Driver of Eden dump truck officially charged after fatal crash killed 4 linemen, injured 2 others
EDEN, N.C. (WGHP) — The man accused of driving the dump truck that ran a stop sign, hitting and killing four workers, has been officially charged.
According to the North Carolina State Highway Patrol, who have taken over the investigation due to the involvement of a City of Eden vehicle, Michael Ray Vernon, 66, of Eden, met investigations at the magistrate's office and was officially charged with one count of failing to stop for a stop sign, one count of operating a commercial motor vehicle without a valid CDL and 4 counts of misdemeanor death by motor vehicle.
He was given a $50,000 unsecured bond.
Investigators are continuing to work on the crash, which happened on April 24 and killed four men working as contractors for Duke Energy.
Fallen Linemen Organization working to help Eden crash victims
Four of the six pedestrians hit died on the scene. Two people suffered serious, life-threatening injuries and were air-lifted to a hospital. The person in the bucket truck was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
The four deceased have been identified as:
Douglas Garland Sides, 71, of Summerfield
Madison Carter, 32, of Sandy Ridge
William Evans, 35, of Randleman
Matthew Lockwood, 30, of Winston-Salem
Lockwood was a Marine, described by one of his best friends as a man of faith and a person whom people liked to be around. Evans's step-brother remembered him as a devoted family man who leaves behind his wife and son. Sides was a fisherman and 'the coolest guy ever' according to a former coworker.
All of them were remembered as loving their work as linemen. The Fallen Linemen Organization works to support families of linemen who are severely injured or killed, and is working to help the families of the Eden crash victims.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Buzz Feed
3 days ago
- Buzz Feed
47 Shocking Secrets People Had Casually Revealed To Them
Recently, Reddit user MainDifficult2641 asked, "What's the most fucked-up thing someone has confessed to you in confidence?" and some of these answers were seriously disturbing. Here's what people had to say. "I worked for a medium-sized company, and one wintery Saturday morning, the boss came in with his coffee cup and sat next to my drafting table. It was only him and me in this big old building. He told me he had been a young Marine in WWII and was part of a two-person bazooka team. They got caught in a skirmish where they didn't have a clear line of fire, but they loaded and fired anyway. As he fired, one of his buddies raised his head, and he accidentally killed him at close range. This happened 33 years before, and as a young man, I was, of course, speechless." "Years ago, when I was working as a server, my co-worker's boyfriend died in what was ruled a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She was there and witnessed this happen. She and I were particularly close. About a week after his death, she pulled me aside after work and strongly insinuated that she had pulled the trigger. She then proceeded to show me the blood that was still under her fingernails. I didn't feel there was much I could do about the situation. I had never considered that she could be dangerous like that. She stopped showing up to work shortly thereafter and was fired (big relief)." "I had a friend once tell me he hated his father. One day, his father was having a heart attack while struggling to get some aspirin open. My friend happened upon him as his dad fell over. He grasped his heart, looking up at his son. My friend sat down in the chair near him and watched him. He said his dad struggled a bit and then just stopped moving. He waited a few minutes, got up, and then called his mother. Saying, 'I just came home, and I found Dad on the ground.' His mother was in panic and told him to call an ambulance and to check his breathing to help him. The mother called an ambulance, and they showed up a while later, but the dad was dead." "My dad told me that he gave the neighbor's daughter 50 bucks and she blew him. She is my age and was 22 at the time, and he was 42. She was addicted and needed money for her methadone prescriptions." "I was in my early 20s, sitting at a bus station in Portland, Oregon, when a woman next to me, out of nowhere, mid-cigarette, turned and asked, 'Do you know what brains smell like?' I just about shit my pants. I was too young and too polite to get up and walk away, so I stayed frozen while she calmly told me how she got beaten by her boyfriend and apparently took a pipe to his head, spilling 'his brains all over the floor.' Then she looked surprised and said, 'Don't tell anybody.' Yeah… that one's etched in my brain forever." "I ended up with my perfect partner, she was the one, or so I thought at the time. One night, after some drinks, she confessed to me that she had a mutual sexual relationship with her brother, and on the night he killed himself, he refused her; she emotionally battered him into feeling guilty over the whole thing. She said that I reminded her of him. We broke up shortly after." "My ex used to spike his friend's drinks with Ecstasy, claiming, 'I just want them to be happy and have fun.'" "My grandmother confessed to having killed a man who tried to SA her when she was a teenager. She pushed him back, and he fell badly." "I used to have a friend, 'Lyra', who told me the messed-up reason why she got breast implants. She had a crush on her husband's ex-girlfriend's fiancé (I know, complicated), whom she worked with. She had been flirting with him and texting him a lot to get close to him. He confided in her that his fiancé was getting a double mastectomy because she had breast cancer. She went out and got implants in order to 'give him what his fiancé couldn't': breasts. As soon as she healed, she was sending nude photos, and when his fiancé was out of town, she took over wine, got him drunk, and tried to get pregnant with him that night (she already has two baby traps from high school)." "There was a missing young woman in my local area. A guy who wanted to date me told me he'd dreamt about kidnapping her and killing her. He told me in some detail what had occurred. However, he believed that it had not really been a dream, and he had actually killed the woman. He was scared the police would get him. I moved away soon after this." "Someone told me they killed someone in the '80s, but it was all good now. Apparently it wasn't, because they just cold-cased him and sent him to prison at 79 years old." "I worked at Tim Hortons when I was 15, and one day on a particularly nice fall afternoon, an older customer told me unprompted that on nice days like this, she thinks about hanging herself in the woods. I didn't really know what to do with that, so I offered her a free donut." "I was 14/15 when my dad told me a story about him and his friends gang raping a drunk girl when they were teenagers. He laughed about it. The wild thing is, I would have easily believed he made it up as a weird ego stroke, but if it were true, I also wouldn't be surprised. Dad also told me weird, ominous, and vague stories of having killed/tortured people. Looking back, he was a compulsive liar, would go in and out of psychosis but also did some violent shit. So it's almost impossible to know what's true or not. Interestingly, he was a prime suspect for a string of serial killings." "I don't consider it fucked up, but others would. They told me about killing someone. A relative was bed-bound and near the end, but probably a few weeks from going into hospice care. They had the professional pharmacological knowledge so they mixed up drugs and injected it into the IV to help the person pass because they knew the person would be miserable if they were aware. I fully believe we should be allowed to choose euthanasia as humans." "A guy friend told me he was sneaking into his ex-girlfriend's apartment and going through her computer and her bedroom garbage can to get clues about her dating life. He had thought she was the one for him because they both had a history of cheating on partners and somehow thought things would be different if they dated someone who was also a cheater. Then she cheated on him and left him for another guy." "I was at a friend's house, and a woman came over. My friend had a bit of a fucked up way about him and asked her what was the worst thing she ever did. She then told us the story of how she had a teacher who was close to some of the girls in her school and made some of the parents uncomfortable. He had never made her uncomfortable or made any inappropriate statements or moves toward her, and she'd never seen anything of the sort. She got called into the principal's office, and there were a bunch of people from the school board there, and they asked her about any interactions she'd had with the teacher. She proceeded to 'tell them what she thought they wanted to hear' and made up a series of heinous actions that she knew would get him arrested and prosecuted — and that's exactly what happened." "I was involved in a volunteer organization and befriended one of the new members. During the course of our friendship, he confessed that he'd had sex with his adult daughter. It was one of those horrible situations where they'd been on a talk show that promised her they would find her estranged bio-father and told him he was going to be connected to an 'old friend' he'd lost contact with. Their resulting relationship turned sexual nearly immediately due to misplaced feelings, his addiction issues, her mental health issues, etc." "I was working at a nursing home and became close to this one lady on hospice in her eighties. She was mostly with it during the day, but became slightly confused at night. One day, I was setting up her before-dinner meds, and she started talking to me about her life and the regrets she had: just your standard 'don't take things for granted' and 'take chances when you can' type of talk. Then she got more serious and looked at me and said there was one thing I should make sure never to do. So I was idly listening as I prepped her meds and dinner, and she hit me with, 'whatever you do, do not kill anybody.'" "A college ex and I had a rocky start. When trying to convince me to stay with him, he decided to tell me some 'secrets' of his to prove I could trust him. Things he never told anybody else, which were...1) A kid his age had died by suicide a couple of years earlier in a town where my ex's parents owned a vacation home. My ex faked a deep depression over it for sympathy and told his high school crush and their friends' circles that he had been best friends with that person. They'd never even met, but he kept the newspaper article about it hanging in his room and milked their sympathy for years. I know he actually did this because I heard some of those friends mention their 'relationship' a few times and how tragic it all was." "Someone confessed to me that they were the sole witness to a rape that happened at night but he was too shy to take the witness stand so the guy got away with it." "I helped this man who was seemingly drunk walking in the middle of the street at night. After I got back into my van, he walked up to the passenger window and told me this: 'Do you remember that one time, when you and I were at Matt's house, we took Shelia and then burned her?' The way he said it in a whisper and after looking around to see if anyone else could hear always creeped me out. Btw, I had no idea who any of these people were." "He let himself into his ex's house (he knew she never locked it), went through all of her stuff, pleasured himself onto her bed, and remade the sheets so it looked like it was untouched because she was dating someone else. There was quite a lot of stuff, but that was the absolute worst. He still doesn't understand why I stopped hanging out or talking to him." "My ex was drunk one time, and we had fought. Now, he was known by almost everyone as the good ol' helpful happy dude. Couldn't do any wrong; he'd give you the shirt off his back. I was fed up with him being so emotionally stunted and closed off. He ended up confessing that his entire personality was manufactured and fake. A facade. He wanted people to see him as that person. But he actually didn't care and hated being nice to people. He said that every single nice gesture he did was fake and had zero meaning behind it. Even the baseline of treating people humanely was exhausting for him. He didn't actually care about anyone; he just knew he had to put on a show so people saw him the way he wanted to." "I was doing shrooms one time with a coworker of mine, ex-cops. He confessed to me that he had once voluntarily thrown down some stairs a pregnant lady because she was resisting arrest and, in his own words, was 'drunk enough to not remember a thing anyway.'" "My dad used to have monthly drinking sessions with his six to eight friends when I was 10 years old. One night, he told me one of them had killed their own daughter, who was 16, just because she refused to take their dog for a walk." "She told me that she hated one of my friends, so she slept with my friend's boyfriend to pass her herpes to her. She thought it was a funny story to tell me in a bathroom at a party because we had hit it off, and she didn't realize we were friends. I no longer felt like we were hitting it off." "A female coworker (I'm a woman) told me how her bulimia is incorporated into her sex life with her husband. ... What she told me is the most WTF moment I ever had with a coworker." "I had a 90-year-old woman tell me she had thrown herself down a flight of stairs, hoping to cause a miscarriage because she couldn't bear the thought of having another child with her abusive husband with alcoholism." "I met a woman who told me that as a child, she was abused and her dissociation created a split personality, and said that she doesn't remember much of her childhood. She said that one time she was driving on the highway and her ex was in the car yelling at her. She claims that she was so stressed out, she reverted back to her child personality but since she 'was a child' she didn't know how to drive and crashed into the side wall. The saddest part about all of this was that she said, 'I'm thankful I have good friends who I can open myself up to,' even though I had only met her earlier that day." "I was 15. My friend was 14. We were walking home from a school basketball game. She told me she and her boyfriend had been 'trying' for a baby. She told me her bf caught her poking holes in the condoms, and they agreed to start trying. I was absolutely shocked. She was successful. She got pregnant not even a year later." "A girl I met online and had sex/phone sex with for a few years when we were like 18-20 with admitted to me she wanted to fuck her uncle — like her actual father's brother. I played it off as a roleplay thing the first few times, but then she wanted to start showing me pictures of him, and I realized she meant it. To her credit, she recognized the impossibility of it and said she would never act on it (I confirmed that a lot), but yeah…We still continued our virtual fling for a year or two after because I was young, dumb, and horny and she was hot and willing to talk to me. I hope she's still fighting those demons, wherever she is now." "When she was drunk, my mom admitted to me that she had manipulated my family into turning against me, 'because that's what she watched her mother do' and that I didn't deserve a good childhood because she didn't have that. She also admitted she knew about my aunt continuously sexually abusing me pretty much my whole childhood, but didn't want to 'tear the family apart' Later, when I was in high school, I was on suicide watch, and my therapist told her I was being abused, and she pulled me out of therapy. Not an ounce of remorse in that, and somehow it's still all my fault in her mind." "An ex-boyfriend was emotionally talking about the girl he was with before me, and confessed that she was 15 when they were together. He was 28 and told me he still had feelings for her. We broke up very shortly afterwards." "My grandfather, as a teenager, castrated a man in his hometown with some other locals after the man sexually assaulted a girl. He doesn't feel bad about it, and the man survived and never reported it to the police. It was a different time, and they used piano wire, apparently..." "I'm a librarian, so I've had a couple of unsettling conversations over the years. The one that sticks out the most was the man who began to describe to me how difficult it is to secure a job when you have a record. Somehow, this led to him telling me about said record, which was for sexual assault. I remember him saying, 'I stopped when she started to cry, I'm not a monster.' A few months later, he told me about his ex-girlfriend who dumped him and moved to another state. He wanted to try to find her so he could drive to where she was and convince her to stay with him." "'I just started a weird drug name I can't remember because I'm a compulsive masturbater. Now I'm like, what do other people do all day?' This was two days after I met them." "A guy I work with told me he had killed people before, but that he was a changed man, and it was a long time ago. The dude dodged any of my questions I had after he told me this. The disturbing part about it was that he waited until we were up in a forklift together (that he was driving) to tell me this. I was uneasy about the whole thing and was so relieved to be down from that forklift when we were done working." "I overheard a woman loudly speaking on her cellphone as I was walking my dog. The snippet I heard was: 'She's taking the child support her baby-daddy is giving her and giving it to her boyfriend so he could pay child support to his ex-girlfriend.' I.e.: some guy is sending money to a woman so that HIS child can have food and clothes, but instead of using it to support the baby, she's giving it to her new boyfriend so that he can support HIS baby with the first guy's money." "While his wife was pregnant, he got her sister pregnant. He talked his wife into giving her $500 for an abortion. His wife started to demand repayment from her sister. He had to hide the fact that he was working a second job and giving the money to the sister to repay the $500." "They admitted to faking a positive pregnancy test to trap their ex. It still haunts me." "My best friend at the time confessed she turned off the cameras at her house so she could sneak her ex into the house she shared with her husband. Her husband eventually found out but didn't divorce her. She then confessed to me later that she didn't regret having the affair because she liked the attention her husband was heaping on her. Her husband was a nice guy; he didn't deserve that." "A friend was having an affair with his wife's best friend while opening/starting a business with her husband. As you can imagine, neither marriage nor the business survived. I hated that I knew for as long as I did, and didn't know if I should bring it up or tell anyone. I lost sleep, had bad anxiety over it, and so much indecision. Friends were in both camps — tell her immediately! Stay out of it! In the end, the wife caught them because they were dumb." "My dad confessed he was cheating on my mom with her brother's girlfriend of over five years. I was 16." "I live in a small town in Italy that has a very popular family-owned Gelateria that has been there for almost 40 years. I have been having their ice cream for my whole life. ... On a bright summer day several years ago, I went to this gelateria for a treat like I often did. I was the only customer, and it was a slow day, so the old owner, a man in his 70s, sat with me and we had some small talk while I was having my gelato. Out of the blue, he remembered that many decades ago, in the '80s, on a day exactly like this, a beautiful German woman came for gelato. She was alone and the only customer. He gave her the ice cream and sat with her, and 'one thing led to another,' and he 'convinced her' to have sex with him. His wife and kids were away, so he closed the bar for an hour and had sex with her behind the counter." "This guy who I thought was a close friend called me and admitted to sexually assaulting his sister-in-law. I told him what he did was wrong and to turn himself in, get therapy, and never speak to me again. He didn't think she would press charges. She did. He went to jail. Fuck that guy." "Someone once told me they sabotaged their best friend's relationship out of jealousy, and the friend never found out. They felt guilty, but also admitted they'd do it again. It still sits weird with me." And finally..."I met a girl on Tinder in Dubai. She arrived in a brand new Prado. I was kinda surprised, given that she was working as a flight attendant for Emirates. Long story short, turned out she was participating in one of those freak shows, but on her own terms. Basically, once or twice a month, she and other girls would be driven to one of the places in the desert with tents built in a way that some of them had glass floors. They couldn't see who was sitting below the glass down there. According to her, they'd have to slowly dance, eventually squat down and defecate on the floor. The longer the better. And for these days, they had to eat only salad to make the texture 'less vulgar.' That's it. Dance, undress, shit on the floor, take your money and leave." Were you casually told a shocking or horrifying secret? Let us know in the comments or via this anonymous form. Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
Black America Web
4 days ago
- Black America Web
Social Media Torches ICE Over Violent Arrest Of Narciso Barranco, Father Of 3 Marines
Source: Anadolu / Getty President Donald Trump might have sold his mass deportation agenda as a crusade to get gang members and other violent criminals out of the country, but data shows that nearly half of those arrested and detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) either have no criminal record at all or have only been convicted of minor offenses, including traffic violations. Not only do ICE agents appear to lack discernment when it comes to arresting illegal (and in many instances, legal) immigrants, whether they're criminals or not, but a recent video indicates that some of them are also pretty indifferent when it comes to how rough the arrest is. Meet Narciso Barranco. On Saturday, Barranco was detained by agents who came after him while he was working as a landscaper at an IHOP in Santa Ana, California, according to CNN . Video footage of the arrest, which has since gone viral on social media, shows Barranco, 48, being punched repeatedly while pinned to the ground and surrounded by masked agents. Barranco's son, Alejandro Barranco, told CNN that his father has lived in the US since the 90s, and, while he is an undocumented immigrant, he has no criminal record. 'He was always a good dad,' Alejandro said. 'He always made sure we had food on the table. He always taught us to respect, to love our country, to always give back.' Alejandro Barranco is, by the way, a U.S. Marine, as are his father's other two sons. Unsurprisingly, when the victim's violent arrest drew public outrage, he wasn't identified by Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin as a decades-long U.S. resident who fathered and raised three members of the U.S. Marine Corps. Instead, McLaughlin simply referred to Narciso Barranco as an 'illegal alien' who 'tried to evade law enforcement.' 'The illegal alien ran, then turned and swung a weed whacker directly at an agent's face,' McLaughlin told CNN. 'He then fled through a busy intersection and raised the weed whacker again at the agent. The illegal alien refused to comply every step of the way—resisting commands, fighting handcuffs, and refusing to identify himself.' It's almost as if McLaughlin avoided using Barranco's name because she didn't want the public to make the mistake of, you know , humanizing the 'illegal alien.' As far as Barranco allegedly swinging a weed whacker at ICE agents (who were wearing masks for whatever reason), that's hardly a proven claim. From CNN: The agency also shared a video online of Barranco holding a weed whacker, claiming he 'assaulted federal law enforcement.' The video shows an officer spraying an unknown substance at Barranco, who is seen holding lawn equipment but doesn't appear to strike officers in the footage. Barranco is currently in ICE custody, according to McLaughlin. His son told CNN his father likely became frightened and ran when approached by masked federal agents 'with guns out.' 'He just got scared,' Alejandro Barranco said. Of course, the fine folks on X aren't buying McLaughlin's version of events either, and they are sounding off on ICE and the Trump administration for allowing rogue agents to treat human beings any kind of way just because they don't have their paperwork in order. (Also, a GoFundMe page was launched on Barranco's behalf to help his family secure 'proper legal counsel to represent him.') Check out some of the reactions below. Social Media Torches ICE Over Violent Arrest Of Narciso Barranco, Father Of 3 Marines was originally published on
Los Angeles Times
5 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
Japanese court convicts a U.S. Marine in sexual assault, sentencing him to 7 years in prison
TOKYO — A Japanese court has found a U.S. Marine guilty of sexually assaulting a woman on Okinawa and sentenced him to seven years in prison, in a case that has triggered anger and safety concerns on Japan's southern island, which has a heavy American troop presence. The Naha District Court said Lance Cpl. Jamel Clayton, 22, of Ohio, was sentenced in the case on Tuesday. Clayton was found guilty of attacking the woman in her 20s in the Yomitan village on the main Okinawa island in May, 2024, chocking her from behind, sexually assaulting her and causing her injuries. In sentencing, Judge Kazuhiko Obata said the victim's testimony, provided remotely and anonymously, was highly credible even though the defendant denied his charges brought by the prosecutors, who demanded 10 years in prison, according to Kyodo News. 'This behavior does not reflect the values of the Marine Corps nor does it exemplify the standards the overwhelming majority of our Marines uphold daily,' Capt. Kazuma Engelkemier, spokesperson for 3rd Marine Division, said in a statement confirming Clayton's conviction emailed on Wednesday. Engelkemier said the U.S. side monitored the trial proceedings without interfering in the Japanese judicial process. 'We cooperated fully with the investigation process,' he said. The Marine has been in Japanese custody since his indictment that followed the allegation, he added. The case was one of a string of sexual assault cases last year in which the arrests of the suspects were initially withheld by local authorities on grounds of protecting the victims' privacy, triggering anger and criticisms of coverups. Okinawa, where one of the fiercest battles of World War II was fought 80 years ago and under U.S. occupation until 1972, remains home to the majority of about 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan under a bilateral security pact. The island, which accounts for only 0.6% of Japanese land, hosts 70% of U.S. military facilities. Frustration runs high on Okinawa because of its continued burden with the heavy U.S. presence that includes noise, pollution, aircraft accidents and crime related to American troops. Defense Minister Gen Nakatani, who attended Monday's 80th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Okinawa, raised concerns about recent sexual assault cases involving U.S. service members when he met with Lt. Gen. Roger Turner, the commander of III Marine Expeditionary Force, requesting discipline and preventive measures. There has been growing calls for a revision to the Status of Forces Agreement that gives the United States the right to investigate most accidents and crimes that occur on Japanese soil. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba 's Cabinet on Tuesday adopted a statement showing that the Japanese prosecutors dropped criminal cases against more than 300 U.S. service members in the last decade between 2014 and 2024, including a sexual assault case in Okinawa in 2020. Yamaguchi writes for the Associated Press. Reeno Hashimoto in Tokyo contributed to this report.
