He didn’t suffer a heroic death in the line of duty, but friends and family from the community, as well as officers from five local law enforcement departments showed up to memorialize and remember six year old canine officer Dan, who died earlier this week in Roanoke Rapids.
The city will get help from the engineering firm which did the Rochelle Park restoration on which plants can be safely trimmed without compromising the erosion control measures done for the project.
Several people in the neighborhood have complained the restoration effort, designed to rid the park of dangerous ditches up to 10 feet deep and control years of erosion, have made the park an eyesore. They have also complained the wooden fence surrounding the riparian buffer is unsightly.
Two men allegedly involved in a roofing scam in Roanoke Rapids are being held in the Edgecombe County Jail for exploitation of the elderly.
Investigation by Roanoke Rapids police Detective Frankie Griffin led to warrants being served in Edgecombe County for Vincent Craig Moore, 38, and Jeffery Carmichael, 43.
Vickie Myrick Camp, 55, of Littleton, died Tuesday, July 27, 2010, peacefully at her home after fighting a battle with cancer, surrounded by her loving family.
Jill Glover Upshaw, 49, died Saturday, July 24, 2010 at Nash General Hospital in Rocky Mount.
Edwina Victoria Clay Taylor, 54, of 10713 Maple Ridge Drive, Spotsylvania, Virginia, died Sunday, July 25, 2010, in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina.
Jack E. Grant, 90, of 430 Jefferson Street, died Saturday, July 24, 2010 at his home.
Mrs. Shirley Denise Mercer, 52, of Rocky Mount, NC, died on Wednesday, July 21, 2010.
Brian Baker’s future is being groomed on Lake Gaston.
It is a future which could take the 16-year-old Roanoke Rapids High School junior to a professional career in the increasingly popular world of wakesurfing, a sport where the surfer rides a wake created by a specialized boat that takes the rider on a trip for as long as their endurance holds out.
A Roanoke Rapids man was arrested yesterday for kidnapping his girlfriend, nailing the door shut and then threatening to kill her, Roanoke Rapids Police Chief Jeff Hinton said in a press release today.
Cody Ryan Roundtree,18, was arrested around 11:30 a.m. and charged with first-degree kidnapping, assault by strangulation, assault on female and communicating threats. He was jailed on $75,000 bond.
Hinton said the arrest stems from a domestic dispute with his girlfriend at their Chockyotte Street residence.
Roundtree allegedly forcibly took his girlfriend into the residence, nailed the door shut, choked her and threatened to kill her.
In his 24 years, Roanoke Rapids Public Works Director Richard Parnell has never seen anything like it: Ten storm grates stolen from city streets, 28 from the River’s Edge subdivision — 24 grates and four manhole covers — and 12 taken from Carolina Crossroads.
“The cost of metal is going back up,” Parnell said yesterday. “I’m guessing they’re cutting them up and hiding them in other junk.”
He is referring to metal thieves and It takes effort to steal the grates, the public works director said. Many times when the city has to remove them employees use a backhoe because they are so heavy. “It’s not something you just take off the side of the road. It really takes two people to pick them up.”
The grates probably weigh between 100 to 150 pounds, Parnell said, and there only a few solutions to making them theft resistant. “We don’t like to weld them down or solder them,” he said, because it makes maintenance difficult. There are locking mechanisms but they are more expensive than what the city buys.
Another problem when buying replacement grates is they come as one unit, forcing the city to take them apart to use only the parts they need.
They cost between $185 to $235 so the city will have to spend approximately $2,400 to replace the ones stolen off city streets.
River’s Edge will have to pay about $5,000 for its own grates and the state will most likely pay for the ones at Carolina Crossroads, Parnell said.
Replacing the grates is something the city has to do because of the liability it presents, he said. “We don’t want someone walking at dusk and stepping in them.”
The River’s Edge storm drainage system is 18- to 20-feet deep where the grates were stolen, he said.
“It’s a balance between safety and liability,” Parnell said.
The Roanoke Rapids Police Department continues to investigate the thefts. Anyone with information is encouraged to call the police department at 252-533-2810 or Halifax County Crimestoppers at 252-583-4444.
The man charged in the slaying of one of six women found dead over the past four years in rural Edgecombe County lived in Scotland Neck for eight months, the town’s police chief confirmed.
