Deputies in Culpeper County responded at 8:04 this morning for a report of a person pointing a gun at two county schools, A.G. Richardson Elementary and Pearl Sample Elementary. Both are on James Madison Highway.

Five people were taken into custody as a result of the incident. Police say the gun involved was a pellet gun and that no students or others were in danger.

“At no time were any school children in danger,” Sheriff Scott Jenkins said in a statement this morning. “We’re in the process of speaking with the individuals involved and will release further information as it becomes available. We want to reassure parents that their children are safe at both schools.”

Editor’s note: We’ll have more on this story later today as we get more details from the Sheriff’s Office.

BY KATIE THISDELL

Any fees imposed by Stafford County officials for public records requests must be based on their county salaries.

The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a new policy Tuesday regarding responses to requests under the Freedom of Information Act. The board waived the bylaws to pass the policy at its first read.

Now, any fees that supervisors, public officials and staff decide to charge for records requests will be based on a specific formula.

A supervisor may not charge more than $9.85 per hour, based on a $20,000 salary. The chairman may charge $10.34 per hour. That money goes to the county’s general fund.

Stafford County receives about 50 FOIA requests per year, according to County Administrator Anthony Romanello. No requests are pending.

For one recent request, Supervisor Cord Sterling had estimated charges based on his personal salary, totaling $1,240. The board had passed a resolution to donate the total to the schools in his district.

Sterling said he would have to take vacation days from his employer to fill the request. County staff members are now reviewing his emails, which are no longer forwarded to his personal email account.

Because of the notoriety of the matter, Shumate recommended the board pass the resolution immediately.

Former Supervisor George Schwartz worried about the effects of the policy, and said supervisors should not let civilian commitments interfere with their elected duties to provide for open government.

“If one cannot maintain their sworn duties then do not run for office or, if in office, resign from office,” Schwartz said during public comment at Tuesday’s meeting.

Under FOIA, the county must present an estimate on possible fees that may be incurred during a response. Board members and public officials may choose to waive fees.

A deposit is required if the estimate is greater than $200.

If the balance of a previous FOIA is overdue by 30 days, the county may require payment before responding to new requests, according to the policy.

The county has a five-day period to respond to a request, with a seven-day extension possible.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, the board approved a $1.4 million loan from the county’s transportation fund to the Stafford Regional Airport to build a new terminal. Currently, a doublewide trailer serves as the terminal.

Hank Scharpenberg, chairman of the airport authority, told the board that costs would be repaid as soon as possible, with 55 percent of the revenue stream for each new corporate client being designated for repayment.

Supervisors also discussed what to do with plans for Urban Development Areas, which had been mandated for areas with high growth projections. But this year, the General Assembly made them optional for localities.

The Planning Commission has requested guidance from the board before determining maximum density limits for a new zoning district.

Discussion will continue at the next meeting.

Katie Thisdell: 540/735-1975
Email: kthisdell@freelancestar.com

BY KEITH EPPS

Police are seeking the public’s help in finding a man who exposed himself to at least one jogger Monday evening in Fredericksburg.
A woman reported that she was running near the Outdoor Center off Fall Hill Avenue along the canal path when the incident occurred about 7:40 p.m. City police spokeswoman Natatia Bledsoe said the suspect then followed the woman a short distance until she came upon another woman on the path who was with her dog.
She told the other woman what had happened, and she replied, “I just saw it, too.” The two women and the dog then ran together toward U.S. 1, where the first woman veered off and called police from the Verizon store.
After calling police, the woman resumed her jog to Mary Washington Boulevard, where she saw the suspect on some wooden steps heading back to the canal path. This time she flagged down a state trooper, and police searched for the man without success.
He was described as a black man in his 20s, 6 feet tall and 160 pounds. He had a medium complexion, a short afro and was wearing a white tank top and blue jeans. He did not say anything to the woman.
Bledsoe said it was the eighth reported indecent-exposure incident since 2010 on the canal path, which is 1.75 miles long and runs from Princess Anne Street to Fall Hill Avenue. One man was arrested in connection with two of the incidents.
 Anyone with information about Monday’s incident is asked to call police at 373-3122.

Keith Epps:  540/374-5404
kepps@freelancestar.com

BY JEFF BRANSCOME

Spotsylvania County’s Department of Fire, Rescue and Emergency Management is spending about $3,000 in the short term to prevent more drug thefts from its ambulances.
Fire Chief Chris Eudailey said the department is changing locks to medication compartments in every ambulance. It’s also adding separate lock boxes in ambulances for morphine and Versed—two drugs that have been reported stolen in recent weeks in three incidents at Chancellor-area stations.
And within the next few months, fire and rescue officials hope to buy  new drug compartments for all of the county’s ambulances, Eudailey said. The compartments  would have technology—potentially a key fob system—to identify who accessed them and when.

Eudailey said he didn’t know how much the compartments would  cost.

Since April, the Sheriff’s Office has been investigating thefts of morphine and Versed from locked ambulance compartments.
  On April 20, two 10-mg ampules of morphine and two 5-mg vials of Versed were reported missing from Rescue Station 10 on Gordon Road. Two days later, two more 10-mg ampules of morphine and two 5-mg ampules of Versed were discovered to be missing, this time from Rescue Station 5 on Harrison Road.
Eudailey said he hopes police make an arrest soon. “It doesn’t matter whether they’re career or volunteer” personnel, he said. “We’re going to ensure that they’re prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
The latest incident happened at Rescue Station 5 on Harrison Road between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. on May 3–4. About $100 of morphine, Valium and other narcotics went missing.
Since then, morphine and Versed have been removed from all ambulances and given to select supervisors, Eudailey said. Those supervisors will respond to calls in which the drugs are needed.
The drugs will be returned to the ambulances after the locks  are changed and new keys are issued to  providers of advanced life support.
Versed is a brand name for midazolam, which is used to produce drowsiness and to relieve anxiety before surgery or other procedures.
 Morphine is a narcotic pain reliever used to treat moderate to severe pain.
Spotsylvania Fire and EMS Commissioner Eric Lasky praised the county’s response to the thefts.

 “The fact of the matter is, now we’re going to go well above what the commonwealth of Virginia requires of us to ensure these things don’t happen again,” said Lasky, a rescue chief with Chancellor Volunteer Fire and Rescue.
Commissioner LeRon Lewis, a chief with the Spotsylvania Volunteer Rescue Squad, said changing the locks is a great step.
But he’s not so sure about replacing the current medicine compartments with what he called “an intricate key fob system.”
“It seems to be a pretty large expense to take on,” Lewis said.

Jeff Branscome:  540/374-5402
jbranscome@freelancestar.com

BY CHELYEN DAVIS

RICHMOND—Virginia’s tax revenues are looking up, with April’s collections coming in 10.6 percent higher than  April 2011.
For the fiscal year so far, revenues are up 5.9 percent, ahead of the forecasted growth of 4.6 percent.
According to Secretary of Finance Ric Brown, April’s increase was due to strong individual withholding receipts. Brown said April and May are both significant revenue-collection months.

Corporations’ final payments for the 2011 tax year and the first estimated payment for the 2012 tax year were due in April. Individual income-tax returns were due May 1, so a large portion of those estimated and final payments are made in April.
Sales tax collections and corporate income tax collections both showed  small increases over the previous year.
In a written statement, Gov. Bob McDonnell said the April increase shows that Virginia “continues its recovery from the challenging economic period.”

“Our bipartisan effort to enact pro-business policies focused on job creation continues to foster a recovery more robust than elsewhere in the nation,” he said. “However, it remains too soon to celebrate and lose focus on our fragile economy.

“We must redouble our efforts to ensure our government is running at peak efficiency, and we must continue to aggressively pursue new business investments and job-creation strategies in Virginia to fan the flames of this recovery and put back to work the 250,000 Virginians still in need of good-paying jobs.”
Chelyen Davis:  804/343-2245
cdavis@freelancestar.com

BY DONNIE JOHNSTON

David DeJarnette’s face lights up as he pulls off his driving helmet.
“I got the pole,” he says. “It is nice to start off the season with the fastest qualifying time.”

A friend from across the street in the Summit Point (W.Va.) Raceway campground comes over to congratulate the weekend racer.
“You know you were only a quarter of a second off the track record, don’t you?” he asks DeJarnette, whose smile broadens even more.
It is the first weekend of the new season, and DeJarnette, like the other 300 racing enthusiasts at the 43-year-old track, has been looking forward to this event all winter.
The second-term Culpeper County treasurer has had success since he first started competing in 2006, but getting the pole position in the Camaro–Mustang Challenge Series race will give him an added advantage.
“The pole is important because sometimes you get stuck in traffic and it is difficult to pass out there,” DeJarnette says. “Sometimes the person in the front car can run off and hide.”
And that’s what the 53-year-old DeJarnette hopes to do in his 1994 Ford Mustang GT  on this day.

DeJarnette grew up around cars, and racing is in his blood. His father, Joe DeJarnette, ran a used-car lot in Culpeper for more than 30 years and sold high-performance parts at his shop.

“Dad always had a lot of muscle cars around and sometimes my brothers [Spencer and Billy] and I would drive four different cars to school each week,” he recalls. “And we were expected to fix anything that went wrong with the cars we drove.”

DeJarnette also learned a thing or two about racing from his father.
“My dad and my uncle used to race over on that old dirt track at Winchester,” he says. “He had a 1940 Ford.”
Joe DeJarnette’s car number was 6 so David decided to use 678 on his Mustang.
Summit Point (about 10 miles northeast of Charles Town) is a flurry of activity on race weekends. Drivers in a variety of categories  roar around the 2.5-mile road track from the time practice runs begin about 9:30 a.m. until the final race is over around 5:30 p.m.
For those who have never raced competitively, there are National Auto Sport Association  instructors who, after a classroom session, will accompany you down the half-mile straightaway and around the paved track’s 10 turns. It was after these instruction classes that DeJarnette began his weekend racing career.
“I had been coming over here for years with a friend and drove in some of the non-competition classes,” he recalls. “Then one day I told my buddy, ‘You know, we can drive as well as some of these guys!’ so I started competing.”
GETTING READY TO RACE
It was at Summit Point that actors Paul Newman and Tom Cruise honed their racing skills. Photographs of  the two movie stars hang in the track’s small restaurant.
Driving at speeds of up to 115 mph on the straightaway and taking tight turns on a crowded track can be dangerous, so the latest and best in safety equipment is required.

Special pads ensure that the brakes don’t overheat and fail, and another modification allows for on-track wheel alignment that may need to be changed because of track or weather conditions.
Helmets, fire-retardant suits and a HANS device, which protects the head and neck in a crash, all help ensure that  a driver is as safe as possible. And top-quality roll cages are a must.
“You don’t want to be sliding sideways about to hit something and wonder if your roll cage is good,” says DeJarnette. “Most amateur drivers buy the best roll cages they can.”

 DeJarnette might be a mild-mannered public servant Monday through Friday, but on this weekend the competitive juices are flowing. After capturing the pole position, he wants to win the race.
“No matter what car is in front of you, you want to catch it, reel it in and pass it,” he says. “That’s the most fun—when you come across that finish line, they’re waving that checkered flag, and you know you’ve won the race.”
On this day, the sky is cloudy and, although it is late April, a few sleet pellets have fallen before noon. Now, about 30 minutes before DeJarnette’s 3:20 race, the clouds thicken again and there is another threat of rain.
“We don’t stop for the rain,” explains DeJarnette. “We have windshield wipers. It may slow our times and speed, but rain won’t stop us.”
The skies brighten just a bit as DeJarnette rolls out of the staging lane and onto the track for the initial pace lap. Within seconds, he is going full bore down the east end of the straightaway and into the first curve. Once around the track, he gets the green flag and the race is on.
 OFF TO A GOOD START
For 25 minutes, the cars—there are about 20 competitors in today’s Camaro–Mustang division—race around the track until a flag signals the final lap.

As he had hoped, DeJarnette, with the pole position, has run away from the pack. The one car that gives him any competition has minor trouble and fades to a distant second.
“He’s won!” exclaims David’s older brother, Spencer, who often comes over to help. “He’ll be a happy guy tonight.”
And a happy guy he is. One of his buddies sprays him with champagne as DeJarnette waits to have his engine horsepower checked.

In his class, 267 horsepower is the limit, and DeJarnette, who has had some work done on his engine over the winter, is mildly concerned as he awaits the outcome.

“The horsepower limit is just to make sure that the best driver, not the driver with the biggest wallet, wins,” DeJarnette says.

It turns out that the winning Mustang is well below the horsepower limit, and now the victory is official.  It has been a very good start to the racing season.
The next day won’t be quite so good, however. In the Sunday race, DeJarnette spins out and his engine dies in the middle of the track. It takes about 15 seconds to restart the car as other racers whiz by.
Miraculously, he doesn’t get hit, finally gets his Mustang going and somehow finishes fourth. He won’t get a trophy, but he has avoided disaster.
On Monday, DeJarnette is back at work crunching numbers and pushing papers around his desk in the Giles H. Miller Jr. Building on Culpeper’s Main Street.
But the memory of Saturday’s race victory will make the everyday grind just a little easier to bear.

Donnie Johnston:
djohnston@freelancestar.com

BY AMY FLOWERS  UMBLE

There won’t be any snowmen. Or snowball fights. Or sledding. And it’s a pretty safe bet  no one will feel like drinking hot cocoa by the fireside.
 But King George County students will get a snow day this month.

 Monday night, the School Board voted to change May 25 from a half-day to a full day off, because the division didn’t use the snow days built into the calendar.
May 25 is the Friday before Memorial Day weekend.
 With fewer than two weeks until the holiday, School Board member Rick Randall worried that parents wouldn’t have enough time to make child care arrangements for that day.

 However, board member John Davis countered, “Our teachers are teachers, not day care providers.”
 School Board members also said that they are narrowing in on a new superintendent. The board hopes to have a full-time school chief in place by July 1.
 Chairman Mike Rose said that the candidate pool has been winnowed to “less than five,” and he expects to announce the new hire by June 1.
 “I am really impressed with the quality of the candidates we’ve seen,” Rose said.
Amy Flowers Umble:   540/735-1973
aumble@freelancestar.com

BY JIM HALL

COURSE MAP | ROAD CLOSURES

The traffic patterns in use throughout Fredericksburg on Sunday morning for the 5th annual Marine Corps Historic Half race  will be the same as in past years.
 Officials have been advising those traveling to destinations along the race route to be aware of road closures and runners.
 “Plan extra time,” said James Swisher, vice president for project management and continuous improvement at Mary Washington Hospital.
The 13.1-mile course reaches nearly every corner of the city, from Central Park to downtown, through the hospital property and back to the start–finish line at the Fredericksburg Expo and Conference Center.
At some point during the race, more than two dozen city roads will be closed, most for an hour or more. Some of the road closings begin at 5 a.m.
Numerous churches line the route, including St. Mary Catholic Church on William Street, First Christian Church on Washington Avenue, and St. George’s Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church of Fredericksburg on Princess Anne Street.

Worshipers will have to dodge rolling road closings, such as the 7:25 to 9:25 a.m. closing on Princess Anne Street.
“Be sure to allow more time for parking further away from the church than usual,”  St. George’s website advises.
 At Mary Washington Hospital, one of the exits will be closed, left turns will be prohibited at some intersections, and thousands of runners will be strung across the property from one end to the other.
“The biggest times of impact are 6:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.,” Swisher said.
Runners will enter the hospital campus from U.S. 1, just after the 10-mile mark, travel behind the hospital and exit onto Cowan Boulevard.
That means they’ll again have to tackle Hospital Hill, the mile-long climb adjacent to the emergency department.
In its recent newsletter to runners, Marine Corps officials warned them about Hospital Hill, saying, “No two words strike more fear or inspire greater determination in the hearts of Historic Half runners everywhere.”
Patients, visitors and staff will find that the hospital entrances at Cowan Boulevard and U.S. 1 are open, though traffic will not be allowed to exit onto Cowan Boulevard.

The traffic pattern at the hospital is the same one in use for several years.
“We feel like it’s a good plan,” Swisher said. “We’ve gotten to be old hat at it.”
One new wrinkle this year is the connector road between the hospital and Eagle Village. That street will be open during the race as an entrance and an exit.
“We’ll be monitoring usage on the connector this year,” Swisher said. “We’re thinking of it as an extra relief valve for traffic.”
The hospital has been a part of the half-marathon since its start in 2008. Many staff members run in the half, the relay and 5K races, and others volunteer at the aid stations.
“It creates some challenges for us, but we’ve figured out how to overcome them,” Swisher said. “We like being a part of it.”

Jim Hall: 540/374-5433
jhall@freelancestar.com

The ELS Language Center will hold an open house Sunday for anyone interested in hosting a college-age international student.
The Language Center partners with the University of Mary Washington to bring international students to the Fredericksburg area.
Host families can commit for one month or up to one year.
The open house will be held Sunday, 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in Suite 350 of the Eagle Village Executive Offices. The event is free and open to the public.
For details, contact Allison Jerdan at 540/840-9820 or fredhomestay@hotmail.com.

BY KEITH EPPS

A trip to a pawn shop has led Stafford County police to a man suspected in a series of recent thefts from unlocked cars.
Sheriff’s spokesman Bill Kennedy said there have been 32 recent reports of thefts from vehicles in Shadow Woods and Towns of Hampton Oaks subdivisions in Stafford.
Among the items taken were GPS devices, cameras, iPods, a portable DVD player and money. The thefts occurred on April 26 and 27, and on May 2 and 3.
William Jerome Roseboro, 25, is charged with two counts of grand larceny, two counts of larceny with the intent to sell and obtaining money by false pretenses. He is facing the possibility of more charges, Kennedy said.
According to an affidavit for a search warrant filed in Stafford Circuit Court, Detective J.R. Fouts went to 610 Pawn and Jewelry on May 3 to check for some of the stolen items.

A portable DVD player  that had the same serial number as a stolen one was found. Police determined that Roseboro had pawned the item on April 28.
Other items taken in the thefts were recovered from the store, while others had already been sold.
The affidavit states that later on May 3, Roseboro returned to the same pawn shop with several GPS devices.

Store employees refused to take the items from Roseboro, the affidavit states, and in his haste to leave he left a black TomTom GPS on the counter.
The store turned the GPS over to Fouts, who determined that it had been stolen during the series of thefts that occurred late May 2 or early May 3.

Court records show that Fouts interviewed Roseboro on May 7 in front of his home on Rover Court.
Fouts states that Roseboro acknowledged knowing the the items he pawned were stolen and that “I was involved.”
The home was searched, and an iPod Touch and a wallet taken in the thefts were recovered, court records show.
Roseboro is being held in the Rappahannock Regional Jail. A preliminary hearing in Stafford General District Court is scheduled for Aug. 7.
Keith Epps: 540/374-5404
kepps@freelancestar.com