The third of three men charged in a string of armed robberies that plagued shopkeepers along the South Crater Road business corridor in Petersburg pleaded guilty in federal court yesterday to robbery and firearm charges. Corbin Alexander Dickerson, 19, of the 200 block of South Park Drive in Petersburg, was convicted of one count of bank robbery and use of a firearm in a felony.

A fugitive whom police tracked back and forth from Richmond to Surry County in recent days was apprehended in Surry and charged in the fatal shootings of two Petersburg men last weekend in Hopewell. Shawn Wooden, 34, of Richmond was taken into custody Tuesday by a contingent of law-enforcement agencies that had been chasing him since Sunday’s killings of Kashif Temple, 24, and Antonio Spain, 22. The two men were found slain in a car in the 2300 block of Freeman Road in Hopewell’s Arlington Heights area.

Hopewell police are investigating the city’s third and fourth homicides of the year with the double slaying of two Petersburg men found shot to death Sunday in the Arlington Heights area. Police received a shots-fired call about 10 p.m. in the 2300 block of Freeman Street, a neighborhood near Winston Churchill Drive and Arlington Road. When officers arrived, they discovered the bodies of two men in a car in a vacant lot between Freeman and Waverly streets, according to neighbors.

After 82 years in Petersburg, Elm Street Baptist Church is now officially part of the Saint Paul’s Baptist Church ministry in Richmond. Last month, the church along the West Washington Street corridor near the Dinwiddie County line turned over its assets to Saint Paul’s, including the deed to its property on Elm Street valued at $562,900, and a $30,000 endowment for renovations.

Cracks snake their way along the sidewalk in the 200 block of North Sycamore Street, posing a hazard for passers-by and forming an eyesore for shop owners.  A movement blossomed when Petersburg resident and business owner Kimberly Ann Calos galvanized the artistic community in Petersburg and beyond to address the issue. As a result, nearly 60 artists created 74 paintings to cover the blight that has taken over the concrete.

Central Virginia has seen a slight increase in homicides so far this year, with higher numbers in Richmond and Petersburg offsetting improved numbers elsewhere. For the first nine months of the year, the region had 59 homicides, compared with 55 at the same time last year. The biggest shift has been in Richmond, where city police recorded seven more homicides as of Sept. 30 than a year earlier. Richmond’s nine-month count of 34 exceeds the total of 32 homicides for all of 2008.

Loucendia Reed Lambert was no stranger to tragedy. Her sudden death Wednesday after being struck by a GRTC Transit System bus in Richmond was the latest in a string of family misfortunes. She had recently lost a sister, one of five siblings to die over the years. A son committed suicide a number of years ago, and a second son disappeared in June 2008 and has never been found.

The third of three men suspected of robbing a Richmond bank before leading police on a chase into the city’s Randolph neighborhood was arrested yesterday in the Petersburg area, where he lived. Kenneth A. Reed, 23, of the first block of Gibbons Street in Petersburg, was captured by the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force. He was charged with robbery, attempted robbery, felony use of a firearm and eluding police in Monday’s holdup of the M&T Bank at 3124 W. Broad St. in Richmond, authorities said.

A wreck is blocking the exit ramp from southbound Interstate 95 to Wagner Road in Petersburg. Virginia State Police said the wreck occurred about 5:30 a.m. They report no injuries. Further details were not immediately available.

PETERSBURG—Thadd Williams is an aspiring filmmaker living in Los Angeles. His road to the mecca of the movie industry began 10 years ago at a brand-new school in central Virginia. Williams was one of the original students to enroll at the Appomattox Regional Governor’s School for Arts and Technology. It was there, in the newly renovated building on West Washington Street, that his career was molded. He studied theater and took his first filmmaking class during his senior year.

A plan to build more than 100 luxury apartment units at a warehouse in downtown Petersburg is facing a setback. The City Council last week postponed to Oct. 27 a public hearing scheduled for Tuesday on the rezoning of 201-225 Hinton St. The council was expected to vote on the rezoning after the hearing, but it delayed the action to allow additional time for a dialogue with the residents on the proposed project.

PETERSBURG—An effort to protect Petersburg’s treasured Battersea villa against further exterior deterioration is near completion. Over the past few months, workers at the villa on Upper Appomattox Street have added new custom copper chimney caps, removed cement stucco from below the water table, extended downspouts on existing drains to direct water away from the foundation of the house, realigned gutters, scraped and painted the roof, among other upgrades.

Petersburg School Superintendent James M. Victory once referred to the city’s schools as the poster child for school improvement. City school officials have said for months that the division is making gains in student achievement, and the results are showing. When the Virginia Board of Education voted unanimously yesterday to give A.P. Hill Elementary School full accreditation status, it gave the city four fully accredited schools - a marked increase from last year’s one school out of the district’s seven.

A.P. Hill was the subject of an investigation after the Virginia Department of Education received a report that students were removed from class and did not participate in Standards of Learning assessment testing.

For the second consecutive year, a record number of Virginia’s public schools have reached full accreditation after passing state tests in math, English, science and history during the 2008-09 academic year.