Two Labrador retrievers are undergoing six-month quarantines after a rabid raccoon was found dead in the backyard of their owner’s Sandston home. Henrico County police said this evening that the raccoon tested positive for rabies after it was discovered Friday in the yard of a home in the 200 block of Antioch Drive. Rabies shots for both dogs expired two years ago, police said. Both dogs are being quarantined even though it is not certain they were in contact with the animal. Henrico’s Animal Protection unit is urging residents to keep rabies shots up to date and to avoid contact with any animals or pets that are acting oddly.

The USO hall just off Williamsburg Road was conveyed to Henrico County at the end of World War II with the understanding that it would house a recreation center for Sandston residents. A 50-cent assessment was tacked on to each Sandston resident’s water bill to purchase and maintain the center. Six decades later, the assessment is still in place, and the Sandston Memorial Recreation Center holds numerous community events on its shiny maple floors. But the recreational facilities outdoors leave much to be desired, leaving some Sandston residents feeling like second-class citizens.

A Sandston-area man was found dead at his home Tuesday, and Henrico County police have charged his stepson with killing him. Cecil Colley, 71, was found at about 8 a.m. on the kitchen floor of his house in the 5600 block of Old Elko Road by a co-worker, Henrico police Lt. Doug Perry said. Colley had “obvious signs of trauma to his body,“ Perry said.

A Sandston man yesterday became the fourth person convicted in a year-old Louisa County effort to corral sexual solicitation of minors. Julian Martin, 54, pleaded guilty in Louisa Circuit Court to soliciting a 13-year-old girl and faces up to 30 years in prison when he is sentenced April 22. Martin, who has been in jail since his arrest July 2, arrived at a Louisa business with alcohol to meet someone he thought was a 13-year-old for a date.

Craftcorps opened a new branch in eastern Henrico County in 1997 to serve a new, burgeoning memory-chip industry. The Texas-based company prospered along with the Qimonda semiconductor company, providing as many as 350 skilled laborers to the plant just a few years ago. But Qimonda is closing—and Craftcorps now must aggressively find new work locally to survive.

The search for a missing Sandston woman ended near where it began. Police recovered the body of Ethel Marie Easter yesterday about 100 yards from where she was last seen alive. A passer-by found Easter’s body inside her car yesterday morning, across the street from the South Laburnum Avenue bank where she had made a withdrawal Jan. 13, Henrico County police said.

For every car lover who ever fretted over what goes on behind closed body-shop doors, the courtroom equivalent of a horror flick played out in Henrico County yesterday. What went into Mustang Mike’s, a Sandston body shop, sometimes didn’t emerge for years, customers testified. And what did emerge was often in pieces or rendered worse than the already disabled relics that were supposed to be restored there.

Michael A. Watson, 51, who ran Mustang Mike’s in Sandston, was found guilty in Henrico County Circuit Court today of multiple embezzlement and grand larceny charges in connection with his auto repair and restoration work. He faces up to 20 years in prison on each of six felony convictions when he is sentenced Dec. 12. He faces additional jail time for failing to register his business and pay state taxes.