A Wilkesboro man has been arrested, and faces charges on nearly 20 burglaries at homes in Wilkes and Ashe counties over the past few months. Deputies from Ashe and Wilkes counties along with Wilkesboro and North Wilkesboro Police, raided a house at 515 Corporation in in Wilkesboro this week, executing a search warrant issued by a judge in Ashe County.



During the raid, Wilkes county deputies recovered property believed to have been stolen in at least a dozen recent burglaries -- so much property they haven't released a full list of it because they're still contacting the owners to come identify it. Ashe county deputies identified property from four break-ins they've been investigating recently, and Wilkesboro and North Wilkesboro police believe each agency has solved at least one recent burglary as well.



Gene Wayne Haymond, who turns 36 next weekend, is being held in Ashe county, and is likely to face multiple charges. Deputies and officers with all four agencies involved continue their investigation of the case.

Although deputies celebrate the capture of a man believed to have committed at least a dozen burglaries in Wilkes, the parade of people suffering break-ins continues unabated. A storage unit on Skyline Road was broken into recenly, and almost five-thousand dollars woth of automotive parts taken. Danny Bell reported the crime yesterday afternoon, after he had tracked down quite a bit of information to lead deputies to the suspected burglars.



Neighbors told Bell they had seen a blue Chevy S-10 make several trips to the unit in recent days, and when he had a list of items taken, he went searching at local recycling places. He found the stolen items at two scrap yards. Both had issued checks to 27-year old North Wilkesboro man, who they said har arrived in a blue Checy S-10 along with another man. Deputies have not released the name of either man. The thieves stole 13 radiators, four sets of wheels and tires, along with fan shrouds, a transmission and a cooling fan. Deputies continue their investigation.

Several people are listed as suspects in a series of break-ins at renal mobile homes in Wilkes owned by a Boone company. Roger Wright reported the burglaries to the sheriff's office Wednesday. He said several homes at Byrd Ridge Terrace had been broken into, and copper wiring was cut out. In other homes, the thieves removed furniture and fixtures, and the tie downs and underpinnings on one of the homes was stolen. Some of the other residents of the park identified at least three suspects, including 17-year old Bradley Myron Little, who has some previous history with law enforcement. Total value of the loss is six-thousand dollars. The case remains under investigation.

Mailbox vandals hit a rural Wilkes homeowner for the second time this week, this time damaging the mailbox beyond repair. The vandalism was reported Saturday morning, the day bevore a vandal or more than one ran down another rural road with a bat hanging out of the car and whacked ten mailboxes. In this case, the Miller's Creek woman says the kids damaged the box enough she's having to replace it, at a cost of about 20-dollars.

A unit of Army National Guard soldiers based in western North Carolina will stay in Iraq for up to four months beyond its one-year deployment as part of President Bush's troop buildup plan. The 1451st Transportation Company, headquartered in Boone, is the first National Guard unit in the state to be affected by the plan Bush announced two weeks ago. The soldiers were expected to return home in March or April, but under a 125-day extension they could arrive back as late as August. The unit, which has detachment headquarters in Morganton and Marion, has 175 soldiers from 10 counties mostly in the western part of the state. The unit's soldiers move supplies around Iraq and provide security for convoys. Four soldiers in the unit have been wounded in combat.



The 1451st is in its first deployment to Iraq though 39 of its soldiers had been deployed to the country before. The unit is attached to a larger National Guard unit in Minnesota.

With dozens of famous drivers, car owners and crew chiefs on hand, NASCAR broke ground on its long-awaited Hall of Fame on Thursday, promising to properly honor its rich history.



Seven-time Cup series champion Richard Petty joined NASCAR president Mike Helton and others in moving the first clumps of red clay for the $107.5 million facility that is to open by the spring of 2010. They used shovels designed to look like pit crew gas cans amid the roar of engines from replica cars of Petty and Dale Earnhardt.

A bomb threat Wednesday at West Wilkes High School means all but one of the county's high schools has been threatened this year. And it looks like all the threats are the work of one misguided teen. Sheriff's deputies are not releasing the name of the 13-year old boy. Wednesday's threat was phoned in to West Wilkes about 10:35 a-m. A male caller told the secretary who answered the phone there was a bomb in the school, set to go off soon. The school reacted according to district protocol and evacuated students, staff and visitors until the building could be searched. A deputy walked thorough the school with two administrators and found nothing. After about an hour outside, everyone was let back in the building.



Later in the day, the unidentified teen confessed to making the threat, and to similar threats late last year on East Wilkes High School and Wilkes Central Middle School. The boy bragged to several friends about Wednesday's threat, and they ratted him out to the principal. The boy was taken into custody and will be handled by the juvenile court system. According ot the crime report, he is being detained in Taylorsville for the rest of this week.

Sheriff deputies say a 1993 Olds Delta 88 was stolen this week from a home on Poplar Springs Road. Joe Allan Davis reported the theft Wednesday evening. He says a woman who intended to buy the car "borrowed" it Wednesday afternoon and hasn't been seen since. He was able to give deputies the woman's nae and phone number -- at least what came up on caller ID when she phoned him about buying the car. It's described as a Metallic Blue, 4-dour Delta 88, 1993 model. Deputies are still trying to contact the woman.

A concert celebrating Black History month will be held tomorrow at First United Methodist Church in North Wilkesboro at 7 pm. The concert is free to the public. The three choirs participating are: New Damascus Baptist Church choir, Pleasant Hill Baptist Church choir and Rickard Chapel Choir.



The Pleasant Hill Baptist Church choir was organized in 1992 under the leadership of Reverend Coot Gilreath, Jr.



The New Damascus Baptist Church choir sings at area revivals with pastor, Reverend James Little and other special services.



Rickard Chapel is one of the three African Methodist Episcopal Zion churches located in Wilkes County. The congregation currently has 100 active members.



The concert is sponsored in part by the Cultural Arts Council of Wilkes and the North Carolina Arts Council, a state agency, through Grassroots Funding. The Cultural Arts Council’s mission is to foster, promote and increase public knowledge and appreciation of the arts and cultural activities in Wilkes County.

The arrests of two Wilkes men last weekend started normally enough. Two deputies on their way to look for a couple of people wanted for a crime happened across the men driving on a rural road. The deputies stopped 27-year old Michael Yourgevidge and 29-year old John McCrimmon. When one of the deputies ran Yourgevidge's driver's license, he found it had been revoked. Then things started down hill. A search of Yourgevidge turned up three pills of Percocet in his pocket, without an associated prescription bottle. And he was wanted for questioning in connection with a recent burglary.



The deputy cuffed Yourgevidge and searched McCrimmon, who also was found to be carrying drugs. He had a baggie of marijuana, a packet of rolling papers, and seven Percocet pills. He was arrested and charged with multiple drug crimes, while Yourgevidge faces a drug charge along with one of driving on a revoked license.

A Boomer woman suffered minor injuries during a fight with her husband early yesterday morning. Adrienne Hall tells sheriff deputies her husband George came home about 1 a-m, apparently drunk, and started in on her. First he threw a soda across the room and screamed at her to clean up the mess. Then he started pushing her around, yelling that she wasn't doing the job right. She says she ran into her mother-in-law's room, with him following. He then balled up his fist and hit her twice, according to both her and his mother, who saw the attack. A deputy served the 25-year old Hall with a warrant for assault on a woman.

A car and a small school bus collided this morning at Rock Creek Road and Mountain View Road, critically injuring one person in the car and causing minor injuries for the children on the bus.



I spoke with Wilkes EMS a few minutes ago. They tell me the driver of the car, a man, was airlifted to Baptist in Winston-Salem, and his passenger was taken to Wilkes Regional by ambulance with minor injuries. Six children were also transported to WRMC to be checked out, but all their injuries are reported to be minor.



It did take some time to free the driver of the car, and with the number of injured people, the scene was pretty chaotic for about forty-five minutes. The Highway Patrol is investigating the wreck, and we expect to talk with them later in the day to find out how it happened.



The bus has been reported to be one from the Blue Ridge Opportunity Commission. The person I spoke with at Wilkes EMS was not able to confirm that, but did say it was one of the small buses where the children all wear five-point harness seat belts. He believes that is part of the reason injuries were so minor.

Sheriff deputies are following up on a gas drive-off reported Sunday evening at a Wilkes convenience store. The clerk at Pure for Sure in Purlear tells deputies someone drove up in a silver, late 80's model 4-door Dodge car about 6 in the evening. The woman pumped a little over 24-dollars worth of gas, jumped in the car and took off without paying. The clerk described the thief as a white woman, about 5-4, with black hair. She was unable to get a tag number form the car, and did not know the woman. The drive-off remains under investigation.

It wasn't for a lack of effort, but a thief didn't get away with anything after they broke into a local convenience store last week. Bobby Eller says he went to his store in Ferguson early last week to open up, and found the lock on the front door had been jimmied. He looked through the store and found one floor panel that had apparently been pried up, but nothing take from anywhere in the building. He tells sheriff deputies he wonders if anyone actually made it into the building, and he has no idea who may have tried to break in. There was no security tape. The investigation is still listed as open.

Sheriff deputies are looking for a stolen pickup truck. Ricky Sheets called deputies last Saturday after he thought there was no place else to turn. He'd left his pickup on the side of Suncrest Orchard Road back on the 6th, after it broke down. When he was finally able to get back to it two weeks later, the pickup was gone.



Before calling the sheriff's office, Sheets had checked with the person who owned the property next to the road, and with the highway patrol, and with all the local towing companies. None knew anything about the truck. It's a white 1971 Ford F-150 pickup.



Deputies have noted the tag number and put it in the national crime database in case the pickup shows up in the future.

A Claremont man died in a freak accident just the far side of the Caldwell/Wilkes county line in Boomer over the weekend. 33-year old Thomas Dennis Dillard was walking along the side of the road and was killed when a Chevy Tahoe driven by his girlfriend fliped and rolled over on him. According to the highway patrol, what caused the S-U-V to flip is the real question. They know Dillard and Lisa marie Caroll were having an argument, and that both were possibly intoxicated. They know, because Dillard was under the truck that he was outside of it when the incident happened. But they can't tell if Caroll meant to hit Dillard or if he'd jumped up on the running board and scared her, making her lose control of the Tahoe.



It happened along Hollow Springs Circle, off Highway 18, early Sunday morning. The couple had been at a Wilkes county bar earlier in the evening. After being treated at Caldwell Memorial Hospital, Carroll was arrested on a reckless driving charge and for driving while intoxicated. More charges may be forthcoming.

One can only guess there's probably more to this than meets the eye. But even the story sheriff's deputies are releasing is a little...well, odd. It starts early Sunday morning, about 4:30am, when a man who lives on Honeysuckle Drive says someone else came up to his door and asked if he wanted to buy some tools.



The gentleman told his visitor, no thanks, he wasn't interested. "Well," the visitor asks, "could you give me a ride somewhere then?" No can-do, because the man doesn't have a driver's license. With that, he turned around and walked back in the house -- only to hear someone starting the car outside, which belongs to his mother. It's unclear if she was there at the time, or just how the car got from her address in Roaring River to his north of North Wilkesboro -- it's about eight and a half miles as the crow flies.



The young man who wanted to sell the tools had a young woman with him, too, according to the man. The man does know the name of the person who was standing on his porch at 4:30 on a Sunday morning and allegedly took off with his mom's car -- but deputies aren't releasing the 19 year-old's name. He lives not far down the road. Oh, and the tools -- four boxes full of them were left on the front porch, along with a box decorated with flowers that, according to deputies, contained "assorted toiletry items."

More than 13-hundred dollars worth of property was stolen, and a door damaged to the tune of 350-dollars, during a break-in reported late Saturday evening. Darrell Lawrence called deputies around 10-pm, saying he had come home from a five-hour trip to find his front door kicked in and a number of items missing. Among the out of place items was a 32-inch TV, which was recovered outside, not far from the front door. Deputies were able to lift a few fingerprints after they dusted the house, but so far have no one to match them to. Mr. Lawrence reported a 5-foot-7-inch man sporting a goatee was at his house just before he left, but he did not know the man's name. Deputies are continuing their investigation.

Yet another business, this time in Hays, reports thieves have stolen an expesive roll of copper wire. Sheriff deputies say the high resale value of copper is the reason the county had been seing so much stolen recently. In this case, the thief opened the door to a chicken house and made off with an 800 to 1-thousand-foot roll of copper wire worth about 800 dollars. The burglar also took some water pipe, valued at 300-dollars. Deputies have released no further information about the case.

There's really not much better way to summarize this next story, but to say someone drove down a Wilkes road over the weekend with a ball bat hanging out the window of their car. Sheriff deputies took two reports of mailbox vandalism from homes near one another as the sun came up Sunday morning.



The first came from Steven Soots on Elledge Mill Road, the second minutes later from Robert Wagner on Bethany Ford Road. A deputy checking out the situation found eight additional mailboxes had been battered with a bat or a pipe during the night. Damage was noted in the 400 block of Elledge Mill Road, along with two boxes in the 700 block, two in the 800 block, one in the 900 block, one in the 1100 block and one in the 1400 block.



As frequently happens in this type of case, no one reports hearing anything or even noticing until the sun came up Sunday morning.

Wilkes County Sheriff Deputies are beginning their investigation of a crime that's reported to have happened Christmas weekend. But the victim didn't report the crime until some kids found the box with is property in it, late last week. Claude Johnson lives near Hays. He says he remembers a metal box containing about 65-hundred dollars worth of property was in his home the Saturday before Christmas, but it had disappeared by December 26th.



The box contained a knife collection numbering more than 125 pieces, and valued at nearly 52-hundred dollars, along with rings, tools and memorabilia -- and several morphine patches. That last part is important, because Johnson says a relative told him a person, whose name is not being released, threw what he called a "pill and morhine party" at a home near Airport Road and Rock Creek Road shortly after Christmas. Deputies are still conducting their investigation into the theft and whether the party is related to it.

Local Trooper Hurt on the Job

A North Carolina highway patrol trooper who was investigating a four-wheeler wreck Saturday became pinned between one of the four-wheelers and his car, breaking his leg in two places. Trooper Kyle Barber was working the wreck along White Plains Road Saturday afternoon along with trooper Chris Anderson.



The two ATV's had collided, but neither rider had suffered more than scratched and bruises. One of the four-wheelers had ended up still in the road. According to Trooper Anderson, Trooper Barber was looking at a rifle attached to one of the four-wheelers, and asked one of the men involved in the crash to move the other ATV out of the road.



Charlie Alexander climbed aboard the four-wheeler and started it up,not remembering it was still in gear. The four-wheeler took off, throwing Alexander off, hitting Anderson's patrol car, and pinning Barber to his patrol car. Anderson, who was questioning Charles Holloway in his cruiser, jumped out of the car and shut off the ATV, rolling it back off Barber and calling for a rescue helicopter.



Holloway was already under arrest for impaired driving in relation to the earlier accident. He also faces other charges, and was booked into the Wilkes County Jail on a 2-thousand dollar bond. Alexander will likely face reckless driving charges in relation to the accident that injured Trooper Barber.



Chase Near Mt. Airy Ends with Driver Drowning

A much different outcome for an incident involving troopers near Mount Airy. In spite of a heroic effort by two men who saw a car fleeing from troopers plunge into a pond, the driver drowned before he could be pulled from the car. The Highway Patrol says 45-year old Bobby Junior Ross of Lowgap sped off from a trooper on I-74 that had tried to pull him over for drunken driving just before 10 Saturday night.



After a several mile chase that included Ross blasting through an old car wash with his Taurus and that at times reached 75 miles an hour, Ross lost control and sped into a field. Troopers say he drove another quarter mile, into the Stonecroft subdivision, and right into the water. The car came to rest almost int he middle of the pond.



Two men who heard the commotion saw the car, and grabbed a tire iron to break out hte back window. But the car sank quickly, and they could not find Ross beneath the murky water. The rescuers say the driver told them he wasn't belted in, but he couldn't swim to the surface. An autopsy will be performed to see if there's anything more to Ross's death than the drowning. A supervisor says the trooper was justfified in continuing the pursuit because of the danger Ross posed to other drivers.



Cross Words, Big Damage

A small fight started in a local bar ended with major damage to a Boomer man's car. Wilkesboro Police say they were called to Dooleys last weekend, after Mike Horton and another man, identified by witnesses as Brandon Foster, got into a fight. According to the witnesses, after the disagreement, Foster went outside and repeatedly kicked the driver's door of Horton's car. After he tired of doing that, they say, he left. According to the police report, the damage will cost about 8-thousand dollars to repair.



Local Man Thinks He Was Scammed

"Please tell everybody, but don't tell 'em who it happened to!" That's the request of a Wilkes man after he believes he was the victim of a scam recently. The elderly man received a phone call from an unidentified woman who asked him if he would like to receive free shoes meant for people with diabetes. The victim tells police he had a nice conversation with the lady and answered several other questions -- including giving the woman his social security number. After he did, the caller simply hung up.



Then the victim realized it may have been nothing but a ploy to get his personal information. So he called the social security administration, which told him it would put a "flag" on his account so no one could open accounts with it. He also called the sheriff office to report the incident, and asked them to publicize it -- but to leave his name off.