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A daily look at some of The News & Observer headlines on this date in past years.
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On this day in 2017, a Raleigh bar owner was returning to North Carolina after a 10-day legal ordeal abroad.
Amanda LaRoque of The Goat Bar was on a trip to Honduras when she was suspected of having cocaine. Eventually, the case was dismissed.
“She had several thousand dollars of cash stowed in a safe disguised as a can of Arizona iced tea, her mother said. When airport authorities searched it, they found a powder inside. Family members said a concrete-like substance on the inside of the can had flaked, making the drug accusation bogus,” The News & Observer reported.
The Atlantic Beach area had its first-ever ban on swimming and surfing when hundreds of sharks were spotted off the coast. The restrictions came after North Carolina officials sent an alert about an “excessively high number of sharks, noted for their fierceness,” The N&O reported.
But that didn’t stop some beachgoers from getting in the water. After roughly 15,000 people were warned to stay on the sand, some swimmers went back offshore.
It turns out, local officials didn’t have the power to enforce the ban. Instead, they used a broadcast system and lifeguards to help spread the word as schools of sharks moved toward fishing piers and shallow water.
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A 23-year-old mill worker died after drinking rat poison by mistake. James H. Lucas was on the job near Zebulon when he swallowed the lethal substance, which had been stored in a soft drink bottle.
Wake County coroner I. M. Cheek said Lucas died within hours of accidentally consuming the poison’s sodium fluoride.
In 1926, a man accused of making moonshine learned his fate in Moore County. He and his son-in-law were sentenced to six months of working on roads.
Police believed the man’s arrest “halted the operations of one of the few remaining moonshiners who took a pride in the quality of his output,” The N&O reported.
A quart of liquid used as evidence at the man’s trial “had that mellow, yellow appearance that only comes with good liquor and age,” according to The N&O.
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