VIRGINIA BRIEFING

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Higher Education

U-Va. Sit-In Held for Workers' Wages

Seventeen University of Virginia students have been staging a sit-in on campus since Wednesday morning to call for higher wages for support workers, a student organizer and a professor said.

The demonstrators want the university to raise the minimum pay for support employees to $10.72 an hour. The lowest wage at the school is $9.37, officials said.

University officials said the lowest wage had been $8.88 an hour and was increased last month. "We believe the schedules are fair, that they do not constitute what you have represented to the public as poverty wages," University President John T. Casteen III wrote in a letter to students.

-- Maria Glod

Fairfax FATALITY

Woman Hit by Car Near Seven Corners

An 85-year-old woman trying to walk across Arlington Boulevard in the Seven Corners area yesterday afternoon was struck by a car and killed, Fairfax County police said.

Nanh Le of the 3700 block of South George Mason Drive in Falls Church was trying to cross near Leesburg Pike, Officer Richard Henry said. Le was hit by a Toyota Scion driven by a 25-year-old Arlington man, police said. Le was pronounced dead at Inova Fairfax Hospital.

-- Tom Jackman

Fairfax Crime

Taxi Driver Shot in Possible Robbery

A taxi driver was shot and wounded early this morning in the Vienna area during what might have been a robbery attempt, Fairfax County police said.

The shooting occurred about 12:30 a.m. in the 8000 block of Trevor Place, about a mile south of the Tysons Corner shopping mall.

-- Clarence Williams and Martin Weil

SEXUAL ASSAULT

Man Guilty of Attacking Girl on Flight

A Virginia man was convicted Thursday of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl on an airline flight, federal prosecutors said yesterday.

A U.S. District Court jury convicted Ryan D. Jennings, 24, of Mechanicsville, Va., of abusive sexual contact with a person younger than 16, said U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg.

Instead of sitting in his assigned seat on a Dec. 19 flight from San Diego to Dulles International Airport, the indictment and prosecutors said, Jennings sat next to the victim and assaulted her as she slept.

-- Associated Press