The family of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has reached an agreement with a credit collection company to avoid the foreclosure of their historic hotel as he runs for US Senate, the resort announced Thursday.

The Republican governor’s family had been set to appear in court Friday to ask a judge to halt the auction of The Greenbrier, which had been scheduled for Tuesday.

That hearing has been canceled.

“It’s taken care of, and we move forward, and The Greenbrier is as whole as it can possibly be,” Justice said at a news briefing. “The Greenbrier is going to be in our family forevermore.”

The hotel came under threat of auction after JPMorgan Chase sold a longstanding loan taken out by the governor to a credit collection company, McCormick 101 — a subsidiary of Beltway Capital — which declared it to be in default.

In a statement, the Justice family said it had reached an agreement with Beltway Capital to “receive a specific amount to be paid in full by October 24, 2024.”

The family said it had already secured the money, although the Justices did not specify the amount.

“Under the agreement, Beltway Capital will Beltway reserves its rights if the Justice family fails to perform,” the statement reads.

A message left with Beltway Capital wasn’t immediately returned Thursday.

Justice defended his family’s business practices at Thursday’s briefing and repeated past claims that JPMorgan Chase’s sale of The Greenbrier loan was a politically motivated effort to hurt his US Senate campaign.

“We had a 14-year working relationship with JPMorgan, and then shortly after the primary where I was the winner — hands down, you’re going to the U.S. Senate, no matter what anybody says under the sun — it makes, it made, total no sense other than political, it made no sense at all,” he said.

Justice said that his family had made payments on the JPMorgan as recently as June and that it was notified the loan had been sold in July without prior warning. JPMorgan Chase did not respond to an email seeking comment.

If the hotel had been sold, Justice said, “there would have been carnage and devastation like you can’t imagine to the great people of The Greenbrier,” referring to jobs that could have been lost.

The auction, which had been set to occur at a courthouse Tuesday in the small city of Lewisburg, involved 60.5 acres, including the hotel and parking lot.

Justice family attorneys filed a motion this week for a preliminary injunction to try to halt the auction of The Greenbrier.

They claimed that a 2014 deed of trust approved by the governor was defective because JPMorgan didn’t obtain consent from the Greenbrier Hotel Corp.’s directors or owners, and that auctioning the property violates the company’s obligation to act in “good faith and deal fairly” with the corporation.

They also argued, in part, that the auction would harm the economy and threaten hundreds of jobs.

About 400 employees at The Greenbrier hotel received notice this week from an attorney for the health care provider Amalgamated National Health Fund saying they would lose coverage Tuesday, the scheduled date of the auction, unless the Justice family paid $2.4 million in missing contributions.

Peter Bostic, a union official with the Workers United Mid-Atlantic Regional Joint Board, said that the Justice family hasn’t contributed to employees’ health fund in four months, and that an additional $1.2 million in contributions will soon be due, according to the letter the board received from Ronald Richman, an attorney with Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, the firm representing the fund.

The letter also said some contributions were taken out of employees’ paychecks but never transferred to the fund, concerning union officials.

Justice dismissed concerns about the claims Thursday, telling reporters that “insurance payments were made and were being made on a regular basis.”

“There is no way that the great union employees at The Greenbrier are going to go without insurance,” he said. “There is no possible way.”

Justice is running for Senate against Democrat Glenn Elliott, a former mayor of Wheeling. Justice, who owns dozens of companies and had a net worth estimated at $513 million by Forbes Magazine in 2021, has been accused in court cases of being late in paying millions for family business debts and fines for unsafe working conditions at his coal mines.

He began serving the first of his two terms as governor in 2017, after buying The Greenbrier out of bankruptcy in 2009.

The hotel has hosted US presidents, royalty and, from 2010 until 2019, a PGA Tour tournament.

Justice’s family also owns The Greenbrier Sporting Club, a private luxury community with a members-only “resort within a resort.”

That property was scheduled to be auctioned off this year in an attempt by Carter Bank & Trust of Martinsville, Virginia, to recover more than $300 million in business loans defaulted by the governor’s family, but a court battle delayed that process.

A search is underway for a Missouri teen who may have traveled to Virginia with someone she met online, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Authorities are searching for 17-year-old Abigail Lawless, who went missing from her home in West Plains, Missouri in the middle of the night after her family fell asleep.

We’re told she is 5 feet, 9 inches tall and weighs about 160 pounds.

Abigail’s mom, Leah Lawless, said this happened after a nice dinner outing with the family and is highly unusual for her daughter, noting that she has never left home before. She said she has not contacted any family or friends since she left, which is not like her, according to the mom.

“We all love and miss you so much, please come home. We just need to know that you are okay and safe,” her mother said, hoping that the message will reach her daughter.

In an effort to bring more attention to Abigail’s case, her poster is being featured on the Ring’s Neighbors app as a part of a partnership between NCMEC and Ring. This feature reaches millions of users, providing real-time assistance in locating missing children.

If you have any information about Abigail or her disappearance, please contact NCMEC at 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678) or the Howell County Sheriff’s Office (Missouri) at 1-417-256-2544.

Virginia firefighters manged to rescue a trapped skydiver who had landed high up in a group of trees, according to the Orange County fire department.

The rescue happened over the weekend and took around an hour to complete.

“Access to the patient was limited and our personnel had to clear a path that allowed for Truck 23 to reach the victim. The decision to use the Truck was due to the fact that our ground ladders simply could not reach,” the Orange County Fire Department posted on social media.

The skydiver was taken to the hospital for treatment.

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The fire department said, “Once in place, a rescuer made contact with the victim, assisted him onto the aerial, and cut away his chute before lowering him to the ground.”

An update on the condition of the skydiver was not immediately available and authorities didn’t appear to have immediately released their identity.

This story was originally published by Scripps News Richmond.