The stepson of an assistant police chief in Hampton is suing the city of Norfolk and several of its police officers â asserting they retaliated against him in a car crash investigation after he accused an officer of lying about him in a separate case. Brandon A. Williams, 37, filed the $4.6 million federal lawsuit last month in U.S. District Court in Norfolk, alleging his constitutional rights were violated both in a January 2020 trespassing case and in a car wreck investigation nine months later. The lawsuit also contends that because Norfolk officers failed to properly investigate the car crash, they never charged the other driver â a U.S. Navy officer â with drunk driving even though his blood alcohol content was more than three times the legal limit. Read more in the Sunday Main News section 
Up until about a year and a half ago, Chesapeakeâs city council members seemed to get along just fine. Votes on the governing body, which has a 7-2 Republican majority, were almost always unanimous. In fact, a review conducted by The Virginian-Pilot in November 2020 showed that in the previous two years, 94% of the councilâs votes had been undivided. But all that began to change in the spring of 2021. Thatâs when a majority of the councilâs members refused to go along with a plan backed by Mayor Rick West to move City Council elections to odd-numbered years, to align with state races, rather than the crowded federal contests. Read more in the Sunday Main News section 12-year-old Iryna Yakovets is adjusting to life in the US with her auntâs family, while her parents are back home helping the war effort. The sixth grader is enrolled at Eaton Middle School in Hampton. Some days are hard as she still learns the language and culture, and misses her friends and family back home. But sheâs making friends and slowly adjusting to life in a new place, and school officials are helping however they can. Read more in the Sunday Main News section Lucas Johnâs songwriting journey began at age 3, when his delayed speech led his parents to enroll him in a music class. Now 29, the Williamsburg native and frequent local performer is on a national tour with Frank Ray, an emerging country music star with Hispanic roots who has helped diversify the genre through his bilingual lyrics. John â whose given name is Lucas Caccetta â is also releasing his own more rock-based songs. In October, he dropped his latest original single, âWaste Time,â part of a four-song record scheduled for completion by yearâs end. âIâm so grateful for everything that is happening,â he said. âItâs such an honor to play with Frank, and then itâs been a really cool process to take the sounds of my heart, sculpt them into songs and show people who I am.â John, a Walsingham Academy graduate and a former bartender at Precarious Beer Project, immediately took to music during his early childhood class at Williamsburg United Methodist Church, said his parents, John and Kelly Caccetta. He picked up the guitar at age 12. Read more in the Sunday Break section
Imagine a teddy bear. The perfect teddy bear, in fact: cuddly, fluffy and huggable, with a gentle smile. Now imagine it has a full set of human teeth. Thatâs the image Robert Weathers, writer and director of this yearâs Hampton Horror Tour for the Hampton History Museum, conjures up to explain horror, a genre thatâs difficult to define, controversial â and very, very lucrative. Weathersâ view of horror comes from Stephen King, he said, describing three primary types of fictional scare: the gross-out, like a bucket of eyeballs; the terrifying, like a monster in a hockey mask chasing you with a chainsaw; and horror, which takes the familiar, twists it, and makes it threatening. âHorror is the one that is the most difficult to achieve. Itâs the one that strikes the hardest,â he said. As with his day job as a historical interpreter who portrays George Wythe at Colonial Williamsburg, Weathersâ goal for the tour, which runs through Sunday, is to make history personal for the audience â in this case, the scary parts of history.
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More industrial space was built in Hampton Roads last year than in the preceding 10 years combined, a commercial real estate expert said. Lang Williams, executive vice president with Colliers Virginia, said the 10-year span leading up to 2020 saw about 4.4 million square feet of industrial space developed in the region. âLast year, 5.1 million square feet were completed,â he told 100 attendees of Hampton Roads Association for Commercial Real Estateâs final luncheon of the year on Oct. 19. Much of the recent spike can be attributed to Amazonâs new 3.8 million-square-foot robotics-powered fulfillment center in Suffolk and its 640,000-square-foot facility in Chesapeake. Read more in the Sunday Work & Money section
Brian Flood was an avid outdoor enthusiast. He loved running, hiking, biking, and playing basketball. He participated in numerous marathons, including the New York City and Chicago marathons. He hinted to his mother, Peggy Munley, that he was thinking about not running marathons anymore because of the stress on his body. But before he did, he wanted to run one more. On Sunday, Flood was supposed to run in the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Virginia. But Flood died unexpectedly on July 19. He was 44. His death deeply impacted all those who knew him, including his cousin, Jack Munley. âHim and Jack were very close,â Peggy Munley said. âThey grew up together. Jack was like another big brother.â Jack Munley, a lieutenant with the Eastern Virginia Medical School Police Department, knew about Floodâs desire to run in the Marine Corps Marathon. So, after his death, he decided he would run the marathon in honor of his cousin.
Read more in the Sunday Sports section
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