The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office and Virginia State Police are investigating a double slaying in the Lakeside Village area of the county. According to a news release, two people were found dead yesterday morning in Cartersville, and police are searching for a “person of interest” who may have information about the deaths. The sheriff’s department was withholding the identities of the victims until the families could be notified.

An Appomattox man accused in the Thanksgiving Day slaying of his daughter’s boyfriend was indicted this week by a county grand jury. Ardie Jackson, 46, is charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael King, 19. At Jackson’s preliminary hearing in March, Appomattox County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Donnie Simpson testified that Jackson told him he believed he had unloaded King’s shotgun before picking it up, shouldering it, pointing it at the teenager and pulling the trigger.

The alleged killer of FBI informant Fannie “Patsy” Beard was sentenced to 20 years in prison yesterday on a drug conspiracy conviction by a judge who called him “fortunate.“ Danny Damon Smith 23, had been charged with capital murder and was facing a potential death sentence. That charge was dropped, but authorities, in an attempt to increase his sentence on the drug charge, tried to show he committed the slaying.