by Laurence Hammack | Aug 9, 1998 | Prisons
POUND — The twisting road that climbs like an asphalt snake to the top of Red Onion Mountain is a dead end, and that seems only appropriate. At the end of Virginia 361 stands the gate of Red Onion State Prison. The newly constructed maze of concrete and steel is...
by Laurence Hammack | Aug 1, 1998 | Miscellaneous (mostly animals)
Sam was in a jam, the kind of predicament that can happen innocently enough to a 2-year-old and then follow him for the rest of his life. On a trip Friday afternoon to the Mill Mountain Star, Sam Kinsey checked out the view by sticking his head through the metal slats...
by Laurence Hammack | Mar 2, 1998 | Courts/legal issues
On the night of Feb. 22, outside the restaurants and nightspots of Roanoke’s City Market, Mary Arnold found her own entertainment. Arnold, a hard-drinking drifter whose life on the streets has produced more drunk-in-public arrests than can easily be counted,...
by Laurence Hammack | Nov 10, 1997 | Courts/legal issues
For longer than the Roanoke City Courthouse has stood at Church Avenue and Third Street, longer than the tenure of its most senior judge, longer than the time spent in prison by many a criminal who passed through the building, one thing has remained constant: Donald...
by Laurence Hammack | Sep 28, 1997 | Courts/legal issues
IT IS EARLY on a Tuesday night, and already the parking lot is filling up at Roanoke’s only striptease club. Like moths to a porch light, men are drawn to the hot pink sign on Franklin Road Southwest that marks the location of Girls, Girls, Girls of Virginia...