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Published: November 7, 2009
A shattered peace
A quadruple shooting Sunday in Mount Airy, the usually peaceful town that has maintained its reputation over the years as the model for Andy Griffith's fictional Mayberry, is a jarring event in more ways than one.
Marcos Chavez Gonzalez, 29, is charged with killing Juan Manuel Martinez, 26; Javier Manuel Martinez, 21; Victor Alfonso Martinez-Jimemez, 22, all of Mount Airy; and Marcos Oviedo Aguilar, 21, of Surry County. Investigators early this week were checking several leads, including whether the shootings were contract killings or the result of a love affair gone awry.
The case raises other troubling questions. The victims were shot outside a television store. Police were trying to determine how Gonzalez acquired an assault rifle despite being a felon. And some area residents have used this story as an excuse for lashing out at "the Mexican invasion."
Immigration reform may be needed, but under our system of criminal justice, the accused are assumed innocent unless proved otherwise in a court of law, regardless of who they are.
Violence can't be blamed on one's ethnic or racial background, even though doing so might relieve of us of our shared responsibility to look for the deeper causes of crime and violence.
Message heard
Cheers to the parents of students at Cook and Brunson elementary schools, who let officials know that they didn't like the idea of combining the two schools to create one magnet school in Winston-Salem. Superintendent Don Martin says that they now believe a better plan would be to create a magnet school at Brunson, and leave Cook's attendance zones as they are.
The original plan would have created one magnet school in two places. Grades K-2 would be at Cook on Thurmond Street and grades 3-5 would be at Brunson on Hawthorne Road, the Journal's Wesley Young reported. Some students would have been forced to change schools.
"I have a son who is 9 years old and in the third grade, and when he came to Cook I saw a change," Chere Roberts told school officials at a meeting Monday night at Brunson. "It bothers me because I'm scared if he comes here (Brunson) he will act up again."
School officials obviously heard Roberts and other parents. That's the way it should be. Parents and their children are, after all, the chief stakeholders in the public-school system.
A racing return
It's been more than 12 years since the last NASCAR race at North Wilkesboro Speedway, once a bedrock of stockcar racing. The track next to U.S. 421 has mainly sat empty, a sad reminder of past glory days. A plan to bring racing back to the track could revitalize it and boost the local economy.
A group of race-industry veterans, Speedway Associates Inc., has signed a 3-year lease on the speedway with an exclusive option to buy it from Bruton Smith. USARacing Pro Cup Championship Series has scheduled a race at the track for next October.
This series isn't nearly as prominent as NASCAR. But it's worth noting that Terri Parsons, the widow of NASCAR champ Benny Parsons, has worked behind the scenes to help make this deal happen, although she doesn't have a financial stake in it.
"This is just good clean-cut racing the way it used to be for all the right reasons," she told the Journal's Monte Mitchell.
Alton McBride Jr. of Lake Norman, the president of Speedway Associates, said, "We're not relying solely on racing" but are considering the track as a multi-use facility.
Perhaps concerts and festivals could be held there. All in all, this is an idea that could create excitement and business. If Speedway Associates has a solid plan for the track, perhaps Wilkes County, Wilkesboro and North Wilkesboro could help with infrastructure, such as sewer and water. Gentlemen, start your engines.
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