Friends, family salute a CMPD ‘fallen hero’
One thing was clear from the laughter and tears shared in uptown Charlotte Wednesday afternoon — Officer Mia Goodwin lived a life of dedication.
She was always talking about and bragging on her family: her firefighter husband and college sweetheart, Brenton, and their three young kids, Gabriella, Greyson and Gia. “And for good reason,” friend Katherine Hernandez said. “You guys made three wonderful kids.”
Goodwin’s strong Christian faith was a formative part of her life too, according to family. She attended University Elevation Church in Charlotte. And Goodwin was devoted to her job with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, the Observer’s Hannah Smoot, Evan Moore and Joe Marusak reported.
Goodwin, 33, was killed on duty in the early morning of Dec. 22, just after returning from maternity leave. She died in a wreck involving two semi-trucks on Interstate 85; three other officers were injured. They all had been working an accident scene there.
UNC School of the Arts alumni join lawsuit
Just days before the end of North Carolina’s two-year window for child sex abuse survivors of all ages to sue, 17 more plaintiffs have joined a lawsuit against the state’s most prominent arts school.
A total of 56 alumni included their claims against the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, investigative reporter Sara Coello reported. They say the school ignored evidence of staff sexually abusing students, many of them while enrolled in the school’s high school program.
Their allegations span most of the school’s history, from the 1960s to the 2010s.
Alumni named five new defendants, accusing former instructors Ronald Borror of raping a 16-year-old music student and Lesley Hunt of telling a student she “should not be a crybaby” when the student told her that another teacher had forced himself into her dormitory and sexually assaulted her.
A holiday cold brings new perspective
For Christmas this year, columnist Théoden Janes wrote, I got something that was definitely not on my wish list: a stuffy nose.
I could feel it coming on on Christmas Eve. While visions of sugar plums danced in others’ heads, I laid awake fretting about whether my excessively dry mouth and the pressure building in my sinuses meant I was doomed to wake up feeling definitively ill.
It did.
If you’re anything like me — or, I suspect, like most Americans — getting sick on or around Christmas is not an unfamiliar experience. Even pre-COVID-19, it was no mystery why more people got sick in December, when so many of us retreat indoors for social events that feature people shaking hands and hugging and laughing and sneezing all over each other.
But whereas, pre-COVID, getting a stuffy nose at Christmastime would have just bummed me out, this time around, it stressed me out.
Earnhardt racing family matriarch dies
Martha Earnhardt, matriarch to one of the most well-known families in stock-car racing, has died.
Her grandchildren, Kelley Earnhardt Miller and Dale Earnhardt Jr., confirmed in a statement that she passed away on the evening of Dec 25. She was 91.
“As we grieve her loss and begin to imagine life without our beloved ‘Mamaw,’ we find solace in knowing she is at peace in eternal glory and in joyous reunion with her husband Ralph and sons Dale, Randy and Danny,” their statement read.
Martha Earnhardt was married to famed dirt-track racer Ralph Earnhardt from 1947 until his death in 1973. She was the mother of Dale Sr., Danny Sr., Randy, Cathy and Kaye. Her son, the late Dale Earnhardt Sr., was a seven-time NASCAR champion and the father of Xfinity team co-owners Earnhardt Miller and Earnhardt Jr.