DANVILLE, Va. – A North Carolina man is facing multiple felony charges connected to a road rage incident in Danville Tuesday, according to the Danville Police Department.

Police said at around 4 p.m. Tuesday, officers responded to a report of shots fired in the area of the 700 block of Halifax Road. A short time later, a victim reported that his vehicle had been shot into during a road rage incident.

Through information gathered at the scene, the suspect vehicle and driver, 28-year-old Marlowe Cobbs, of Milton, North Carolina, were identified and found in Caswell County, North Carolina.

Cobbs has been extradited back to Virginia, and was charged with the following:

• Shooting from a vehicle

• Attempted aggravated malicious wounding

• Use of a firearm in commission of a felony

• Discharging a firearm in public

• Child endangerment

• Shooting at an occupied vehicle

He’s being held in the Danville City Jail without bond.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Danville Police Department by either calling patrol at 434-799-6510 option 4, investigations at 434-799-6508 option 1, and option 1 again, calling 911, contacting Crime Stoppers at 434-793-0000, approach any officer you see, through social media, via email crimetips@danvilleva.gov, or use our crime tips app CARE at www.p3tips.com/tipform.aspx?ID=818#.

ARDMORE, Oklahoma (KXII) – While fireworks, family and friends may be the focus of the Fourth of July — creating a plan to get home safe deserves just as much attention.

To help ensure everyone gets home safe, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP) will set up sobriety checkpoints along major roadways in Oklahoma on the Fourth of July.

“There are gonna be some checkpoints, I know in Mayes County and some of the other counties, law enforcement are planning to have sobriety checkpoints set up there,” OHP Trooper and Impaired Driving Liaison Mike Shanholtzer said.

These checkpoints are a part of the Oklahoma ENDUI program created by then-Governor Mary Fallin in 2013.

The ENDUI program utilizes community education, officer training, and increased patrols on the nights surrounding major holidays to reduce the number of accidents involving drivers under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Shanholtzer said, if you’re planning to drink and head home, calling a sober friend or a rideshare service is a must.

“Have things lined up,” he said. “Don’t get a position where, ‘oh no, I’ve had a couple beers and I don’t feel like I should drive but I’m gonna try and make it home,’ that’s not what we want.”

However, Shanholtzer said no matter what your plans are, it’s important to pay extra attention while on the roads this weekend.

“Be more attentive, realize there’s going to be a lot of traffic, that we have people that are going to use drugs or alcohol, people that aren’t paying attention,” he said. “If you are hyper vigilant and paying attention, you may be able to avoid a crash even if it’s someone else’s actions that could have caused it.”

Copyright 2024 KXII. All rights reserved.

WASHINGTON — President Biden on Wednesday awarded the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry to two Union soldiers who stole a locomotive deep in Confederate territory during the Civil War and drove it north for 87 miles as they destroyed railroad tracks and telegraph lines.

U.S. Army Pvts. Philip G. Shadrach and George D. Wilson were captured by Confederates and executed by hanging. Biden recognized their courage 162 years later with the country’s highest military decoration, calling the operation they joined “one of the most dangerous missions of the entire Civil War.”

“Every soldier who joined that mission was awarded the Medal of Honor except for two. Two soldiers who died because of that operation and never received this recognition,” Biden said. “Today, we right that wrong.”

The posthumous recognition comes as the legacy of the Civil War, which killed more than 600,000 Union and Confederate service members between 1861 and 1865, continues to shape U.S. politics in a contentious election year in which issues of race, constitutional rights and presidential power are at the forefront.

Biden has said that the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump was the greatest threat to democracy since the Civil War. Meanwhile, Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, riffed at a recent Pennsylvania rally about the Battle of Gettysburg and about the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

The president said Wednesday that Shadrach and Wilson were “fighting and even dying to preserve the union and the sacred values it was founded upon: freedom, justice, fairness, unity.”

“Phillip and George were willing to shed their blood to make these ideals real,” Biden said.

Theresa Chandler, the great-great-granddaughter of Wilson, recalled for The Associated Press how the Union soldier had the noose around his neck on the gallows and spoke his final words.

She said that Wilson essentially said that he was there to serve his country and had no ill feelings for the people of the South, but that he hoped for the abolition of slavery and for the nation to be united again.

“When I read that, I had chills,” Chandler said. “We can feel that as a family and that we’re enjoying our freedoms today, what he tried to move forward at the time.”

Brian Taylor, a great-great-great-nephew of Shadrach, said this was an opportunity for his ancestor to be remembered as “a brave soldier who did what he thought was right.”

“I kind of feel that he was a bit adventurous, a bit of a free spirit,” Taylor said.

Shadrach and Wilson are being recognized for participating in what became known as the Great Locomotive Chase.

A Kentucky-born civilian spy and scout named James J. Andrews put together a group of volunteers, including Shadrach and Wilson, to degrade the railway and telegraph lines used by Confederates in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

On April 12, 1862, 22 of the men in what was later called Andrews’ Raiders met up in Marietta, Georgia, and hijacked a train named The General. The group tore up tracks and sliced through telegraph wires while taking the train north.

Confederate troops chased them, initially on foot and later by train. The Confederate troops eventually caught the group. Andrews and seven others were executed, while the others either escaped or remained prisoners of war.

The first Medal of Honor ever bestowed went to Pvt. Jacob Parrott, who participated in the locomotive hijacking and was beaten while imprisoned by the Confederacy.

The government later recognized 18 other participants who took part in the raid with the honor, but Shadrach and Wilson were excluded. They were later authorized to receive the medal as part of the fiscal 2008 National Defense Authorization Act.

Shadrach, born on Sept. 15, 1840, in Pennsylvania, was 21 years old when he volunteered for the mission. He was orphaned at a young age and left home in 1861 to enlist in an Ohio infantry regiment after the start of the Civil War.

Wilson was born in 1830 in Belmont County, Ohio. He worked as a journeyman shoemaker before the war and enlisted in an Ohio-based volunteer infantry in 1861.

The Walt Disney Corp. made a 1956 movie about the hijacking titled The Great Locomotive Chase, starring Fess Parker and Jeffrey Hunter. The 1926 silent film “The General,” starring Buster Keaton, was also based on the historic event.

Copyright 2024 NPR