Area News

    How best to dedicate the newly renovated Ritz Center in downtown Tabor City?     With a bang, cap-gun toting Tabor City Town Manager Al Leonard said during an opening ceremony for donors held in the Hickman Road facility Thursday night.     An open house for everyone is planned from 1 to 5 p.m. Monday,…

By DEUCE NIVEN & JOYCE GRAHAM     Al Leonard has taken himself out of the running to be Loris City Administrator, sending City Council members back to the drawing board, Mayor David Stoudenmire said Monday.     Leonard, Town Manager in Tabor City for nearly three decades, has also been passed over by the City of…

By DEUCE NIVEN     With the stroke of a pen a long-running dispute that had crippled the finances of Nakina Fire & Rescue has been resolved, its “old board” firmly, and legally in control of the department’s operations.     With both sides in agreement, a lawsuit pitting the “old board” against a “new board” elected…

By DEUCE NIVEN     Warrants charging ten counts of secret peeping were served on a suspended Fair Bluff Police Department officer in Fayetteville Monday.     Donald Bryan Beauchaine, 38, was charged on warrants obtained by the Lake Waccamaw Police Department upon his release from the VA Medical Center in Fayetteville, and held at the Cumberland…

    MIchela Alberta Young, K’Ehleyr Cheyenne Zeh, and Nathan Holycross Zima were the final three graduates of South Columbus High School’s Class of 2014 during commencement Saturday morning, and the last to leave the Stallion auditorium, and the last to parade past the overflow crowd in the gym.     Tristyn Lauren Cartrette was recognized as…

By DEUCE NIVEN     Heavy smoke from burning wheat fields was getting the blame from those involved in a five-vehicle chain-reaction crash on NC 904 east of Tabor City just after 11:30 a.m. Friday.     In what appeared to be a Friday the 13th miracle, none of the seven people involved were taken to a…

By DEUCE NIVEN     Two life sentences have been given to a Tabor City woman for the slayings of her elderly husband and his son, court officials in Conway said Friday.     Sandy Lee Locklear, 42, was found guilty of both murders at the conclusion of a two-week trial, and sentenced to two concurrent life…

By DEUCE NIVEN     Willis H. Harper Jr., a former Tabor City attorney who last practiced law in Whiteville, has admitted to embezzling more than $200,000 from 78 clients during a two-year period ending in August 2011.     Harper entered the guilty plea in Superior Court in Whiteville on Wednesday.     Superior Court Judge Gale…

    Fire that appeared to begin inside a shop at the Tommy Hobbs home off of Mercer Road north of Roseland Monday afternoon destroyed the structure and numerous vehicles parked in and around it.     “I only has insurance on one,” Hobbs said of the vehicles.     Hobbs was summoned from his work in…

    Dog training at South Columbus High School has the campus on “lockdown,” but there is no emergency, Capt. David Nobles of the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office said.     “Just routine,” Nobles said.     K-9 officers are used in schools across the county from time to time, and training is also done at various schools,…