Free Republic

“She was shivering, and she was cold,” said one of the cavers who executed the three-hour rescue. “She clearly had been there for several days.” Jesse Rochette is an experienced caver and has stumbled upon many things below ground. He’s seen glow-worms, salamanders, giant crickets, fossils, bat colonies and crystals. But Rochette was shocked by what he and a small group of cavers found this week deep inside a cave in Giles County, Va.: a wounded dog trapped 50-feet below ground. The first thing Rochette did was offer the stranded pup a slice of salami. She snatched it right up.

A black man in Tennessee will get a new trial after being convicted by an all-white jury who deliberated in a room adorned with Confederate symbols. Tim Gilbert, who was sentenced to six years in prison in 2020 for aggravated assault and other charges stemming from a December 2018 dispute, was granted a new trial Friday by the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals. An attorney for Gilbert argued his right to a fair trial was violated because the jury deliberated in a room at the Giles County courthouse with an antique Confederate flag and a portrait of Confederate President Jefferson...

RICHMOND, Va. | A school district in southwestern Virginia is re-posting copies of the Bible's Ten Commandments in all county schools, despite concerns that doing so is unconstitutional. The five-member Giles County School Board voted unanimously to restore the framed, 4-foot-tall, biblical texts after parents and local ministers complained about their removal from the district's five schools and its technology center. The decision was made even though the board's attorney advised that such Christian displays represent unconstitutional government endorsement of religion. The Ten Commandments were up on school walls in Giles County for at least a decade next to framed...

A Giles County man paroled from prison after serving 14 years for killing two hikers on the Appalachian Trail in 1981 now is suspected of shooting two campers just off the trail in Giles on Tuesday. Randall Lee Smith, 54, was in a Roanoke hospital yesterday after crashing a pickup truck in Giles, Sgt. Michael Conroy of the Virginia State Police said.