Football scouts loved Gavin Smith’s raw strength and on-field intensity. A redshirt freshman for the North Carolina State University Wolfpack, the 6-foot 3-inch, 280-pound defensive tackle was ranked No. 13 in the state for his 2006 recruiting class. He was the 4A State runner-up in wrestling at Wakefield High School in Raleigh. Smith, now 26, […]
John H. Tucker
Bio: John H. Tucker is a staff writer for INDY Week.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/JH_Tucker
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With a criminal record, it’s tough to find a job
Last Wednesday morning Shawna Harris muscled her way off the bed she shares with her husband and three children, in the house they share with her mother and stepfather. The 24-year-old, who lives in Henderson, didn’t wake up to an alarm clock; there was no job to go to. No job for nine years, apart […]
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Raleigh civil suit tests intellectual property law
In 2006, Hal Wilson, a Raleigh entrepreneur, was in his office troubleshooting a problem when suddenly he had an idea. Wilson, who launched his company, Cyber Imaging Solutions, in 1996, had already gained renown for developing a system allowing beauty salon customers to compare hairstyles “virtually,” by uploading headshots to computer screens and dropping and […]
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North Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage challenged by ACLU
The American Civil Liberties Union and its North Carolina branch announced today plans to challenge North Carolina’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples. The civil liberties group plans to amend the language in a previous federal lawsuit that challenged the state’s ban on second parent adoptions, which is the process by which one partner in […]
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Voting rights and unemployment benefits spur more than 1,000 demonstrators at Moral Monday
Moral Mondays are typically raucous, yet this week’s gathering at Halifax Mall, three days before July 4, took on special significance. On stage, the Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP, shouted incantations about voting rights, one of this week’s themes. In front of him assembled a nucleus of loyal activists yelling and […]
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Durham man’s two-week car caper exposes loophole in document regulations
Detective Jeff Smith shook his head and muttered as he shuffled through a two-week-old file that was already a couple of inches thick. “I’ve never seen anything like this before, no sir,” said Smith, a 15-year veteran of the Durham Sheriff’s Office. “How did he even find the time?” wondered a detective sitting next to […]
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Law enforcement and drug users embrace needle bill
Last Wednesday inside a Durham Fire Station auditorium, a beefy flank of police officers, deputy sheriffs and Duke University security personnel watched a woman in front of them play with needles. “This is the part where I break out my bag of paraphernalia,” said Tessie Castillo, allowing the contents of her satchel to spill onto […]
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Durham man challenges law on sex offenders and social networking sites
On April 27, 2010, Lester Gerard Packingham Jr., a 29-year-old Durham resident and registered sex offender who had sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl when he was 21, logged onto his Facebook account with his username, “J.r. Gerrard.” “Man God is Good!” he wrote on his profile page near his photo. In it, he posed […]
