The big discussion around the Duke and Carolina message boards today was that Ty Lawson, UNC’s point guard last year who is pretty likely going first round in the draft to the NBA, was arrested around 2:30 this morning for disturbing the peace of violating a noise ordinance, some such, by blaring loud music in his car. He was also found to have been drinking. I think his blood alcohol level was below the legal limit, but since he’s only 20 years old he got in trouble for that too. Lawson was considered to be a pretty easy first round draft pick, but some people are thinking this will hurt his chances. A number of Carolina fans are thinking this will hurt his chances bad enough that he’ll come back to play another year there, but I don’t think that will happen. He seems to want to go ahead and go pro, form things I’ve read, and between him, Wayne Ellington and Danny Green, it doesn’t sound like any of them want to return.
If Lawson does come back, Carolina will likely be a front runner again. If he does not, I think they’ll stay ranked all next season, but they won’t be at the top.
Work was decently busy. After it I went to production volunteer meeting at Studio 3 for the church. I hung out with the Warkenteins, Burf, Joey and Philip, mostly. We all sat and ate together. They had a basket of things for people at each table. You were supposed to look at the number taped to the bottom of your chair and that was the order you got to pick something in. I was going to take some movie tickets, but I let Joey have them. I ended up with a gift card for Starbucks, which I figured Amanda could use. There was stuff left over so I also got David Crowder’s new CD, Remedy.
After all of that we were told about some of the changes coming up for when we get into the building. We were also told that we’d be moving into the new church building a couple weeks later than planned. Despite that, it’s amazing how fast the building has gone up and come together.
Dwayne and Olivia performed some music for all of us while we took communion then most people headed over to The Connection to watch Missy and Eric perform. I thought about it, but I knew Amanda was bored at home, so I wanted to get back to her.
While I was at Studio 3 I got a text message that Mike Boscaljon had been in an accident, but that he was okay. I called him on the way home and he said he’d been to the beach to check out the surf but there wasn’t anything going on there. On the way back, by Eastwood and Military Cutoff, the person in front of him braked kind of quickly so he braked too. He then had the presence of mind to wonder if the person behind him would have any trouble braking and saw the car behind him coming on too fast to stop. He tried to veer off into the median, but but lady hit him and smashed him into a tree, so the car got it like a pair of Chinese finger cuffs.
Nobody was hurt, fortunately, and according to Mike the second question for most people was my question too: Is the surfboard okay? Rest assured it is. The car, however, is not, and it’s Mike and Kaitlyn’s only car. On top of that, Mike was driving with a suspended Wisconsin license. He was upfront with the cop about this and got a ticket for failure to produce a license, which I’m thinking is much better than driving with a suspended license. Hopefully that will all work out too.
When I got home Amanda was watching Dateline. She had turned it on because one of the stories was about Maria Lauderbach, the pregnant Marine who was killed a while back by another Marine, Cesar Laurean, who was suspected of raping her. This all happened in Jacksonville, NC, practically next door to Richlands, NC where Amanda grew up. It was a bigtime national story.
Anyhoo, the first story was of a young mother of two who was randomly kidnapped from her home in Florida. She tried her best to get help, even calling 911 and giving them all sorts of info over a cell phone without her kidnapper knowing. People called in with sightings and the police were constantly one step behind. There was a missed communication in the dispatch office and the poor woman ended up being found in a shallow grave with a bullet in her head. Tragic as this situation would have been anyway, if some of the information had gotten out like it was supposed to have it could have possibly changed the outcome. There was one lady who called in on her cell phone and reported something strange going on in the car next to her when the car turned up one road and passed a place where several cop were. Not far from that was where the body was found.
It was really just so sad. Her father is a detective in the county where the lapse occurred and he’s gone on a crusade to try to increase communication processes or some such. Really just so sad though.
Zach Dotsey