alex toomy en Toomy's loss, Sullivan's gain <p><strong>6/13/11</strong><br /><br />John &amp; Frances Webber to Richard &amp; Leigh Myers, 3360 Brookside Drive, $565,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Craig Enterprises Inc. to Thomas &amp; Elizabeth Freshwater, 642 Eight Woods Lane, $514,158, Albemarle<br /><br />Craig Enterprises Inc. to Mark &amp; Nancy McKinnon, 4626 Mechums River Road, $386,236, Albemarle<br /><br />Mike &amp; Yvonne Griffin to Charles &amp; Donna Lazar, 2765 Peppervine Court, $380,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Craig Lindqvist to William, Helen &amp; Craig Lindqvist, 1301 McCauley Street, $322,408, Albemarle<br /><br />NVR Inc. to Richard Staton &amp; Stacey Vaughan, 226 Colony Drive, $202,565, Albemarle<br /><br />Jim &amp; Christine Tucker to Patrick &amp; Jane Belisle, 677 Evergreen Avenue, $437,500, Charlottesville<br /><br />Thomas Van Der Voort Jr. &amp; Joan Horn to Quinn &amp; Diane Curtis, 110 Robinson Woods, $498,000, Charlottesville<br /><br />Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation to Julie Stanton, 526 Cleveland Avenue, $155,000, Charlottesville<br /><br /><strong>6/14/11</strong><br /><br />BMB Investments LLC to CGS Holdings Inc., 944 Glenwood Station Lane, Units 101 &amp; 104, $889,000,&nbsp; Albemarle<br /><br />Young &amp; Jaehyun Choi to Richard &amp; Margaret Dimeglio, 2674 English Oaks Circle, $347,500, Albemarle<br /><br />Ted &amp; Judith Geissler to Jonathan &amp; Laura Fox, 2034 Locke Lane, $265,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Benjamin &amp; Jamie Hom to Franca Giancaspero, 1241 Clover Ridge Place, $200,000, Albemarle<br /><br />SHR9 LLC to Southern Property LLC, 820 Cole Street, $105,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation to Richard &amp; Dana Miller, 10501 Howardsville Turnpike, $68,500, Albemarle<br /><br />HSBC Bank USA to Preferred Trust Company, 4983 Irish Road, $37,000, Albemarle<br /><br /><strong>6/15/11</strong><br /><br />* Atlas Va I Spe LLC to Murcielago LLC, 5932 Blenheim Road, $2,300,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Jay T. Graves to Vartain &amp; Catalina Babaian, 5066 Raspberry Road, $1,000,000, Albemarle<br /><br />David &amp; Gayle Kunkel to Todd &amp; Suzanne Sturman, 3244 Heathcote Lane, $850,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Bruce &amp; Dona Wylie to Jim &amp; Christine Tucker, 520 Arrowhead Drive, $586,500, Albemarle<br /><br />Kevin &amp; Michele Hogan to Patrick &amp; Carolyn Huyghe, 3020 Amberfield Trail, $392,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Poplar Glen LLC to Ryan Montgomery &amp; Deborah Yu, 505 Tulip Tree Court, $359,258, Albemarle<br /><br />Coy Barefoot &amp; Alison Bell to William &amp; Annie Izard, 870 Emerson Drive, $285,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Ralph J. Bartholomew to Craig Volden &amp; Andrea Mejia, 6.14 acres, Lot 10, Ardwood, $275,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Nancy B.S. Perry to William Olinger, 4633 Garth Road, $260,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Walter &amp; Mary Jane Griffith to Charles &amp; Tanya Croxton, 1625 Redwing Lane, $256,311, Albemarle<br /><br />Runkle Properties LLC to Kurt &amp; Jennifer Slangerup, 2166 Polo Grounds Road, $241,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Thomas &amp; Donna Brumfield to Mary Kim, 109 Turtle Creek Road, Unit 8, $120,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Christopher &amp; Darlene Bruce to John &amp; Barbara Cruickshank, 1005 Druid Avenue, $179,900, Charlottesville<br /><br />Robert &amp; Martha Frank to Eric &amp; Elizabeth Ramirez-Weaver, 2105 Tarleton Drive, $250,000, Charlottesville<br /><br />Stanley Janisweski to Kelli Heidebrink, 373 Quarry Road, $250,000, Charlottesville<br /><br /><strong>6/16/11</strong><br /><br />Ryan &amp; Emily Kaliney to Salvatore &amp; Linda Abate, 562 Pebble Hill Court, $240,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Stephen &amp; Mary Schmitz to Christian Stevens &amp; Leigh Cantrell, 3285 Hardware River Road, $525,000, Albemarle<br /><br />J.P. Morgan Chase Bank National Association to Karen Rice, 26.98 acres, TM 37-12, $495,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Walter &amp; Carol Bochnik to Thomas &amp; Pamela Painter, 4421 Watts Passage, $386,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Jay &amp; Wanda Higgs to Bruce &amp; Dona Wylie, 429 Heritage Court, $365,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Phillis Warnock to Amir Allak, 321 North Bennington Road, $260,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Curtis Anderson to Petrina Uhlenhopp, 1540 Stoney Creek Drive, $250,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Kenneth &amp; Jerry Roach to Gregory &amp; Helen Bassett, 1688 Buck Road, $100,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Octopus Property LLC to Louise Greer, 730 Walker Square #2B, $146,000, Charlottesville<br /><br />Michael, Melvin &amp; Micky Gibson to Virginia Ruddock, 110 Azalea Drive, $186,000, Charlottesville<br /><br />Mary Kutteruf to Martha Russell, 1224 Cherry Avenue, $220,000, Charlottesville<br /><br />James &amp; Elizabeth Chance to Eric &amp; Laura Holmes, 1312 Grove Road, $320,000, Charlottesville<br /><br /><strong>6/17/11</strong><br /><br />Trevor &amp; Danielle Starnes to George Urban &amp; Amanda Reefer, 1236 Hatcher Court, $515,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Ernest &amp; Margaret Barber to Andrew &amp; Joanne Rome, 2645 Stowe Court, $424,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Albert &amp; Theresa Pehanick to Devin &amp; Patricia Winklosky, 3210 Malbon Drive, $385,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Richard &amp; Mary Jane Auld to Pratip Raychowdhury &amp; Gertraud Eder, 500 Crestwood Drive, Unit 1408, $315,000, Albemarle<br /><br />James &amp; Tamara Shifflett to Cool Stream Holdings LLC, 4879 Via Ridge, $300,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Robert M.R. Gehorsam to Stephen &amp; Jennifer Patterson, 1314 Tilman Road, $257,000, Albemarle<br /><br />Justina Spiegel &amp; David Duncan Jr. to Michael &amp; Jayna Prochazka, 1665 Goldentree Place, $256,000, Albemarle<br /><br />VanderLinde Housing Inc. to Christopher &amp; Carolyn Sherwood, 4.73 acres, Lot 5, Copperfield, $183,500, Albemarle<br /><br />NVR Inc. to Roy Kennedy, 228 Colony Drive, $181,463, Albemarle<br /><br />Michael &amp; Sherrill Hughey to Jeffrey &amp; Cara Bickers, 986 Salisbury Square, $160,000, Albemarle<br /><br /></p> _BreakingNews Business Featured alex toomy thomas sullivan Real Estate - $old Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:17:04 +0000 Samantha Masone 99153 at Toomy triumphant: Ragged Mountain fire case fizzles <p>A man living near the infamous February wildfire that scorched hundreds of acres in Western Albemarle testified that he saw a distinctive male figure on a John Deere tractor ignite a ruinous blaze on a day when burning was not just illegal, but&#8211; with abnormally high winds&#8211; practically insane.<br /><br />"I saw a person at the brush pile leaning over it and then backing off," testified Ivy resident Mitchell Sams at the trial of developer Alexander Toomy. "When I first saw it, it was just one little puff, as if you had just lit a small piece of paper."<br /><br />That was as close as the prosecution could get to putting Toomy&#8211; a Drew Carey lookalike&#8211; at the scene of the pile in the Ragged Mountain Farm subdivision. But with Sams about 1,500 feet away and his view admittedly skewed by branches, it wasn't close enough to convince the judge.<br /><br />In the six-hour, May 31 trial in Albemarle General District Court, Toomy produced a diverse array of witnesses and telephone records backing his claim that he was juggling hay deals and sipping a beer inside a barn while watching a televised UVA basketball game. Judge William Barkley required little time to rule that there was insufficient evidence to convict Toomy on the <a href="">pair of misdemeanor reckless burning charges</a>.<br /><br />"Why did they ever prosecute him?" asks Andy Hord, another neighbor who testified to watching some of the fire's earliest moments&#8211; with nobody nearby. Hord has been saying from the outset that he thinks that a dormant bonfire simply released an errant spark into the high winds and dry conditions present on fire day, February 19.<br /><br />"I'm sure that's what did happen," said Hord. "The prosecutor was chasing after something that was bad luck."<br /><br />The prosecutor, however, claims this was news to her.<br /><br />"The first time anyone heard that theory advanced," says Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Darby Lowe in a post-trial interview, "was in court when you and I heard it."<br /><br />Informed that a <a href=""><em>Hook</em> article</a> quoting Hord and another neighbor had posited such theory while the forest was still ablaze, Lowe offers this response: "I don't read your stories as part of my investigation."</p> <p>If the prosecutor had a tough day, it's been a tougher year for Alexander Toomy. He stood accused of accidentally torching Ragged Mountain Farm subdivision, a place he developed during the real estate boom only to <a href="67658/massive-foreclosure-western-subdivisions-rocked-default">lose it last year in foreclosure</a>.</p> <p>Testimony indicated that Toomy's presence on the subdivision's outskirts made him the preferred contractor when the new owner wanted to tidy the property for the spring selling season. One of his employees, Patrick Wise, testified that in the weeks leading up to the blaze, Toomy directed him to conduct three bonfires to dispose of fallen limbs and trees&#8211; with the last one occurring on February 7.</p> <p>"I tended the fire," said Wise, noting that he extinguished it not with water but by separating the burned wood and covering it with dirt. "When I brought the wood back together," Wise testified, "there was no smoke and no visible embers."</p> <p>Neighbor Hord testified that he noticed the dirt embankment, and fire experts called by both the defense and prosecution agreed that a dirt-banked bonfire can smolder invisibly for days&#8211; or even weeks&#8211; only to erupt when high winds uncover and release a "fugitive" ember. <br /> <br />Will Lowe launch a new criminal prosecution based on this new theory? She declines to comment.</p> <p>The prosecution produced a forester who testified that there were fresh arcs in the soil just 20 feet from the log pile. On a day when the fire should have been moving through the dry grass at a minimum rate of 359 feet per minute, those patterns suggested that someone had been present to try to hold the line.</p> <p>"I didn't make the u-shaped patterns," Toomy testified. "The fire was advancing toward Colston [subdivision]. I was just moving up and down."</p> <p>Suppression marks couldn't hold a candle to all the people who were interacting with Toomy, who presented a litany of phone calls to support his story of a day chock-full of activity.</p> <p>It began with him tending a slow-cooking pig brisket just outside his horse barn, fielding phone calls from two men heading his way&#8211; one buying hay and the other selling it&#8211; and then sitting down to watch the second half of a University of Virginia vs. Virginia Tech basketball game.</p> <p>"I noticed UVA was winning, so I sat down to watch," Toomy testified. "I had opened a beer, and the barn filled with smoke."</p> <p>Melton McGuire, owner of a nearby farm called Verulam, testified that he drove over to buy three big round bales of hay. All was normal when he took the first bale, but when he returned for the next, Toomy was gone.</p> <p>"There was a drink on the table, the television was on, and it looked like someone had left abruptly," McGuire testified.<br /><br />Then there was Mike Herring, the Waynesboro man heading over to deliver 200 rectangular hay bales. He called en route.<br /><br />"I could hear the television in the background," Herring testified. When he got there, he saw "a small amount of smoke" and discovered that Toomy had headed off to fight the fire. He too saw a half-full bottle of beer.</p> <p>On Dick Woods Road, a neighbor named Ethel Keckley testified that she had a clear view of the fire and never saw Toomy until around the time of her 911 call, placed at 2:11pm, when Toomy was racing over with his tractor.</p> <p>To believe the prosecution's portrayal of events, one had to envision that between his meeting with the hay buyer and his planned meeting with the hay seller that Toomy suddenly bolted away to ignite a nearly half-mile-away brush pile, fight the fire momentarily, then return to his barn to greet his landlord and act surprised. And then head back to fight the fire again.</p> <p>Still, at least one resident contends that on the failure-to-extinguish theory Toomy and the company that owns the land, Ragged Mountain Partners LLC, ought to bear responsibility for the fire that <a href="89365/ragged-cost-wildfire-tally-nears-quarter-million-mark">blackened 609 acres</a> and destroyed trees, fences, and a neighbor's antique boat-filled barn.<br /><br />"The remedy now is in civil court," says Bob Huff, who estimates his total loss at just under $200,000.</p> <p>"He can do what he feels he's got to do," says Ragged Mountain Partners representative Chris Sarpy. "That's his right."</p> <p>One thing that Sarpy says has ended, however, is the practice of on-site burning. "Now we're a little gun shy," he says.</p> _BreakingNews Featured Crime/Justice alex toomy ragged mountain fire News Mon, 06 Jun 2011 20:30:55 +0000 hawes 91481 at Trial continued: As Ragged fields erupt in green <p>The criminal trial has been pushed back, but the burned fields of Ragged Mountain Farm have recently emerged to look greener than the surrounding fields spared from flames during the recent 609-acre wildfire that began on a wind-whipped Saturday in February.</p> <p>"That's not surprising," says <a href="">Sam Lindblom</a>, who burns fields across the Commonwealth as the land program manager for the Virginia Nature Conservancy. Lindblom says the combination of ample rainfall during the spring growing season, black ash to heat the land, and an explosion of nutrients unleashed by the recent flames created a "perfect combination" for rejuvenated fields.</p> <p>"And whammo," says Lindblom, "that's why it's so green."</p> <p>Meanwhile, accused fire-starter Alex Toomy has won a continuance on the two charges stemming the blaze. The hearing was to have occurred on Monday, March 28, but his lawyer, Michael Derdeyn, confirms that his client will instead appear for trial on May 31.</p> <p>At issue is <a href="">whether Toomy broke state fire law</a> by conducting a brush fire before 4pm and whether his burning practices resulted in <a href="">the blaze</a> that began around 2pm on February 19 and eventually burned parts of four subdivisions including destroying a building holding a trove of boats and other property.</p> <p>Some neighbors have suggested that Toomy may not have set any fire on the day in question&#8211; that one of his earlier brush fires may have simply erupted during the high winds that peaked that day around 50 miles per hour. Toomy developed the subdivision where the fire began, but since his bankruptcy last year has been relegated to a role widely described as a handyman or farmhand.</p> <p><a href="">Preliminary damage estimates</a> assembled by the <em>Hook</em> put the cost of the blaze around $250,000; so a criminal conviction for Toomy might lead to substantial civil liability. Toomy has declined to return a reporter's phone calls.</p> <p>The case will be heard in Albemarle General District Court. If convicted, Toomy faces a maximum criminal penalty of $750.</p> <p><strong>Note:</strong> <em>The first two paragraphs were added to this story at 3:30pm on Tuesday, April 5, at which time the words "waived his preliminary hearing" were replaced by the words "won a continuance" to more accurately reflect the General District Court's nomenclature.</em></p> _BreakingNews Featured Crime/Justice alex toomy ragged mountain fire News Fri, 25 Mar 2011 19:28:16 +0000 hawes 89565 at Ragged cost: Wildfire tally nears quarter-million mark <p>As the criminal trial nears, tallies of suppression costs and property losses have begun in the so-called <a href="">Ragged Mountain Fire</a>, and the price-tag appears to have neared the quarter-million-dollar mark, including nearly $50,000 to extinguish the sprawling conflagration. Meanwhile, the late February blaze scorched 609 acres of terrain, according to an official with the Virginia Department of Forestry.</p> <p>"We confirmed it with GPS," says David Powell, an assistant regional forester, who notes that an earlier estimate of over 800 acres included "initial containment lines" that were wider than what actually burned.</p> <p>This fire&#8211; which began on a wind-whipped Saturday in a financially troubled subdivision&#8211; cost the Forestry Department $9,940, a figure that includes only the time and fuel expended for Department-mustered workers and equipment, not the efforts of the myriad other fire companies that pitched in.</p> <p>If the cost&#8211; at $16 an acre&#8211; seems a little low, indeed it's less than one quarter of the $72 per acre five-year average the Department cites.</p> <p>"We don't bill for investigative time or for education," explains Powell, "We only bill for actual time spent putting it out."</p> <p>At the Ragged Mountain fire, which began under <a href="">mysterious circumstances</a> on February 19, Powell says the Department got help from crews from Charlottesville, Augusta, and Nelson, plus various volunteer and career companies from Albemarle.</p> <p>The Forestry Department's effort included a pair of bulldozers and three full-time employees on the fire's first two days with assistance from six part-timers and a Department fire engine. Reductions in men and machine followed as the blaze came under control around 8pm on Sunday, February 20.</p> <p>Although the fire was declared officially out on the morning of the 23rd, Powell says some stumps and trees smoldered until doused by the heavy rains of early March.</p> <p>According to figures supplied by Powell, this one event far surpassed all the wildfires the Department fought last year in Albemarle. According to those 2010 data, the Department worked six county fires totaling just 22 acres and costing just $2,972 to extinguish.</p> <p>State law gives the Forestry Department the right to seek reimbursement, and Powell notes that the Department won reimbursement from three "responsible" parties last year. One party that won't seek reimbursement is the City of Charlottesville.</p> <p>"We provide that service as part of the City-County Fire Services Agreement," says Charlottesville Fire Charles Werner in an email. "Our costs were nominal, as we only had two units operating there."</p> <p>Albemarle counted costs of $35,792, according to County spokesperson Lee Catlin, who notes that the tally includes Charlottesville's contribution as well as estimates of the value of volunteers. Combined with the Forestry Department, that's a suppression cost of $45,732. Catlin said she'd look into the question of reimbursement.</p> <p>One person who learned what can can go wrong on a windy day is Charlottesville physician Tanner Shilling. Last March, on a Scottsville-area farm, he and his 4-year-old son were monitoring a pile of burning fenceposts.</p> <p>"The wind just started taking it out of control," says Shilling, who says he found relief from the Scottsville Volunteer Fire Department after promptly calling 911. "It could have been a real disaster," says Shilling, "if I'd kept on thinking that I could take control of it on my own."</p> <p>Besides a single scorched acre, the damage was confined to Shilling's checking account. He paid $111, including fine and court costs, for conducting a pre-4pm blaze.</p> <p>"It was a lesson for me," says Shilling. "I won't do that again."</p> <p>Already, some now fence- and foliage-challenged Ragged Mountain-area residents&#8211; not to mention the family that lost their equipment-packed barn, now estimated as a $175,000 loss&#8211; have begun beseeching the subdivision's primary owner for compensation. That's because officials have charged the handyman, <a href="">Alex Toomy</a> (who lost the subdivision to <a href="">foreclosure</a> last year) with starting the blaze. However, the new owner, Ragged Mountain Partners LLC, denies responsibility.</p> <p>A judge gets Toomy's criminal case on Monday, March 28.</p> _BreakingNews Featured alex toomy ragged mountain fire wildfire News Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:05:33 +0000 hawes 89365 at Charges filed: Ousted developer Toomy blamed for fire <p>It's been a tough time for Alex Toomy. Last year, he moved out of the 7,000-square-foot house he built on 106 acres and lost, via <a href="67658/massive-foreclosure-western-subdivisions-rocked-default">foreclosure</a>, the adjacent Ragged Mountain subdivision he'd developed. Asked by the new owners to clean up the lots in preparation for the spring selling season, he'd been conducting some outdoor brush burns.</p> <p>Now he stands accused of starting, perhaps accidentally, <a href="">one of the larger fires</a> in recent history, a multi-day wildfire that scorched 800 acres, consumed a barn, and put as many as 40 houses at risk.</p> <p>He's living on-site in a tenant house, and the new owners have tapped his ex-wife as listing agent for the now-blackened rolling hills.</p> <p>"We could easily have another Ragged Mountain fire," said Albemarle Fire Chief Dan Eggleston, in announcing the two misdemeanor charges against Toomy at a Tuesday morning press conference.</p> <p>If convicted, Toomy faces up to $750 in fines&#8211; $500 for breaking the state's springtime ban on pre-4pm burning and $250 for conducting a careless fire.</p> <p>"I'm delighted that somebody's held responsible," says neighbor Rip Thomsen of the adjacent Colston subdivision. "I can't say that 750 dollars is a major fine. It should be more for that kind of negligence."</p> <p>The larger issue, some neighbors say, is getting compensation for burned fences, incinerated foliage, and for firefighting expenses from the subdivision's owner, Ragged Mountain Partners LLC, which appears to have authorized the burns. However, one of the company's owners, Chris Sarpy, appeared at the March 1 press conference to tell the Fire Marshal that he didn't think Toomy did anything wrong.</p> <p>"It started on your property," Fire Marshal James Barber told Sarpy.</p> <p>"We don't think that was the source of the fire," replied Sarpy. "I talked to Alex last night, and he said he hadn't burned there in about two weeks."</p> <p>Although Barber and Fire Chief Dan Eggleston declined to release specifics of the investigation, some neighbors believe they know what happened. They contend that the high winds of Saturday, February 19&#8211; which reportedly gusted as high as 40 or 50mph&#8211; rekindled dormant embers in a hilltop fire pile.</p> <p>"The winds probably whipped it up and got it burning again," says Bob Huff, who lost three antique boats, a travel trailer, and his priceless collections of license plates and Texaco signs when the flames consumed his mountain-top barn in the adjacent Rosemont subdivision. Between the barn and its contents, Huff says he's out at least $100,000.</p> <p>Toomy has not returned multiple phone messages. A judge will get the chance to sort things out on March 28.</p> _BreakingNews Featured Crime/Justice alex toomy ragged mountain fire ragged mountain subdivision wildfire News Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:08:13 +0000 hawes 89106 at