LoudounNow
LoudounNow
LOUDOUN COUNTY’S COMMUNITY-OWNED NEWS SOURCE
[ Vol. 1, No. 22 ]
[ loudounnow.com ]
[ April 7 – 13, 2016 ]
Special supplement
to Loudoun Now April 7, 2016
INSIDE:
INSIDE:
YOUR GUIDE TO THE
FES TIVAL including the
FESTIVAL MAP
Leesburg’s Crowd Pleaser ............... .............................. Everything Needed .......3 for Kids Rule on Cornwall Outdoor Living.............................. ..4 Vote for Your Favorite ..........................................................8 Festival Map.........................................................................1 2 .............................. Music Unplugg ...........................14 ed .............................. Suds On Tap ............... .............................. ...16 .............................. Sponsors ............... ..........................20 .............................. .............................. ..26
Purcellville pastor stabbed; Leesburg mother shot ............ 3
Ashburn Man Gets Life Sentence for Murder BY NORMAN K. STYER
plosive. Byard said there was no detonator attached, and the material could not be detonated by normal activity. C-4 will only explode when subjected to a combination of extreme heat and a shockwave caused by a detonator. According to a county press release, the material appeared to have come dislodged from a container and fallen into the engine compartment, and was not recovered after training. Within hours of Loudoun Now breaking the story on Wednesday, news had spread across the country and around the the world: The CIA had left C-4 on a school bus. The Chicago Tribune called it national “Weird News” of the week. The Washington Post called it an “only-in-Washington embarrassment for the elite spy agency.” (Close enough to Washington, anyway.) But even if the gaffe turned out to be harmless, Loudouners were not amused. “Just because it was inert wasn’t the issue for me,” said parent and former Spe-
The Ashburn man who gunned down his ex-wife’s husband 15 months ago will spend the rest of his life in prison. Loudoun Circuit Court Judge Burke F. McCahill handed down that sentence Tuesday following two days of testimony from family members, investigators and a psychiatric expert. Minh Nguyen pleaded no contest last July to charges of first-degree murder, malicious wounding, burglary, destruction of property and use of a Minh Nguyen firearm in the commission of a felony. Facts in the case show that Nguyen was in a rage when he banged on the door of Corey and Denise Mattison’s Ashburn townhouse and demanded entry. He was carrying a .380 caliber Taurus semi-automatic pistol and fired one shot before pushing through the door. He then fired the pistol’s remaining rounds, shooting Corey Mattison four times. Mattison was able to exit the home before falling on the driveway. Nguyen followed him, striking his former wife in the head with the butt of the gun as he passed her in the garage. Nguyen got in a car and drove around in a circle—prosecutors said it might have been an attempt to run over Mattison—before crashing. He then got out and
C-4 LEFT ON BUS >> 22
LIFE SENTENCE >> 39
Renss Greene/Loudoun Now
A bomb detection dog scans the school system’s Central Garage near Leesburg on March 30, shortly after explosive material was discovered on a school bus.
WHOOPS
CIA Left C-4 on Loudoun School Bus BY RENSS GREENE
T
he first couple of days back from spring break were more eventful for some Loudoun families than they’d wished. Last Monday and Tuesday, 26 special needs children loaded the school bus as they do every other morning. The bus dropped the kids off at Pinebrook Elementary School, Buffalo Trail Elementary Schools and Rock Ridge High School in Dulles, then went tooling back to the school system’s central garage near Leesburg Executive Airport for maintenance. On Wednesday morning, the same bus underwent a routine inspection when a mechanic discovered that those students were
not the only thing the vehicle was transporting—the mechanic found C-4 plastic explosive inside the engine compartment. The sheriff ’s office locked down the area and redirected traffic. A bomb squad rushed to the scene and K-9 units swept all of the buses in the lot. The next evening, the culprit fessed up—the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA announced in a press release that a CIA K-9 unit accidentally left “explosive training material” in the bus after a training exercise at Briar Woods High School during spring break. According to Loudoun County school system Public Information Officer Wayde Byard, the bus transported 26 students while unsuspectingly also carrying the ex-
! LE W SA NO N O
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There’s a reason we’ve been family owned for over 30 years. Ask your neighbors or visit us and find out why?
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next to Ledo Pizza across from Target & Costco
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