Virginia

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — By the time drug enforcement agents swooped into his small medical office in Martinsville, Virginia, in 2017, Dr. Joel Smithers had prescribed about a half a million doses of highly addictive opioids in two years.

Patients from five states drove hundreds of miles to see him, spending up to 16 hours on the road to get prescriptions for oxycodone and other powerful painkillers.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. said Tuesday that he is asking the FBI to investigate what he called a “criminal” smear campaign orchestrated against him by several disgruntled former board members and employees.

Falwell told The Associated Press he has evidence that the group improperly shared emails belonging to the university with reporters in an attempt to discredit him. He said the “attempted coup” was partially motivated by his ardent backing of President Donald Trump.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A lawsuit over a faulty background check that allowed a South Carolina man to buy the gun he used to kill nine people in a racist attack at a Charleston church was reinstated Friday by a federal appeals court.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a ruling from a lower court judge who threw out the claims brought by relatives of people killed by Dylann Roof in the 2015 massacre, and by survivors.

16 July 2019; DW: James Fields Jr. was convicted on state charges over the death of Heather Heyer and causing dozens of injuries. He had avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty to hate crime charges.

James Alex Fields Jr., an American neo-Nazi and white supremacist, was given a second life sentence on Monday in connection with his 2017 attack against a group of activists in Charlottesville, Virginia.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — An avowed white supremacist who deliberately drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a young woman and injuring dozens, apologized to his victims Friday before being sentenced to life in prison on federal hate crime charges.

James Alex Fields Jr., of Maumee, Ohio, had pleaded guilty in March to 29 of 30 hate crimes in connection with the 2017 attack that killed Heather Heyer and injured more than two dozen others.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The self-avowed white supremacist who plowed his car into counterdemonstrators opposing a white nationalist rally in Virginia two years ago, killing one person and injuring dozens, has asked a judge for mercy and a sentence shorter than life in prison.

Lawyers for James Alex Fields Jr., 22, said in a sentencing memo submitted in court documents Friday that the defendant should not spend his entire life in prison because of his age, a traumatic childhood and a history of mental illness.

STERLING, Va. (AP) — With his threatened Mexican tariffs now on the backburner, President Donald Trump was looking to claim victory even as some of his Democratic challengers for the White House criticized him for overselling a deal that mostly ramps up existing efforts.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A northern Virginia man who says he fears torture at the hands of Israeli authorities is back in the U.S. after a judge’s order forced immigration authorities to reverse his deportation and bring him back from Israel before he ever got off the plane.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — Police responding to the deadly mass shooting at a Virginia Beach municipal building were unable to confront the gunman at one point because they didn’t have the key cards needed to open doors on the second floor.

Over the radio, they desperately pleaded for the electronic cards and talked of bringing in a sledgehammer, an explosive charge or other means of breaking down the doors.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — The gunman who attacked his colleagues at a Virginia Beach government office building resigned by email hours before the shooting, a city official said Sunday as authorities sought a motive in the assault that killed 12 people.

Officials gave no indication why 40-year-old DeWayne Craddock had notified a superior of his intention to leave his job as a civil engineer in the utilities department. He was an employee “in good standing” and showed “satisfactory” job performance, City Manager Dave Hansen said.