Today's News

Editor’s Note: This information is taken from open court records and is a matter of public record. The listings are complete. The newspaper, as a matter of fairness, will not honor requests to omit any listing. 

District Court

These sentences were recorded in August in the Carroll County General District Court Office, Hillsville. Sentences may be appealed:

Jamie Charles Hawks of Lowgap, N.C., guilty of public swearing/intoxication; $25 fine and $91 costs.

INDEPENDENCE –– Longtime Independence/Grayson County High School coach Thomas Owens will be honored during a special ceremony on Tuesday prior to the Blue Devils’ girls’ basketball game with Fort Chiswell.

Owens, who has coached boys’ basketball, girls’ basketball and baseball at the school for nearly 40 years, will be honored by having the basketball court at Independence Middle School dedicated in his honor, and by being inducted into the GCHS Wall of Fame.

Galax High School performing arts students are back on top of their game this year with a performance of “The Diviners,” a play by Jim Leonard Jr.

“The Diviners” is a tribute to the Great Depression, small towns and the blessings of life. In the play, C.C. Showers abandons his career as a minister during the Great Depression and stumbles into the small Indiana town of Zion to look for work — only to find that the town has been without a preacher for 10 years.

It's every parent's worst nightmare — losing a child.

Ella Ruth Stoneman lived that nightmare last Monday morning when officers came to her work to tell her that her daughter, Amy Stoneman, 28, had been killed in a fire.

The accident also took the life of Ella Ruth's granddaughter, 4-year-old Deanna Lafferty, and the little girl's father, Larry Stephen Lafferty, 39.

"She loved to work and she loved her kids," Ella said of her daughter.