Prince William Times - 02/08/2024

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SPORTS: Osbourn Park girls basketball targets another region championship. PAGES 6, 7

February 8, 2024 | Vol. 23, No. 6 | www.princewilliamtimes.com | $1.00 Covering Prince William County and surrounding communities, including Gainesville, Haymarket, Dumfries, Occoquan, Quantico and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park.

School student ID cards show 988 suicide line, thanks to this mom By Cher Muzyk

Times Staff Writer

Kim Fleming’s life changed the day her only child, David Joseph Cobb, died by suicide in 2015. Since then, Fleming has worked to bring awareness to teen mental health issues and teamed up with a local state lawmaker to ensure Virginia students have quick access to help. This school year, some of those efforts came to fruition in the form of student identification cards issued by K-12 schools, colleges and universities across the commonwealth. At Fleming’s suggestion, Virginia Sen. Jeremy McPike sponsored a bill last year

that requires all schools and public colleges that produce student ID cards to print the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline number on the cards. Anyone experiencing a mental health crisis can call or text 988 — or visit 988lifeline.org online — 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Fleming, 55, of Manassas, said friends sent her pictures of the new cards when their kids brought them home. So far, she has seen them from schools in the City of Manassas, and in Prince William, Fauquier, Loudoun and Spotsylvania counties. See STUDENT ID, page 2

COURTESY PHOTO

Kim Fleming pictured with her son, David J. Cobb. Cobb took his own life in 2015 at age 17

Girl Scouts scramble after Va. Gateway bans cookie sales By Cher Muzyk

Times Staff Writer

Craving Samoas, Thin Mints or Tagalongs? For the last several years, western Prince William County residents looking for their annual Girl Scout cookie fix could find their favorites on sale outside stores at the Virginia Gateway, the area’s largest shopping hub. But not this year. Virginia Gateway’s owners, the Texas-based investment firm Crow Holdings, issued a last-minute cancellation last week of all Girl Scout cookie booths scheduled outside the Gainesville shopping center to the disappointment of several local troops. The situation came to light when a distraught Girl Scout “cookie mom” alerted the community last week via the Facebook page Western Prince William Chatter that Virginia Gateway had canceled dozens of cookie booths. The now-deleted post prompted lots of angry comments. “Disappointed to learn they canceled all Girl Scout cookie booths at the Gateway locations to include

N.C. woman shot to death in Dale City

Lowe’s, Giant and Five Below,” the post said. “They did this less than a week (before sales) begin (and) after troops … allocated cookies for these time slots and anticipated sales.” Every year during Girl Scout cookie season, which started Friday, Feb. 2, the Girl Scouts of the Nation’s Capital coordinates cookie

booth slots outside popular shopping centers where troops can sell extra boxes to meet their fundraising goals. The slots are scheduled online, and troops must act quickly to secure the most popular sites. Troops sometimes order hundreds of extra boxes to sell at cookie booths.

Staff Reports Police have identified the victim of a fatal shooting in Dale City last week as a 23-year-old woman from Burlington, North Carolina. Egypt Zapporah Carter, 23, was found by police at 2:07 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 2, in a car parked outside the Orchard Mills apartments in Dale City. The complex is located off Benita Fitzgerald Drive, down the road from Fanny Fitzgerald Elementary School. Carter was pronounced dead at the scene. A small dog was also located inside the car but was not hurt, according to Master Police Officer Renee Carr, a Prince William County Police Department spokeswoman. As of Tuesday, Feb. 6, Prince William County police had not yet announced any arrests or suspects in connection with the shooting. Carter is the third young woman to die of a fatal shooting in Prince William County since Jan. 1.

See COOKIES, page 2

See DALE CITY, page 2

Local congressional race draws 19 candidates, page 3

Black History month event at the Marine Corps museum, page 5

GIRL SCOUTS OF THE NATION’S CAPITAL FACEBOOK PAGE

Local Girl Scouts work a cookie booth outside a local shopping center.

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