The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority is reconsidering its motion against Chemours after the chemical company filed a revised legal agreement with the state Department of Environmental Quality on Wednesday.
Hate crimes across the country have increased by 17 percent from 2016 to 2017, according to the FBI. Locally, though, the Cape Fear area hasn’t seen the same trend. Numbers have consistently fluctuated between seven to nine incidents each year.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections will take up the query into alleged fraud in the state’s 9th district and beyond on Monday, Feb. 18, but the road to the Raleigh hearing has been long and winding.
According to government reports, there is evidence that the main oversight agency for seafood, the Food and Drug Administration, has failed to meet new mandates to increase inspections at foreign food facilities.
On Tuesday, Feb. 12, parties on both sides of the aisle submitted their final argument briefs for consideration, as well as a list of witnesses attorneys intend to call.
WECT investigates the history of the White Oak Dike, and how decades of miscommunication put hundreds of people at risk during and after Hurricane Florence.
Email from State Board of Elections attorney Joshua Lawson to Columbus County attorney Amanda Prince raises questions about the Columbus County Board of Elections' handling of a protest filed in the sheriff’s race.
Jody Greene was stationed in Columbus County and claimed to live there on property in Cerro Gordo. Oddly, he routinely filled up in neighboring Robeson County, well across the county line and nearly 30 minutes from his alleged residence.
The New Hanover County School Board has declined a request for an independent investigation into its handling of serious issues, including concerns their inaction helped sexual predators prey on students.
The driving records of tens-of-thousands of North Carolinians are incorrect in the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles’ computer system, internal documents obtained by WBTV show.
WECT has learned the interim president of the college also works for the firm hired to conduct the college’s presidential search, a fact that isn’t sitting well with some college employees.
Under Facebook's policies, convicted sex offenders are not allowed on the site; however, InvestigateTV identified multiple offenders who appeared to have recently active profiles.
Acting Columbus County Sheriff Jody Greene has posted a $25,000 bond to keep his seat as sheriff, for now. Wake County Superior Court Judge Graham Shirley ordered Greene to pay that bond as part of an ongoing legal dispute over who is the rightful sheriff of Columbus County.
WECT first uncovered the unusually high rental rate during a series of investigative reports. The VA was paying nearly $300,000 a month to rent the clinic from a private landlord. Recently released correspondence indicates the VA will work to recover any improper payments if fraud is confirmed.
Just a few hundred yards from where the Pier 33 apartment complex is preparing to break ground, a long-running dispute between the City of Wilmington and a waterfront developer continues.
A former New Hanover County high school science teacher is facing new charges in an ongoing criminal investigation into inappropriate relationships he had with his students and other minors. Mike Kelly was recently charged for sex crimes that happened a decade ago against a newly discovered victim.
Topping wrote an elaborate post on his own website, attempting to discredit his accusers, and telling readers that “WECT Can Not Be Trusted,” after our report detailing the growing number of customer complaints about his company, DTopp.
The North Carolina Attorney General’s Office is investigating a downtown Wilmington business accused of taking customers’ money and not providing promised services. WECT has received complaint after complaint about this business.
Race could have been a factor in the sexual assault and murder of a 5-year-old girl in a rural Pender County community, according to court documents unsealed this week.
A legal battle over whether the city of Boiling Spring Lakes should have to compensate a couple whose property flooded because of a city project is nearing an end, more than four and half years after the couple sued the Brunswick County community.
These candidates, whose constituencies cover Bladen County, Columbus County, Pender County, Brunswick County and New Hanover County, all listed Dowless, Red Dome, Politico Management Services or Patriots for Progress on their official campaign finance reports.
Columbus County Commissioner Edwin Russ confirms the newly elected sheriff of the county is living in a motorhome sometimes on a property he is claiming as his primary residence.
The investigation into potential election fraud in Bladen and Robeson counties has grabbed national headlines. Chuck Todd, the moderator of NBC's “Meet the Press”, said Friday many pundits in Washington, DC are expecting a new election in North Carolina's Ninth District as a result.
As evidence mounts of election fraud in Bladen County, WECT has learned this may not be an isolated problem. WECT has just uncovered that things in Columbus County may be even worse.
William Kohler Jr. is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Jeff Lowe, a repo man who was towing Kohler’s truck away from his house when he was shot and killed. Kohler said it was pitch black outside, and he thought he was being robbed.
Casey Roman has tackled heavy issues like opioid abuse, prostitution and homelessness in her documentaries and special reports for WECT News. Her latest effort centers around lawsuits filed against hog farms, with multi-million dollar judgments that have put some local farmers out of business.
Bladen County Democratic Party Chairman Ben Snyder says said in an interview with WECT that reliable sources have told him McCrae Dowless, who is at the center of an elections fraud investigation so serious voters may have to go back to the polls for an elections do over, upped the ante this electio
Amidst the Bladen County elections fiasco which has delayed the certification of a US Congressional race, another top elections official has just resigned.
The State Board of Elections & Ethics Enforcement confirmed several pieces of information surrounding the investigation into potential elections fraud in the Ninth Congressional District race, including the fact that the political committee of Bladen County Sheriff James McVicker received a subpoena
Three Republican Senators from North Carolina are calling on Governor Roy Cooper to create a bipartisan task force to investigate voting irregularities spanning multiple election cycles, including the 2016 gubernatorial election.
A WECT investigation of court records and transcripts reveal court-appointed attorneys, assistant district attorneys and a judge went out of their way in Chauncy Askew and Raheem Davis' prior criminal cases to help them succeed.
North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Torre Jessup took action on at least four occasions that reversed the recommendation or decision of staff, hearing officers and, in one case, a Superior Court judge, to the benefit of specific individuals.
The two people who provided the notes to WBTV asked they not be identified to provide documents that could later become evidence in the ongoing investigation by the North Carolina State Board of Elections and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.
WECT uncovered documents at the Bladen County Board of Elections office that show McCrae Dowless, a convicted felon who has done prison time after convictions for fraud and perjury, personally turned in hundreds and hundreds of absentee ballot requests leading up to the November election.
A Wilmington insurance agent sat down with WECT to share advice and answer some of the most common questions people with insurance claims for storm damage are asking.
After a month of no answers, UNCW students are wanting to know what the school is going to do about the several counts of larceny. Dozens of students reported items stolen after coming back from the hurricane.
Thousands of nuclear weapons workers are seeking compensation from a federal program that has ballooned far past initial projections - and some say they're being denied based on incorrect information.
In 2013, China-based WH Group purchased Smithfield Foods. The $4.7 billion merger combined the United States' top pork producer with the world’s biggest pork producing company. According to some members of the agriculture community, the massive price tag made the company a target for lawsuits.
North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Torre Jessup included data in a presentation to state lawmakers on Thursday that included numbers sharply higher than the numbers in the same data set provided to WBTV by the DMV just a month earlier.
A company offering to help people reduce their student loan debt is now under investigation. One St. Louis woman says her debt actually increased after trying to work with the company.
Hundreds of Americans live in deplorable rental properties and their landlord is the federal government. The properties need $50 billion in repairs. Uncle Sam now is hoping that private investors will save public housing.
Research shows many Americans are concerned with whether Social Security will be available when they retire, but many aren’t saving. NerdWallet experts help explain the realities of Social Security and what you can do.
Nearly 400 people who registered to vote or attempted to change their voter registration at the DMV were nearly kept off the poll books due to a technical glitch.
Brunswick County Schools “inadvertently” broke state law when it failed to notify the public of two official meetings where board members interviewed candidates for superintendent and ultimately came to an agreement on its top choice, a school spokesperson said on Monday.
Already having an understanding about the costs associated with a start-up, Jacob Tippet had a hard time justifying college’s price tag. That amount of money could transform his career now, while the classroom had no guarantees.
David Topping was arrested at 19 for securities fraud. He was a naive kid with an ambitious business plan, who just got in over his head.Now, Topping’s a convicted felon, looking for a fresh start. He’s launched a new reputation management company in Wilmington.
North Carolina is one of 17 states where the state still controls the sale of liquor, and a growing chorus of voices is questioning the wisdom of continuing this system set up in the wake of prohibition.
Congressman Walter Jones is trying to get your tax money back, after the VA's inspector general found the government overpaid by $2.3 million to lease land for Wilmington's VA clinic from the New Hanover County Airport Authority.
The private owners of the Wilmington VA clinic are looking to sell the facility to a new buyer. These developments come just days after news first broke about a criminal investigation by the VA inspector general into the leasing procedures and bidding process used when the clinic was built.
The Inspector found that the VA overpaid by millions to lease the land underneath the Wilmington clinic from the airport authority. Despite multiple requests, the VA was also unable to provide federally required paperwork detailing competing offers to build the clinic.
Catholic leaders in North Carolina allowed priests to continue serving in active ministry, despite reports that those priests had engaged in inappropriate behavior, documents show. For months, WBTV has been gathering internal church documents, some dating back to the 1980s, related to two priests.
A New Hanover County representative who is also the senior chairman of the House Committee on River Quality has sent a letter to Governor Roy Cooper expressing concern about the Chemours Company and GenX.
The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality will hold a public information session on the state's GenX investigation on Thursday, Aug. 30. The event will be held at the Bladen County Cooperative Extension Center at 450 Smith Circle in Elizabethtown.
According to travel reimbursement forms from a recent National Association of Counties conference in Nashville, TN, some local counties have made significant changes to save taxpayers money on county commissioner travel.
Sending sexually suggestive texts to a student was not enough to get Nicholas Oates fired from New Hanover County Schools. The former middle school special education assistant at Myrtle Grove Middle School was reinstated from an unpaid suspension in 2016 when sheriff's officials determined the texts about the size of his anatomy to a child did not break the law.
It took us more than six months to get them, but the City of Wilmington recently released Council's closed session minutes from 2017. The original minutes we were given are brief, and provide few details about what was discussed by public officials behind closed doors.
The Environmental Protection Agency will hold a community engagement event in Fayetteville on Tuesday, August 14, to discuss GenX and other chemical compounds found in local water.
