from something he tried to eat.
The incident called attention to a service provided by the Caroline Sheriff’s Office and other law enforcement agencies. They can provide small transmitters, worn like a wristwatch or bracelet, that can be used to find and locate individuals with Alzheimer’s disease or a mental disability who become lost. The Timber’s Restaurant in Ladysmith recently held a benefit event to raise money for the program.
2. Bus wrecks on I-95
A discount bus operated by Sky Express en route from Greensboro, N.C. to New York City veered off Interstate 95 and crashed near the Carmel Church exit shortly before 5 a.m. on May 31. Four women were killed, and all of the remaining 53 passengers suffered injuries.
All northbound lanes on I-95 were closed for several hours.
Virginia State Police determined that the accident was caused by driver fatigue. Kin Yiu Cheung, 37, of Flushing, N.Y., originally was charged with reckless driving and held in the Pamunkey Regional Jail.
Cheung additionally was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, and Caroline Circuit Court Judge Joseph Ellis later refused to set a bond for him because he considered Cheung a risk to flee. Cheung is scheduled to on trial later this month.
On the day of the accident, federal regulators shut down the bus company, which was headquartered in Charlotte, N.C.
In the national news for weeks, the accident prompted Congress to consider increased safety regulations for passenger buses.
3. Earthquake shakes things up
An earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter Scale, with its epicenter in Louisa County, struck just before 2 p.m. Aug. 23. It lasted about 15 seconds and was felt up and down the East Coast.
In Caroline, the quake caused minor cracks at Caroline High School, Caroline Middle School, and the School Board annex building.
In the county administration building on Main Street in Bowling Green, a light fixture fell, and the building was briefly evacuated. County employees were sent home early as a precaution.
The quake sent some people scurrying out of buildings and spilled goods off the shelves of retailers.
At A&M Hardware on Main Street in Bowling Green, manager Jared Hageman noticed the light fixtures swaying back and forth and felt the floor tremble. “It was shaking pretty bad,” he said.
Hageman thought at first the cause of the commotion might be a big truck traveling down Main Street. He looked out the window. “You could see the road move,” he said.
4. Mining permit spurs controversy
Black Marsh Farm and Vulcan Materials generated plenty of headlines in 2011.
Albert Wachtmeister and Vulcan applied for a permit to allow sand and gravel mining on his farm, which is located on the remote Skinker’s Neck area – surrounded on three sides by the Rappahannock River – in the Rappahannock Academy community.
The request sparked controversy, pitting environmentalists and some of Wachtmeister’s neighbors against those who favor property rights. The public debate raged through two lengthy public hearings, one before the county’s Planning Commission and a second later before the Board of Supervisors.
The Planning Commission voted 3-1 to recommend the Board of Supervisors deny the permit request, but the supervisors approved it by a 3-2 vote in August.
It’s not the end of the matter, however. The Friends of the Rappahannock, a conservation organization, joined with a small handful of nearby property owners in filing a lawsuit in Caroline Circuit Court that seeks to invalidate the permit. An initial hearing was held on the lawsuit in December, and Judge Joseph will rule in 2012 whether the lawsuit will proceed and what claims will be contested.
Meanwhile, Vulcan must obtain a permit from the state Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy.
The county permit will allow mining up to 20 years on 340 acres of Wachtmeister’s 541-acre farm. Vulcan plans to use two access points on the river for barges – one to bring in equipment and another to ship out sand and gravel. The property would be reclaimed as the mining progresses.
According to Vulcan, the sand and gravel mining operations will create 14 jobs and generate about $100,000 in tax revenue annually to Caroline.
5. Storms cause wind damage, flooding
Within weeks after the earthquake, two powerful storms working their way north passed through central Virginia, and Caroline suffered the impacts of both.
Hurricane Irene hit first on Aug. 27. High winds sent trees across power lines, knocking them down and disrupting electric power to more than 2,000 homes in Caroline; many homes were still without power by the middle of the following week.
The fallen trees also blocked roads and damaged homes. One of the hardest hit areas was the Portobago Bay neighborhood off U.S. 17 south of Port Royal. Five home in the community suffered nearly $350,000 in damages.
Just over a week later, the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee swept through the region overnight Sept. 8-9. Heavy rainfall caused widespread flooding, closing roads and creating hazards. At the height of the flooding, about 30 roads in Caroline were closed – most because of high water, but some because of damage.
Marocossic Creek flooded, overflowing Sparta Road. The nearby Sparta Volunteer Fire Department station was evacuated, and the station suffered water damage.
Floodwaters washed out roads in several places. A 25-foot section of Sparta Road washed out near the intersection of Motley Road, Dodge City Road was washed out between Liberty Road and Passing Road, and Passing Road and Coleman Town Road were washed out.
Three homes suffered minor flood damage and about 10 people had to be rescued or helped from their vehicles in floodwaters that night.
6. A YMCA for Caroline
The YMCA is coming to Caroline. A small group of Caroline County and regional YMCA officials gathered in December to break ground.
The building will be constructed on a 10-acre site on Durrette Road next to Ladysmith Village; the work is expected to begin in early 2012 and take 10-12 months to complete. The land was donated by Newland Communities, developers of Ladysmith Village.
The 41,000-square-foot facility will feature a gym, fitness center and an aquatic center with two pools.
The project will cost about $5 million. The Caroline County Board of Supervisors approved interim financing for the project, but a capital campaign being led by Supervisor Wayne Acors and the YMCA will raise funds to pay for the building along with proffers from Ladysmith Village. Union Bank donated $175,000 to help launch he drive.
The capital campaign will take two or three years, but the majority of the funds will be raised within the first 18 months, said Bernard Reiley, executive director of the Rappahannock YMCA.
7. Davenport case back in news
The case of former deputy Clyde Davenport was back in the new in 2011.
In September, Caroline Circuit Court Judge Joseph Ellis granted a defense motion to quash the latest indictments against Davenport.
In addition, Ellis also took the unusual step of removing both attorneys in the case – Commonwealth’s Attorney Tony Spencer and Richmond defense attorney John LaFratta.
Ellis essentially said the Davenport case had turned into a bitter, personal contest of wills between Spencer and LaFratta. He said their personal animosity “overwhelmed” their ability to try the case fairly.
Ellis later appointed George Elsasser, an assistant commonwealth’s attorney for Stafford County, to lead the prosecution against Davenport and Richmond defense attorney Cary Bowen to defend him. He is scheduled to be tried again May 23-25.
The ruling by Ellis quashed indictments handed down in July charging Davenport with five counts of forcible sodomy, which is punishable by life in prison. Davenport was accused of sexually assaulting his stepson when the victim was a boy.
Davenport is scheduled to be re-tried on other charges that arose from the case. In his first trial in September 2010, a jury found him guilty of malicious wounding and child abuse resulting in serious injury and recommended the maximum penalty of 30 years in prison plus steep fines.
However, Ellis declared a mistrial in the case in May because of statements Spencer made during the course of the trial.
8. Elections remake School Board
The county went through redistricting in 2011, and the Board of Supervisors chose to add a sixth voting district, the Western Caroline District. In addition, it was an election year.
One of the most significant outcomes of the local elections was the nearly completely revamping of the School Board.
The new board, whose members were just recently sworn into office, along with other elected officials, contains only one incumbent – chairman Mack Wright Jr., who was appointed in 2008 and now represents the Reed Church District.
The other members are all new with one caveat. George Spaulding, representing the Bowling Green District, has served on the School Board in the past.
The other members of the board are Shawn Kelley of the Madison District, Nancy Carson of the Mattaponi District, Tinka Harris of the Port Royal District, and Mary Anderson representing the Western Caroline District.
In addition to the new seat on the board created by the Western Caroline District, two incumbents, Valerie Fells and Tami Redding, chose not to seek re-election and two more, Wendell Sims and Margaret Watkins, were defeated in the election.
9. Who was Leo Dubois?
Leo Dubois lived in Caroline for almost 40 years. His wife, neighbors, former co-workers at G & G Ace Hardware, and others knew him as a friendly, hard-working man.
After his death at age 83 on July 5, however, news surfaced that he had escaped in the 1970s while serving a 40-year prison sentence for first-degree murder in North Carolina.
Dubois was sentenced to life in prison in 1962 for the death of Davis Preston Williams, 57. In 1972, his sentence was commuted to 40 years. He escaped in June 1974 from the U.S.S. North Carolina Memorial in Wilmington, where he and other inmates were on a work detail, painting and participating in other tasks to maintain the old battleship as a tourist attraction.
The revelations about his past came to light because a copy of the newspaper obituary was faxed anonymously along with his N.C. offender record to prison officials, according to Keith Acree, a spokesman for the North Caroline Department of Corrections.
The Caroline Sheriff’s Office provided North Carolina prison officials with fingerprints taken from Dubois in connection with his arrest for petit larceny in 1979. Technicians positively matched the fingerprints of Dubois on file with the Department of Corrections with the fingerprints from the 1979 case in Caroline County.
Dubois who lived with his wife, Margaret, on Beverly Run near the southeast edge of Fort A.P. Hill, was variously describe by people in Caroline who knew him as “a great guy,” “a very nice neighbor,” and “a good old country boy.”
10. Wounded trooper kills assailant
Near the close of the year, a Virginia State Trooper, wounded by his own gun during a struggle with a man he had placed in his patrol car, returned fire with a second weapon and fatally wounded his assailant.
The sudden drama unfolded quickly in the officer’s patrol car in Caroline County while he was parked on the southbound shoulder of Interstate 95 a couple of miles south of the Thornburg exit. The incident occurred on a Thursday afternoon in early December.
The man, who died at Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg the next morning, was identified as Herbert J. Wheeler Jr., 32, of Chesterfield.
The officer, Senior Trooper Michael H. Hamer, 51, suffered a gunshot wound to the leg and was hospitalized at Mary Washington. He underwent surgery for his wound and was released several days later.
Wheeler had been accused of assaulting his young son and also had a child custody hearing pending. State Police declined to speculate whether the assault case or the custody hearing had any bearing on Wheeler’s actions on the afternoon of the shooting in early December.
After the shooting, Hamer got out of his patrol car, severely bleeding, and three good Samaritans came to his aid.
Dozens of law enforcement officers immediately swarmed to the scene, and police quickly closed off the southbound lanes at the Thornburg exit in order to investigate the shooting. A medivac helicopter, used to transport Wheeler, landed on the highway just south of the police vehicles. The southbound lanes were closed for several hours, and traffic backed up about 10 miles.
