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Courts and Crime

  • Man gets one day in jail to serve on child neglect charge

        A 39-year-old Bedford man will serve one day in jail for his conviction of felony child abuse and neglect.
        Thomas Edison Updike III entered a no contest plea to the charge stemming from a Nov. 2015 incident in which a juvenile was injured while he was driving an ATV.
        Updike received a five-year sentence for the felony conviction with all but the one day jail sentence suspended. He will be on supervised probation for one year and will need to have five years of good behavior.

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  • Teen competent to stand trial

        A Bedford County teen has been found competent to stand trial for allegedly firing shots in his home and at several vehicles. A preliminary hearing date has been set for April 26 at 1:30 p.m.
        On Oct. 13, 2016, incidents led to the arrest of 18-year-old Daniel Jared Flint. He was initially charged with arson, malicious shooting of an occupied vehicle and attempted malicious shooting of an occupied vehicle. He was also later charged with possession of a firearm after being involuntarily committed to a mental hospital.

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  • Montvale man convicted of felony child neglect

        The father of a young child, charged with felony child neglect because the child was found outside near a highway unattended, will spend 40 days in jail following his conviction on the charge Tuesday in Bedford County Circuit Court.
         Nicholas Terry Grooters, 27, pleaded no contest to the charge and was sentenced to three years in prison, with all but the 40 days in jail suspended.

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  • Welch in court Tuesday

        A Bedford Circuit Court Judge has ruled statements Lloyd Lee Welch made to investigators during a series of interviews about the disappearance of two sisters from a Maryland mall in 1975 can be used at his murder trial, scheduled for April.
        On Tuesday, Judge James Updike denied a motion by Welch’s lawyers to suppress the statements. His attorney, Anthony Anderson, argued that the statements were made as part of an immunity agreement between Welch and investigators.

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  • Woman could face deportation after 3rd DUI arrest

        A 34-year-old Mexican woman, now living in Roanoke, could face deportation as the result of her felony DUI conviction in Bedford Circuit Court Tuesday morning.
        The conviction was her third DUI in five years—she has two convictions from 2015—and the felony conviction in Bedford involved her also transporting three juveniles at the time of the incident which led to her arrest.

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  • Charges dismissed against Lloyd Welch’s relative

        Amy Ann Johnson, also known as Amy Ann Welch, won’t face any further prosecution over a misdemeanor charge of obstruction of justice stemming from her testimony to a grand jury looking into the murder of Sheila and Katherine Lyon.
        The two children were abducted from a shopping mall in Maryland in 1975 and allegedly were killed and brought to the county to have their bodies disposed of.

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  • Rhode Island man charged with soliciting local child

        Paulo B. Tomas, 45, of Cumberland, Rhode Island was arrested by Rhode Island State Police, Friday, on charges related to a child sexual exploitation investigation in Bedford County,.

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  • ‘Round up’ yields drug, fugitive arrests

        On December 8, law enforcement officers from the Bedford Police Department and the Virginia State Police assisted the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office, Vice/Drug Unit, in the service of arrest warrants on seven persons (more arrests are pending) charged with the distribution of illegal drugs and prescription drugs (pills, cocaine, marijuana, and heroin).
        The arrests took place throughout the county and in the town of Bedford.
        Alexander Forte, 20, of Bedford, was charged with distribution of marijuana.

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  • Charges go to grand jury

        A Moneta woman, facing some 80 charges, had about one-quarter of those charges certified to a Bedford grand jury on Monday.
        Rhonda Renay Overstreet, 32, had charges of grand larceny, credit card fraud and bad check charges certified while many charges, related to those, weren’t prosecuted since she waived her right to a preliminary hearing.

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  • Altavista man guilty of child sex charges

        Charlie Ray Haskins Jr., 35, of Altavista, entered no contest pleas, in Bedford County Circuit Court, Tuesday, to two counts of aggravated sexual battery against a minor.
        He had been facing eight felonies related to the charges, but under a plea deal only two were prosecuted.
        According to Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Ayers, Haskins began molesting the victim when she was 11 and it continued until she turned 14.

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