Mother of 6-year-old who shot teacher indicted by grand jury
A grand jury has indicted the mother of a 6-year-old boy who shot his teacher on charges of child neglect and failing to secure her handgun in the family’s home, a prosecutor said Monday.
Bon Secours details plans to increase medical access in city’s East End
Bon Secours Richmond welcomed the positive statement from the Richmond Health Coalition about its plans to improve health care in the East End, which the Free Press reported in the April 6-8 edition. “Bon Secours appreciates the coalition’s willingness to have private, meaningful conversations with us about our ‘Community Today, Community Tomorrow: Pathway to Wellness in the East End’ initiative,” spokeswoman Jenna Green stated in response to a Free Press request for comment on the statement Brian Bills, a coalition leader, issued on behalf of the coalition.
Summit to address Black women, birthing and reproductive health
In Virginia, Black women are three times more likely to die than white women during childbirth or due to pregnancy-related causes, according to Birth in Color RVA, a birth, policy and advocacy nonprofit focused on raising awareness surrounding maternal health and reproductive justice.
Clarence Thomas and high court’s low ethical standards, by Clarence Page
It must be more than a little embarrassing for a Supreme Court justice to lament that he took some bad legal advice. But the embarrassment will be worth it for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas if it helps him to get out from under the bigger embarrassments reported by the investigative news service ProPublica.
Another lynching in Tennessee, by Julianne Malveaux
The abolitionist journalist Ida B. Wells’ quest to document lynchings began when three of her friends, Tommy Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart, were lynched because white people were envious of their economic success.
Curbing gun violence demands focus on stronger laws, helping those who’ve been hurt, by Thomas P. Kapsidelis
When Republicans in the Tennessee House were challenged on gun control after three 9-year-old children and three adults were slain at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tenn., they responded by expelling two Black representatives who led a protest on the chamber’s floor. A white legislator survived the outrageous ouster.
Rams lose their ‘Ace’ in the hole
The arrival of several new VCU players is imminent
The Ace Baldwin era is over at VCU. The Rams’ star point guard is heading to Penn State to join former VCU Coach Mike Rhoades.
Mo’s coming home to VCU
Mo Alie-Cox is returning to Richmond not so much to talk about basketball or football, but to talk about the game of life.
Help is on the way for VUU
Virginia Union University has landed one of the state’s elite high school basketball stars.
Bonds looks forward to NFL draft
Long ago, droves of HBCU football players were drafted by the NFL and many went on to All-Pro and Hall of Fame careers.
Embiid goes back to back
Joel Embiid has done it again. For the second straight season the Philadelphia 76ers’ center is the NBA scoring champ.
Squirrels feast on ‘M&Ms’
The Richmond Flying Squirrels opened their season with “M&Ms” at the top of the batting menu. Not the candy kind; this is about leadoff hitter Ismael Munguia and second-in-order Luis Matos.
PLACES TO GO, PEOPLE TO SEE
Whether it’s art and poetry or films and music, Richmond and surrounding communities offer a lot to everyone in the coming weeks.
Why are we ignoring our chidren?, by Julianne Malveaux
The recent massacre of three students and three adults in Nashville, Tenn., is alarming. How and why did a former student invade the school locked and loaded with an automatic weapon and ruthlessly kill innocent students and their caretakers?
Maymont’s spring break includes baby goats and three little chicks
April in Maymont means loads of activities for Richmonders to enjoy. On Friday, April 7, the Maymont Mansion and The Robins Nature Center will be open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., to take in the arrival of five baby goats and three Brahma chicks to the Maymont Farm.
VUU’s Osborne is HBCU Player of the Year
Robert Osborne is going to need to expand his trophy case to handle all of his awards from the most recent season.
Say Amen, somebody
In delivering the eulogy for Irvo Otieno’s funeral on March 29 at Richmond’s First Baptist Church’s Chesterfield location, civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton promised retribution for Mr. Otieno’s death at the hands of law enforcement and Central State Hospital employees.
Equal justice, even for Trump, by Clarence Page
Yusef Salaam, whom you may remember as one of the exonerated Central Park Five, had only one word to tweet to those who wanted to know his feelings about the indictment of Donald Trump: “Karma,” he offered. Karma? I’ve heard about it. Drawn from concepts of re- birth in Indian religions, I’ve been advised to think of kar- maasaformof cosmic justice: Good deeds and intent lead to good karma and happier re- births while bad karma may lead to times that are not so jolly. Mr. Salaam was one of five Black and Hispanic teenagers wrongfully imprisoned for the 1989 rape of a white woman in New York’s Central Park, a case that later was explored in a 2019 Netflix series “When They See Us” and a PBS documentary “The Central Park Five.” In 1989, before any of the five teens had been tried, Mr. Trump, then a major Manhat- tan real estate developer with a bottomless appetite for self- promotion, took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty to be reinstated in New York. Adding kerosene to public anger at the time, the ads were reported to have played a major role in securing a conviction. So did false confessions, it turned out, since no DNA linked them to the crime scene and their descriptions of the victim didn’t match. Mr. Salaam served nearly seven years in prison before he and the other wrongfully accused teens—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise—were Clarence Page exonerated in 2002. Serial rapist Matias Reyes, already in prison, confessed to the assault and DNA confirmed his admission. Ah, how the mighty have fallen. The presumption of inno- cence until proved guilty seemed almost nowhere to be seen in Mr. Trump’s world when the Central Park Five case raged across the headlines and boiled over into a national media frenzy. Yet, as Mr. Salaam mentions in his tweet, Mr. Trump—for whom “apologetic” is not part of his brand—never has apologized. Still, he seeks the presumption of innocence he has denied to others. So be it. Let’s see how well his innocence claims hold up. For now, Mr. Trump’s chants of “Lock her up” in his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton come to mind. Now that it is he who faces what has been reported to be more than 30 counts related to business fraud in a sealed indictment from a Manhattan grand jury, I wonder: Can chants of “Lock HIM up” be far behind? Still, the stress test to which the former president has put our crimi- nal justice system offers a valuable opportunity to view fairness in our system with new eyes. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the ultraconservative Repub- lican from Georgia, suddenly has become a major advocate for inmates of the District of Columbia jail, now that their ranks were joined by detainees from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. Interesting, I said to myself. Since the alleged insurrectionists are mostly white and the D.C. jail’s traditional population is overwhelmingly Black, maybe now they can see how the other half lives. Unsurprisingly, they were shocked. The jail’s conditions, were so bad that 34 of them sug- gested in a letter to federal court last fall that they would rather be moved to Guantanamo Bay. Detainees, through their lawyers, raised concerns that included threats from guards, standing sewage, and skimpy food and water. A federal judge held top jail officials in contempt after they delayed prompt medi- cal care for a Capitol defendant in their custody. Things have gotten better, spurred partly by Rep. Greene and other congressional visitors. But the irony of how it took 40 or so Capitol rioters to get more attention and action than the jail’s roughly 1,400 total inmates is not lost, especially on the inmates of color. Rep. Greene, seldom known for understatement, visited the jail and likened the rioters inside to “prisoners of war,” implying that they were being punished for their politics. Actually they’re being held for a lot more than that. Don’t forget the physical assaults on Capitol Police with pepper spray, bear spray and riot shields, just for starters. Equal justice for all is a cherished ideal in the American system, a system they tried to disrupt. We must do all that we can to preserve that ideal, even for those who try to destroy it. The writer is a syndicated columnist and senior member of the Chicago Tribune edito- rial board.
Henrico to offer free instruction on CPR, AEDs
Henrico County will hold a series of open houses from April 15 through 26 to teach residents to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and use an automated external defibrillator (AED) to potentially save the life of someone in cardiac arrest. More than 356,000 cardiac arrests occur outside a hospital in the U.S. each year, according to the American Heart Association.
