| When Ernest Broadnax was arrested three years ago and charged in one of the oldest and most notorious cold case murders in Virginia Beach history, he was 80 years old. Broadnax was living alone in an apartment building in Queens, New York when Virginia Beach detectives arrived there in April 2019 to arrest him. Police would later say it was a random hit on a national DNA database that led them to charging the former Norfolk resident with the 1973 rape and murder of two young women at an Oceanfront motel. Despite a forensic report that said Broadnax was 15 million times more likely than any other Black man to have been the source of biological evidence recovered from one of the victims, the case was troubled from the start. Read more in the Sunday Main News section
On-time graduation rates for school divisions across Hampton Roads remained steady from 2021 to 2022. Most saw their rates increase or decrease by approximately a percentage point or less. The stateâs on-time graduation rate for 2022 is 92.1%. Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Virginia Beach and York County public schools all surpassed that. Norfolk, Portsmouth and Suffolk fell below the stateâs rate. Here are the 2022 on-time graduation rates for Hampton Roads schools. Read more in the Sunday Main news section Daziyah Brown was not sure sheâd make it to Motherâs Day. The 18-year-old single mom had been struggling with mental health problems, including depression and suicidal thoughts, for several years. âI definitely felt like I just didnât want to be here any more, like life was too hard,â Brown said. She reached out to her school counselor for help, and spent a few days at an inpatient facility. âThey really helped me to see that no matter what, my son comes first, but I also have to be there for him,â she said. She was released from the facility on Motherâs Day, and turned her attention to finishing up her senior year of school. But she wasnât sure sheâd be able to graduate, after falling behind during the last few years. When she realized she wouldnât be able to graduate in June with her peers, she felt like giving up. But Nichole Boston-Blanchard, one of Hamptonâs five graduation specialists, wouldnât let her. On Aug. 11, Brown walked across the stage as a Hampton summer graduate, âready to join the big world,â as she said in her graduation speech. Over the last decade, Hampton City Schools have seen the areaâs greatest increase in their on-time graduation rate, moving their rate up 13.31 percentage points since 2012, according to data from the Virginia Department of Education. In 2022, Hampton edged out York County from its decade-long position as the area leader in graduation rates. Hamptonâs 2022 rate was 97.64 percent, surpassing York County by 0.1 percent, according to analysis by the Daily Press.
Read more in the Sunday Main News section The moment Zachary Bigelow stepped onstage as a village boy in a local production of âFiddler on the Roof,â he knew he wanted to sing and dance for the rest of his life. He was in the third grade. Next came a much bigger role â Snoopy in âYouâre a Good Man, Charlie Brownâ â followed by a decade of parts in musicals and plays all over the Williamsburg area. Sometimes, Bigelow was in two or three productions at once. Now 26, the Lafayette High School graduate is realizing his dreams as a cast member of the national touring production of Broadwayâs âAnastasia: The Musical.â The show is making a one-night stop Nov. 7 at the Ferguson Center for the Arts in Newport News. Read more in the Sunday Break section The painting shows a market, with women preparing fish, mothers smiling as children play around piles of cattle bones, and sheep and chickens meandering throughout. Jacob Lawrence used bright yellows, greens and popping reds to depict scenes he witnessed in Nigerian streets â sometimes in a literal take, sometimes figurative â in his trips to Africa in the 1960s. Lawrence created a name for himself for his years of work spotlighting African and African American life, but a focus on his time in Africa is on display at the Chrysler Museum of Art in âBlack Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club.â The show will be on display through Jan. 8 before opening in February at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Read more in the Sunday Break section
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