ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 30, 1996 TAG: 9604300119
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
Fire ravages 400 acres in Va., W.Va.
WINCHESTER - A weekend fire scorched about 400 acres of forest on Blue Ridge Mountain, but no homes were threatened, a Virginia Department of Forestry official said.
The fire was in and around the Appalachian Trail in Clarke and Loudoun counties in Virginia and Jefferson County, W.Va., said Forestry Department spokesman Lou Southard.
The blaze, reported at 4:35 a.m. on Sunday, came three days after another fire burned about 300 acres seven miles away. It is thought to have been started by people who threw something off a 100-foot cliff where they were camping, said forester Gerald Crowell.
If the agency finds people it holds responsible for the fire, it could bill them for the cost of putting it out, Southard said.
- Associated Press
Man, 68, killed in hang-glider crash
KING GEORGE - A 68-year-old Maryland man died when his hang-glider faltered and fell to the ground, authorities said.
Frank Sauber was flying with an instructor in King George County, east of Fredericksburg, when the lightweight glider crashed about 6:30 p.m. Sunday, King George dispatcher James Sevier said. Sauber, of Rockville, Md., was pronounced dead later that evening.
The instructor told Sauber's family he was riding a gust of air called a thermal when the accident occurred.
``The wind died suddenly, and the hang-glider just plummeted to the Earth,'' said Sauber's sister, Barbara Melnicove.
Sauber had made one successful flight Sunday and was attempting a second, Melnicove said. She said he had been hang-gliding about 15 years.
- Associated Press
Police see no link in disappearances
RICHMOND - Police say they know of no connection between the abduction of a woman in Northern Virginia and the disappearance in March of Alicia Showalter Reynolds.
An armed man abducted the woman Friday on Interstate 95 in Alexandria and forced her to drive to Richmond, where she escaped after the man robbed and tried to rape her, police said.
The Seat Pleasant, Md., woman's description of the man was similar to that of a man who has been stopping, and in some cases abducting, women along U.S. 29 between Manassas and Charlottesville. But State police spokeswoman Lucy Caldwell said Monday the task force investigating the Reynolds disappearance knew of no connection between the two cases.
- Associated Press
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