CMYK N.C. to receive $545 million for rail
County should pay stop-payment fees
Raider boys, girls beat Webb
State, Page 6A
Opinion, Page 8A
Sports, Page 1B FRIDAY, January 29, 2010
Volume XCVI, No. 24
(252) 436-2700
www.hendersondispatch.com
Officials urge you to be prepared
Third man still at large in death of 85-year-old
By DAVID IRVINE Daily Dispatch Writer
Please see SNOW, page 6A
Index Our Hometown . . . . . 2A Business & Farm. . . . 5A Opinion . . . . . . . . . . . 8A Light Side . . . . . . . . . 9A Sports. . . . . . . . . . 1-4B Comics . . . . . . . . . . . 5B Classifieds. . . . . . . 6-8B
Weather Today Mostly cloudy
High: 39 Low: 25
Saturday Snow likely
High: 28 Low: 14
Details, 3A
Deaths Henderson Thomas J. Garner Jr., 53 Andre D. Taylor, 33 New York Elijah Perry Sr., 83 Norlina Louise Valentine, 79 Oxford James S. Thorpe, 85
Obituaries, 4A
50 cents
3 accused in deadly shooting
Snow! Lots in forecast
The Vance County Office of Emergency Management is bracing for the impact of this weekend’s severe winter storm and urging residents to be prepared. A winter storm warning is in place from 6 p.m. Friday to midnight Saturday. The National Weather Service continues to forecast significant snowfall for the area. Accumulations of eight to 10 inches are expected. The snow is forecast to begin on Friday night around 10 and is expected to last all night and continue through Saturday ending sometime late Saturday afternoon, according to Brian Short, director of the Office of Emergency Management. Temperatures at the ground are expected to be below freezing at the time the snow begins to fall. The snowfall is expected to be heavy; therefore accumulation is expected to form fairly quickly. “At this time we are encouraging everyone to stay off the roads as much as possible and to stay at home during this event,” Short said. “If you absolutely must venture out we recommend that you do so only in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Remember to drive slowly and to increase your following distance between you and the car in front of you.” “As our roads may be
By AL WHELESS Daily Dispatch Writer Daily Dispatch/ASHLEY STEVEN AYSCUE
ing for teachers that are more likely to stick around, according to Shearin. He said those sent by Teach For America are only obligated to stay for two years. Sometimes, however, the temporary teachers that have come to Vance County have decided to become permanent ones. “Most of those in the program will likely be going into professions other than teaching, so they
Detectives investigating the Sept. 4 gunshot death of 85-yearold John Thomas Satterwhite have arrested two of three target-shooters indicted by a Vance County grand jury in midDecember. Felony warrants charging involuntary manslaughter were served a week or two later on John Randy Woodlief, 30, of 390 S. Chavis Road, Lot 6, in Kittrell and Darryl Craig Harting, 43, of Youngsville. Bond for each was set at $10,000 when taken into custody. Sheriff Peter White said Wednesday that a similar arrest warrant had yet to be served on Dennis Matthew McDermott II, 29, of Rocky Mount. “He knows we want him,” White said. Asked whether he thinks McDermott is trying to elude arrest, the sheriff replied: “I’m pretty sure he is, because he knows what’s going on.” At the time of the incident, 75-year-old Dixie Williamson Satterwhite of 750 Tobacco Road told deputies she found her husband lying on a wooded path on their land, about a quarter-mile from their house. Satterwhite said she went looking for him about three hours after he set out around 11 a.m. with a walking stick in his hand and a straw hat on his head. Before her husband left, she added, they had heard multiple gunshots in the wooded area where he normally went. White said investigators noticed a puncture wound on the right side of John Thomas Satterwhite’s chest, and blood on the rim of his hat. Several bullet holes were observed in some of the trees near the body, and a number of spent shotgun-shell casings were found near where the incident occurred, White said. About 300 feet from the body, the sheriff added, deputies discovered some “torn-up” plastic bottles lying just inside a clearing on adjacent land owned by someone else. “They (Woodlief, Harting and McDermott) were standing probably 300 feet away from the bottles,” White said. He described the bullet that struck and killed Satterwhite as “larger than a .22” and fired “from a shoulder-held weapon.” The terrain involved was “very uneven,” according to White. He said the 600-foot distance from the apparent shooting spot to the body was “not that far if you are standing on the lower part and fire your weapon up.” The sheriff explained that talking to people in the neighborhood revealed the identities of the three “suspects” who apparently had permission to use the property. When the three men came in for questioning after being contacted, White said, they were cooperative and mentioned having used the land for target practice more than once. “We felt like — based on what we had — the grand jury was
Please see VANCE, page 4A
Please see SHOOTING, page 3A
Charles Hayes, from the Research Triangle Regional Partnership, gives a presentation Thursday morning to the crowd gathered at the District 7 state Senate public forum at Vance-Granville Community College. The event was hosted by Senator Doug Berger, Representative Lucy Allen and Representative Michael Wray.
District 7 Senate public forum N.C. commerce secretary: Corporate tax rate too high By WILLIAM F. WEST Daily Dispatch Writer
N.C. Commerce Secretary Keith Crisco said he would like to see the state be rid of the title of having the highest corporate tax rate in the southeastern region. Crisco made the statement Thursday afternoon in response to a question by Warren County resident Ron Skow at the annual District 7 state Senate public forum at Vance-Granville Community College. Crisco, a former businessman, recalled that when people looked at North Carolina as a place to do business, they looked at the overall cost. “We’re about the middle of the pack,” Crisco said of the state’s total taxation of business when compared to the rest of the region. “That’s kind of avoiding the point, though.” Crisco said that the answer is not simply in reducing state government, but that the bigger effort needs to be in restructuring the tax policy. “And part of that will be lowering the corporate rate,” Crisco added. Crisco said he even thought, “Why don’t we eliminate the corporate tax? It’s about seven percent of revenue we get as a state.” Crisco particularly expressed concerns that, if the business and manufacturing sectors diminish, “you know what’s going to happen? There’ll be pressure to raise it — not lower it, raise it.”
Daily Dispatch/ASHLEY STEVEN AYSCUE
Keith Crisco, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Commerce, addresses the crowd gathered for the District 7 state Senate public forum at Vance-Granville Community College. Earlier in the forum, the audience viewed a presentation by Charles Hayes, a Norlina native who is president and chief executive officer of the Research Triangle Regional Partnership. The partnership markets 13 counties — including Vance, Granville, Warren and Franklin — to the benefit of their communities and helps set strategic Please see FORUM, page 3A
U.S. educational achievement stalled, community college leader tells forum By WILLIAM F. WEST Daily Dispatch Writer
N.C. Community College System President Scott Ralls said the U.S. has much to overcome to compete as nations such as China and Singapore put enormous amounts of resources into training their workforces to achieve even higher levels of productivity in a world of knowledge-based work. “What should be happening is
we should be putting our pedal to the medal, but the truth is we’re in stall as it relates to educational achievement,” Ralls said Thursday afternoon at the annual District 7 state Senate public forum at Vance-Granville Community College. “We all have to get our arms around the fact that we are not as a country anywhere where we need to be in terms of educational achievement today,” Ralls said. During the last decade, the
U.S. dropped from first to 11th of the 30 industrialized nations in terms of the percentage of the adult population having earned higher education degrees, Ralls said. And the U.S. is the only one of the industrialized nations in which those from their mid 20s to their mid 30s are on track to have less educational achievement than their parents, Ralls said. Please see EDUCATION, page 3A
Vance phasing out Teach for America School district can save money and will do its own recruiting for teachers By AL WHELESS Daily Dispatch Writer
Vance County schools’ use of the Teach For America recruiting program to place teachers in some classrooms will stop at the end of the 2010-2011 school year. Superintendent Norman Shearin said Wednesday that he gave the phase-out news to the recruiting organization in a Nov. 18 letter. Saving money and the need for a more-permanent solution were
among the reasons prompting Shearin to write to the organization. “There have usually been 23 to 35 such teachers in our schools at any time,” Shearin said Wednesday. “The only negative is that they are not here long,” he explained. The hiring practice involving Teach For America was already in place when Shearin became superintendent in 2003. The school system is now in the position of doing its own recruit-