VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — 10 On Your Side has reported on a “junk yard” on the Haygood side of Aragona Village multiple times this year.
We received complaints about it, confronted the owner, started reporting on it, and on Thursday, the matter was resolved in a Virginia Beach Circuit courtroom.
The City of Virginia Beach has repeatedly brought Linshaw Lane resident William Bruce Smith to the courthouse. He usually has excuses, and dodged punishment by delaying the court process. City code enforcers were so frustrated by it that they sought an active jail sentence to send Smith a message they weren’t messing around.
The city has been complaining about all the junk on his property. The cars, the cars on blocks, and today Smith finally came in to settle the matter.
The matter was settled by Smith pleading guilty to one count of misdemeanor “improper storage of junk.”
In exchange for that, his 30-day jail sentence will be suspended pending a year of good behavior, then he will walk out of court a free man.
Even though his yard is not what it should be, it’s better than what it was.
Smith summed it up this way: “At the end we are finally closing the book, moving on, and moving into a new year.”
WAVY News 10’s Drone 10 shows why Smith wants to close the book on 2020. The video shows lots of junk in the yard, and in September, it got to the point where you could barely see grass because of all the stuff on top.
People complained to us, so we visited Smith multiple times over the last three months.
On Wednesday, we put Drone 10 back-up again. Three months later, there’s a noticeable difference. Not perfect, but progress made. Smith cleaned up about 40% of what was on the yard.
“There were certainly things I was trying to fix, and I needed some help that nobody gave me, and I needed help, but I ended up doing what I had to do,” Smith said.
As part of the plea agreement, the city dropped five charges relating to inoperable vehicles. Ironically, the city agreed to drop charges for issues that still exist today. To be fair, those issues are easily and quickly resolved with tow trucks.
“Most of the problem has been COVID-19 with DMV being closed, and delays in transferring titles …and a lot of other services,” Smith said.
However, it is much more than that, and as part of the agreement, the city will clean up the yard and tow the cars, and Smith is going to pay for it. That is good news for neighbors because they now know the yard will be cleaned up 100%.
Back in Smith’s neighborhood, there’s relief for what is now finally done — a resolution to fix what is wrong on Linshaw Lane.
“I am happy what I see,” said Rick Vetra. He moved to the neighborhood in 1958, and at 62 years of living there, the blight of the neighborhood is getting cleaned up.
“I thank 10 On Your Side… At least we had our voices heard by the city and courts, and hopefully by Mr. Smith. We hope he hears how we feel, and something had to be done.”