Pittsylvania County officials plan to survey and protect an old slave cemetery that contains about 200 marked gravesites.

A Pittsylvania County family is searching for one of its members, a 1959 Chevrolet Impala that paternal grandfather Irvin McDaniel bought new and called’59 Rag. “This was like [Irvin’s] baby,“ said Jennifer McDaniel, Irvin’s daughter-in-law. “This was a part of the family.“ Thieves took the convertible Saturday out of Irvin’s driveway on Afton Road between 12:30 and 3 a.m., Jennifer said. Virginia State Police are investigating the crime, but the family has been doing investigating of its own.

Two people are dead following a shooting this afternoon at the G&S Market in Gretna, Virginia State Police said.

A study of uranium mining in Virginia is moving forward, to the dismay of some mining opponents. A subcommittee of the Virginia Commission on Coal and Energy approved the study yesterday after fine-tuning the issues to be studied. The study arises from a proposal by Virginia Uranium Inc. to mine uranium in Pittsylvania County in south-central Virginia.

A Virginia Tech geologist recently was awarded a $60,000 grant to study the Coles Hill uranium deposit in Pittsylvania County near Chatham. A mineral research grant from the U.S. Geological Survey is the first from the federal government for studying this deposit and will fund “a very focused study to determine the age of the uranium mineralization,“ said Robert Bodnar, geochemistry professor at Tech.

DANVILLE—A Pittsylvania County supervisor hopes federal and state agencies will look into elevated lead levels at home wells near Coles Hill, where Virginia Uranium Inc. has done exploratory drilling in hopes of one day mining uranium. Chatham-Blairs Supervisor Hank Davis has proposed a resolution for the Board of Supervisors that would ask the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Virginia Department of Health to investigate higher amounts of lead in home wells in the Sheva area near Coles Hill.

After nearly a month of dodging the law across the Southeast, the Pittsylvania County man who escaped from jail in Lynchburg is back behind bars. Larry Dodson Jr., 20, was arrested near Savannah, Ga., on Sunday night after crashing a stolen truck during a high-speed chase, according to the Georgia State Patrol and the U.S. Marshals Service.

As a former commander of Norfolk Naval Base and a nuclear weapons officer who worked on Russian atomic secrets at the National Security Council, Joe Bouchard knows something about uranium. As a Ph.D. and Democratic delegate from Virginia Beach who works on environmental and scientific issues on two important House committees, Bouchard also knows something about the politics of uranium.

A Virginia panel is giving the go-ahead to a study on opening the state to uranium mining and likely bankrolled by the industry—raising fears that the research will be weighted in favor of proponents. A subcommittee of the Coal and Energy Commission yesterday approved a tentative outline of the study by the National Academy of Science, which would focus on safety, environmental and health concerns. A separate examination of the financial and economic impact of mining also is planned.

A Chesapeake man died yesterday from injuries he suffered in a two-car crash on Tuesday. William Patrick Simmons, 21, was a passenger in a car that was traveling north on Interstate 664, about two-tenths of a mile south of Joliff Road in Chesapeake, when it struck a disabled vehicle parked on the shoulder at 9:55 p.m. Tuesday. Simmons, who police said was not wearing a seat belt, died the next morning at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in Norfolk.

Responding to residents’ concerns that uranium mining in Pittsylvania County would be an environmental disaster, county leaders are urging a state commission studying the issue to state unequivocally whether mining would cause damage or harm. County supervisors, in a resolution passed Monday night, said they don’t want the commission’s study merely to provide an analysis of the costs and benefits of uranium mining.

Members of a state commission preparing to oversee a study of uranium mining in Pittsylvania County were urged by area residents last night to make sure the study fully addresses the health effects related to mining the nuclear fuel. Residents also vowed to fight any legislative attempt to use the study to overturn a 27-year-old statewide moratorium on uranium mining.

Conard B. Mattox Jr. was born in Gretna in rural Pittsylvania County. After five years as a U.S. Army Air Forces pilot in World War II, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Richmond, and his law degree there in 1951. He stayed on to teach economics in UR’s Evening College, was law librarian at T.C. Williams School of Law, and also practiced law.

The Medical Examiner’s Office in Roanoke has identified the body found in Pittsylvania County last week as Courtney Turpin Servais and has ruled the cause of death a homicide, according to Pittsylvania County Sheriff Mike Taylor. Servais, 30, of Danville, was reported missing Dec. 19. She disappeared after her car was involved in a reported hit-and-run on U.S. 360 in Pittsylvania County. A cadaver dog from a Northern Virginia search-and-rescue group found Servais’ body on Christmas Eve in the 17000 block of Old Richmond Road/Route 360 in Red Oak Hollow, about 2 miles from the Pittsylvania County and Halifax County boundary line.

Virginia State Police yesterday identified a Pittsylvania County Jail inmate killed in a struggle with a deputy as a Danville man who had recently been convicted of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl. Cody Christopher Nifong, 24, was to have been sentenced Jan. 8 after undergoing a mental evaluation. On Tuesday night, a Pittsylvania deputy was taking Nifong back to the jail after a medical appointment when the two began struggling in the deputy’s cruiser, authorities said.