
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 21, 1994                   TAG: 9412210104
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MICHAEL STOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

MINE BOSS SENTENCED

A former supervisor of Southmountain Coal Co. was sentenced to a year in prison Tuesday on federal mine safety charges stemming from a 1992 explosion near Norton that killed eight miners and injured another.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Wilson also fined David Lee Goode of Coeburn $3,000 and sentenced him to three years of probation after he gets out of jail.

Goode, a Southmountain supervisor from November 1991 to June 1992, is the first person to be sentenced in connection with the fatal blast.

"We think it was an appropriate sentence," said James Crawford, a trial attorney with the U.S. Labor Department.

Goode pleaded guilty in September to federal charges that he did not properly search miners for smoking materials. He also admitted that he falsified record books, saying he had searched the miners.

Three other Southmountain supervisors, as well as the company itself, earlier pleaded guilty to federal safety violations that led to a buildup of methane gas at the mine near Norton.

Federal investigators say the gas was ignited by a lighter carried into the mine by one of the blast's victims.

Southmountain's parent company, Apple Coal Corp., and Ridley Elkins, the mine's general manager, were indicted this month on federal mine safety charges. Both will be arraigned next month.

Prosecutors said Goode not only failed to search the miners for smoking materials, but that he also smoked underground almost every day.

by CNB