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Beer tanks were hauled from King George County to a
The new National Museum of the Marine Corps is particularly striking
Members of the Stafford High School football team file out of the cemetery after the burial of teammate Joey Roberson.
LEFT: Democrat Jim Webb claims victory in the U.S. Senate race. Webb beat incumbent Republican George Allen in November in a race decided by fewer than 8,000 votes. The victory assured Democrats control of the Senate.
Zachary Braswell, 10, mourns at the funeral of his brother, Baron Braswell II.
Relatives of a Spotsylvania dog-mauling victim react after the dogs' owner is convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
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Tulips rest in a tree scarred by fire in the February crash of a small plane near Stafford Regional Airport. In the background is a cross that crash victims' family members erected.
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Popular teenager killed at January dance party
When 16-year-old Baron Braswell II was stabbed to death at a Spotsylvania County dance party Jan. 20, the news reverberated throughout the community.
Braswell, a junior at Courtland High School, was a successful student and athlete. He excelled in football and planned to attend college.
Those plans were derailed by a single stab wound to the heart, which killed Braswell at the Howard Johnson motel on U.S. 1 at Four-Mile Fork. At least 100 teens had gathered there for a CD-release party.
Four Fredericksburg teens were convicted on assault charges. A fifth, 18-year-old Marvin M. Parker II, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He faces up to 40 years in prison at a sentencing hearing scheduled for Jan. 9.
The Courtland High football team dedicated its season to Braswell. The community raised money for a college scholarship fund in his honor. His mother organized a road race aimed at preventing further teen violence.
--Bill Freehling
Law changes after Spotsylvania dog attack that killed 82-year-old woman and her dog
A fatal mauling in Spotsylvania County led Virginia lawmakers to strengthen the state's laws involving serious dog attacks.
It was March 2005 when Dorothy Sullivan, 82, and her small Shih Tzu were mauled to death by a pack of roaming pit bulls outside their Partlow home. But the aftereffects continued into 2006.
Deanna Large, a 37-year-old Partlow woman, was sentenced in March to serve three years in prison. A jury last year decided that the pit bulls belonged to Large and convicted her of involuntary manslaughter.
She became the first person in Virginia history to be convicted of manslaughter as a result of a fatal dog attack.
The incident led the Virginia General Assembly to adopt a law this spring that would allow felony charges against dog owners if a person is seriously injured by a dog that is recklessly allowed to run free. It was dubbed the Dorothy Sullivan Memorial Bill.
--Bill Freehling
Stafford plane crash kills four prominent local men
The Fredericksburg area lost four well-known men when a small plane crashed Feb. 22 at Stafford Regional Airport.
The men were traveling back from a college basketball game in Winston-Salem, N.C., when the four-seater Columbia 400 aircraft crashed about 11:35 p.m. It was an overcast, rainy night.
Homebuilder Rick Potter, 49, attorney Albert "Buck" Jacoby, 56, Realtor Graham Green III, 57, and business owner Michael Gus Pappas, 46, were killed. The plane was Potter's, and it's believed that he was the pilot. Most of the plane, including the engine, was destroyed.
The wreckage was found the next morning 300 yards from the runway. The National Transportation Safety Board has not released the cause of the crash, the first at the airport since it opened in December 2001.
--Bill Freehling
State approves two new hospitals for Fredericksburg region
Few of the decisions made in 2006 touched more lives than the one by Dr. Robert Stroube, state health commissioner, to allow construction of new hospitals in Stafford and Spotsylvania counties.
In late summer, Stroube gave the go-ahead to MediCorp Health System for a 100-bed hospital just down the street from Stafford Courthouse, and to HCA Health Services of Virginia for a 130-bed hospital at the intersection of Interstate 95, U.S. 1 and the U.S. 17 Bypass.
The Stafford hospital is already under way. HCA has not closed on the 73 acres it wants, but a company official said recently that the land deal is "just a question of when."
Beginning sometime in 2009, the 235,000 residents of the two counties will be closer to medical services such as emergency care and diagnostic tests. They'll have new jobs and more doctors to choose from. And when they do visit Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg, parking should be a snap.
--Jim Hall
Jim Webb upsets George Allen in Senate race
Democrat Jim Webb eked out a win over incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. George Allen in one of the nation's most closely watched races this year.
Webb, a former Republican who served as assistant secretary of defense and secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan, won by less than 1 percentage point.
Allen conceded two days after an election night in which the results were too close to call, giving Democrats a one-vote majority in the U.S. Senate.
Allen once led the polls with 16 points and was considered a prime contender for the Republicans' 2008 presidential nomination.
Pundits credit part of Webb's victory to Allen's gaffes--including calling an Indian-American Webb volunteer "macaca," a term Allen said he made up but others said is an obscure racial slur.
The Democratic dark horse wasn't immune to criticism: Webb was labeled sexist and lambasted for writing novels with sexually explicit scenes.
--Natasha Altamirano
Who knew? Sober fun with beer
Great big trucks and beer.
An irresistible combination, especially if it involves more than a month of late-night convoys through the Fredericksburg area, good buddy.
That was the case with the biweekly transports of Coors Brewing Co. fermenting tanks from a staging area in King George County, through Fredericksburg, to the Shenandoah Valley last spring.
Several dozen of the giant 70,000-pound tanks--resembling 1950s-era comic-book rocket ships--were strapped to giant trucks for shipment to Coors' new brewing plant in Elkton.
The tank shipments snarled traffic and presented a logistical nightmare for local highway department workers and police, but provided viewing pleasure for hundreds of area night owls who stayed up to watch them go by.
--Rusty Dennen
Toddler's killer finally leads deputies to boy's remains
The skeletal remains of 3-year-old Tyreek Davis were pulled from the bottom of Lake Anna in February, nearly 17 months after the Caroline County boy mysteriously disappeared.
After he had already pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and felony child neglect, Herman Lee Black finally told detectives the location of Tyreek's body. He hoped his cooperation might result in a lighter sentence.
The body had been put into a large brake drum and dumped in 18 feet of water near the Harris Bridge at Lake Anna. Detectives pulled his body from the watery grave in February; the remains were later confirmed to be Tyreek's and buried.
"I guess God needed another angel," Tyreek's mother, Linette Davis, said at his funeral, "because that's what he got."
In June, Spotsylvania Circuit Judge Ann Hunter Simpson reconfirmed a 10-year prison sentence for Black.
Prosecutor Bill Neely had argued against reducing the sentence. "This man should not be rewarded for something he should have done from day one," he said.
Black had been dating Tyreek's mother. He was taking care of the boy on the September 2004 day he disappeared. He initially told Tyreek's mother and police that he'd left the child in his truck while he went into the Central Park Wal-Mart. He said that when he returned, the child was gone.
Black maintained that Tyreek died accidentally, and he dumped the body because he didn't think police would believe him.
--Bill Freehling
National Museum of the Marine Corps opens at Quantico
The National Museum of the Marine Corps opened on U.S. 1 near Quantico Marine Corps Base on Veterans Day weekend.
Marines whose service spanned more than 50 years of world conflicts came together Nov. 10 to celebrate the Corps' 231st birthday and to dedicate the museum.
About 15,000 people attended the festivities, including President George W. Bush.
The Marine Corps Heritage Foundation has raised approximately $60 million for the construction of the museum building, while the Marine Corps has provided approximately $30 million to fill out the interior of the museum, including artifact restoration and exhibit design. The foundation wants to raise another $70 million to finish the museum.
Museum planners estimate 400,000 people a year will tour the interactive exhibits. Much of what visitors read on the exhibits was written by Fredericksburg author and historian Robert K. Krick.
--Staff reports
Local football player collapses at practice and later dies
A Stafford High School football player died three days after he suffered heat stroke at his team's second practice of the day in August.
The death of 16-year-old Joey Roberson prompted school officials to interview coaches and players about the practice.
While they found that the coaches took appropriate steps to ensure their players' safety in the heat, administrators pointed out several areas in need of "further attention."
At a School Board meeting a little more than a week after Roberson's death, acting Superintendent Andre Nougaret pointed out ways to improve communication with parents.
In June, he said, athletic officials talked with parents about proper nutrition, hydration and rest for their student athletes.
But not all parents attend such meetings, he said, which is why coaches should start giving them information packets about these topics.
--Jeff Branscome
Five patients die after heart surgery complications; suits filed against hospital and drug company
Nine patients or their survivors filed suit in 2006 after experiencing complications from heart-bypass surgery at Mary Washington Hospital.
The suits were filed in Spotsylvania Circuit Court and name the hospital and Central Admixture Pharmacy Services, the manufacturer of a heart drug used during the surgeries.
The plaintiffs claim that they received bacteria-laden cardioplegia during surgeries in 2004 and 2005. As a result, six of the patients died and three were injured, according to the suits. The defendants deny responsibility and blame each other for the bad medicine.
The two sides have been discussing settlements. If there are no settlements, jury trials will begin in October 2007.
--Jim Hall
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Staff vote Free Lance-Star staff members cast separate ballots for the top 10 stories of 2006. Our picks mostly agreed with readers' votes, with two exceptions. 1. Braswell case 2. Webb defeats Allen 3. Two hospitals approved 4. Plane crash in Stafford 5. Deanna Large case 6. Patient deaths at MWH 7. Tyreek Davis' body found 8. City approves river 9. Civil War Preservation 10. National Marine Corps |
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City OKs easement In April, Fredericksburg's City Council approved a conservation easement to protect more than 4,200 acres the city owns along the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers. The vote came after more than two years of discussion, with opponents claiming that the easement would restrict the region's road-building options. The protected land runs 25 miles upstream, through Stafford, Spotsylvania, Culpeper, Orange and Fauquier counties, and the agreement includes provisions that would allow for future road needs. The Nature Conservancy gave the city $1.6 million in exchange for the easement. It holds the easement, along with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation and the Virginia Board of Game and Inland Fisheries. In 2007, Fredericksburg leaders will try to persuade the counties in which the land lies to join on as easement holders and contribute financially to the land's upkeep. They're also asking the General Assembly for more wardens in the local office of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries to help police the land. --Emily Battle
Trust preserves battlefield land Civil War battlefield preservation efforts had a banner year in 2006. Indeed, the Fredericksburg area was the site of the most significant acquisition nationally. The Civil War Preservation Trust, aided by Tricord Cos., Soldiers fought on the Another preservation achievement came at Chancellorsville, where 74 more acres were protected --Rusty Dennen |
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1. Braswell case 2. Deanna Large case 3. (tie) Stafford plane crash kills four State approves two hospitals 5. Jim Webb defeats George Allen 6. Coors beer tanks move through region 7. Tyreek Davis' body found 8. National Marine Corps museum opens 9. Stafford High football player Joey Roberson dies after collapsing at practice 10. Patient deaths at Mary Washington Hospital |
MORE INSIDE FOR THE REST OF READERS' TOP 10 STORIES OF 2006, SEE PAGE C7. |
| MORE ON 2006
The AP's top 10 stories Dave Barry pokes fun at the year's headlines. Page F1 |
