What were the biggest news stories of 2013? (poll 7663686)

Legoland is considering building a family-friendly theme park in the Centreport Parkway area of Stafford off Interstate 95, the third of its kind in the country. County officials are putting together an incentives package.

A pilot apparently committed suicide in July by crashing his single-engine plane into a field adjacent to Shannon Airport in Spotsylvania.

In February, the General Assembly passed the first transportation funding reform in a quarter-century. The bill eliminated the state’s gas tax, applied a 3.5 percent wholesale tax to gas and a 6 percent tax to diesel, raised the state sales tax to 5.3 percent and contained additional taxes for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.

In May, Caroline County residents were stunned to learn that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been buried in a Muslim cemetery west of Dawn. The burial was the result of efforts by a Richmond woman and the Muslim group that owns the cemetery.

Caleb Newton, a Spotsylvania resident, plumber and die-hard fisherman, snagged a world record when he reeled in a 17 pound, 6 ounce monster northern snakehead in Aquia Creek in Stafford on June 1.

In March, Stafford authorities recovered the remains of a man who apparently was shot and buried in 2007 on a large tract of land in White Oak. The search began after the property owner was arrested on drug-related charges.

In 2013, Spotsylvania supervisors rezoned land for four residential or mixed-use developments with a total of 2,634 housing units. The county’s cash proffer guidelines have been a topic of discussion, and the county plans to study the guidelines in 2014.

In March, a Marine fatally shot his ex-girlfriend and a colleague before killing himself at the Quantico Marine Corps Base . A military investigation later found he was suicidal, had signs of traumatic brain injury and should have received better psychological care.

After an August standoff at his home, a Spotsylvania man faces four counts of attempted capital murder after a shoot-out that left him and two deputies injured.

In May, Spotsylvania County supervisors approved plans for Dominion Raceway in Thornburg adjacent to Interstate 95. Neighbors complained the track would bring noise and traffic.

A Texas-based company is moving forward with plans to use fracking to drill for gas and oil in the Taylorville Basin, an ancient lake bed, which runs from Richmond through the Middle Peninsula and parts of the Northern Neck.

In December, the Commonwealth Transportation Board resurrected the Rappahanock River Parkway and river crossing project to ease traffic backups on I–95. The project will add new interstate bridges over the Rappahannock and local-traffic lanes from north of U.S. 17 in Stafford to State Route 3 in Fredericksburg. A new exit near the Virginia Welcome Center will connect to the parkway, which will run west through Celebrate Virginia paralleling Route 3 and linking up with the highway at Gordon Road in Spotsylvania. The parkway had been shelved after Spotsylvania supervisors opposed it.

In May, Stafford County physician Nibedita Mohanty was arrested and accused of knowingly providing prescription drugs to drug abusers and sellers, including a woman who later overdosed. She has denied any wrongdoing.

In August, the Fredericksburg City Council OK’d a deal that would bring the Washington Nationals’ Single-A affiliate, the Hagerstown Suns, to the city.

In January, a Culpeper County jury found former Culpeper police officer Daniel Harmon–Wright guilty of voluntary manslaughter and two lesser felonies in the February 2012 death of Patricia Cook. He shot the 54-year-old Cook four times after responding to a call about a suspicious person in the Epiphany School parking lot. A judge later imposed the jury’s recommended three-year prison sentence.

On June 13, three tornadoes touched down in the Fredericksburg area—two in Spotsylvania and one in King George—uprooting large trees, damaging a shed and causing other property damage.

In October, John Wesley Jeffries pleaded guilty in Fauquier Circuit Court to two counts of capital murder, two counts of abduction and two counts of strangulation. He will serve two life terms plus 165 years without the possibility of parole for killing Nelson Slack, 80, and his wife, Ethel, 74.

In August, Stafford supervisors rescinded an earlier vote allowing a company to operate a waste-to-energy plant at the regional landfill in central Stafford. The decision came after growing concerns from residents and some supervisors over a lack of information about a facility that would have used pyrolysis—a process which involves heating trash at high temperatures without oxygen—to convert waste and imported tires into electricity, along with other byproducts like ash and tar.

In June, a former Stafford man, sought by police here for setting off pipe bombs at the homes of two law-enforcement officers and his ex-fiancée in October 2012, is sentenced to life without parole in Great Falls, Mont. Lawrence Alan Stewart II was convicted in May in Montana of charges stemming from a 45-mile police pursuit on Nov. 1, 2012 in which he tossed five pipe bombs at officers.

In May, after a 17-year hiatus, the Brood II periodical cicada nymphs burrowed up from the tree roots they had been feeding on for nearly two decades. The males noisily sang to attract and mate with females.

In October, a partial shutdown of the federal government for 16 days impacted many local residents who were furloughed from their jobs.

In a two-week span in November and December, two men were shot to death, one, a 28-year-old, in Fredericksburg’s Mayfield neighborhood and the other, a teenager, in the nearby Sylvania Heights neighborhood in Spotsylvania. The two cases are not related.

In March, a security guard at Q Ball Café in Spotsylvania was killed by a gunman firing shots from a passing vehicle.

What were the biggest news stories of 2013?

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