Virginia State Police believe that Freddy Hawks Jr. killed Amanda Brown and Andrew “Andy” Ashworth before turning the gun on himself in the front yard of a home on Englewood Road in the Baywood area of Grayson County.

Two groups of Wythe County students got an exciting reply Thursday to mail they sent to U.S. Navy Seabees serving in Iraq when the sailors themselves showed up in their classrooms.
In time for Thanksgiving 2007, three kindergarten classes at Sheffey Elementary School sent care packages to a Seabees battalion. Then for Christmas 2007, the sailors got another surprise in the mail when they received letters from three Spiller Elementary School classes.

The Sunny Daze saga added another chapter last week as Judge Josiah T. Showalter Jr. granted a continuance of the convenience store owners’ Wythe County Circuit Court jury trial that was scheduled to take place last Thursday morning.

Rising cost had local farmers talking on Saturday at the annual meeting of the Southwest Virginia Agricultural Association in Abingdon, the region’s largest agriculture political action committee.
“I’m concerned about what we’ve been doing in the past, and whether that’s going to work in the future,“ said Tim Sutphin, a Pulaski County beef producer who received a farm management award at the meeting. “It looks like in the future we’re going to have to go back to a forage-based system.“

A Wytheville man who refused medical treatment after a wreck last week has been admitted to a North Carolina hospital with a brain injury. Bobby Joe Hash, 22, of Stony Fork Road is being treated for cranial bruising and bleeding.

A partnership between Johnston Memorial Hospital in Abingdon and Mountain States Health Alliance won’t change plans to build a new hospital in Smyth County, according to Smyth County Community Hospital CEO Lindy White.

The pleasant experience of moving to a new house has become a nightmare for a Wytheville family. From a black ball in the front yard to a pending lawsuit, the prospect of home sweet home has dimmed for Eddie and Sherry Williams.

Two wrongs don’t make a right – and late Wednesday afternoon they turned into 18 years in prison for one local man.

Johnston Memorial Hospital plans to hold a news conference at 3 p.m. today to make an announcement that will, according to a press release “dramatically impact the future of health care in Southwest Virginia.”

“I’m Jonathan Graham, and I’m an alcoholic and I’m an addict.”
The confession came from the witness stand Wednesday afternoon as the 37-year-old Graham asked his sentencing judge to give him another chance.