It was a pretty normal Wednesday morning was for most students at Tuscola High School last week, but as the school day went on word leaked out that one second-period biology class had involved threats, a call to the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office and the arrest of 16-year-old sophomore Joseph “Joey” Jacobs. 

A man shot up the outside of a Verizon Wireless store in Waynesville last week following a town wide outage of both Verizon service and Charter Cable.

The dual outages cut off communication with the outside world for thousands of residents when their cell phones, TV and internet service went down for a few hours last Thursday evening.

Nine months ago, a federal sex abuse case against Harland Squirrel, of Cherokee, ended in dismissal after the jury failed to reach a verdict. But the case hasn’t gone away. In May, Squirrel will face the charges again in tribal court. 

Clyde’s new police chief has only been on the job a few weeks. But Terry Troutman already had his hands full before he even got sworn in.

Three months after lies on a search warrant and a fabricated drug dog alert prompted a federal judge to throw out a Cherokee drug trafficking case, it appears that the officers involved are still at their jobs, with no change in status or salary. The case involved officers and detectives from Swain, Jackson and Graham counties, as well as from the Cherokee Indian Police Department.  

A big one got away in Cherokee earlier this year when the case against a drug dealer was thrown out by a federal judge who found Cherokee police officers had lied in a search warrant.

A Maggie Valley restaurant owner who was also a figure in town politics has been charged with sexually abusing two boys several years ago.

After discovering $50,000 worth of unauthorized checks had disappeared from its budget and placing director Kim Bishop on paid investigatory leave, the Macon County Board of Elections is now trying to regain its footing.

By Holly Kays & Becky Johnson • Staff writers

An embezzlement investigation at the Macon County Board of Elections locked down the office for nearly a week between Jan. 17 and Jan. 23, but business is far from returning to usual. 

Who knows what Anita Vestal saw in Jeffrey Miles, or why she sprang him from jail and ran away with him, or how she justified leaving her husband and four young children behind, possibly forever.