Free Republic

BLUEFIELD — Extending the King Coal Highway’s “bridge to nowhere” in Bluefield to the Airport Road area is still on track for next year. Del. Marty Gearheart, R-Mercer County, said the project remains on the Department of Highways six-year plan for a 2019 start. “Dirt should be moved next spring (2019),” he said. “It will be built when it is supposed to. It’s been part of the six-year plan and was not scheduled until next spring.” The bridge, which connects to Rt. 460 and then to Interstate 77, was finished almost 10 years ago but funding for the highway has...

A man was found incompetent to stand trial Thursday in the fatal shooting of a West Virginia sheriff who later was implicated by federal prosecutors in a separate corruption scandal. Cabell County Circuit Judge Paul Farrell ordered Tennis Melvin Maynard of Delbarton committed to a state mental health facility for life. Mingo County Sheriff Eugene Crum was killed in April 2013 in downtown Williamson. […] Maynard and Crum had known each other for years, with Crum previously serving as a boxing club mentor to Maynard when he was a teenager and when Crum was police chief in the town of...

<p>According to allegations in federal documents unsealed Thursday, the alleged five-year vendetta included plotting to plant drugs under the husband's car, recruiting a state trooper to arrest the man on bogus theft charges, and convincing a police officer to arrest him on groundless assault and battery charges, the documents say.</p>