Name: Focal Point: Mechell's Story
Uploaded: 2007-05-03T10:16:00-0400
Duration: 592611
Description: For most of her life, Mechell Thaxton bounced around from foster parents, relatives and a mother she hardly knew. But after a childhood defined by instability and struggle, Thaxton now has a permanent home, is graduating from high school and is going to college.

Crews worked quickly to reopen the road near Hillsborough Street only an hour after an overhead highway sign was damaged. 



 I-440 reopens in Raleigh after overhead highway sign damaged

The "Dueling Dinosaurs" exhibit opening this weekend at Raleigh's North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences will feature what's believed to be the most complete T. rex skeleton ever discovered.

'Dueling Dinosaurs:' One-of-a-kind dig at Raleigh science museum opens this weekend

DinoLab at North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

Homeowners insurance doesn't cover floods, so purchasing separate flood insurance is crucial in North Carolina, especially in high-risk areas.

Homeowners insurance doesn't cover floods: How to protect your home in North Carolina

Princeville residents weigh options after Hurricane Matthew

For most of her life, Mechell Thaxton bounced around from foster parents, relatives and a mother she hardly knew. But after a childhood defined by instability and struggle, Thaxton now has a permanent home, is graduating from high school and is going to college. 

Focal Point: Mechell's Story

Mechell Thaxton

WRAL-TV News Broadcasts: Watch each newscast live or watch the most recent newscast on demand.

WRAL Late News 

Get the latest WRAL WeatherCenter Forecast whenever you need it, including the DUALDoppler5000 and the 7-Day Forecast.

Here comes summer. I'm meteorologist K Campbell and the Wral severe weather center tracking a big warm up on the way next week, the eighties will begin on Sunday and we're likely to see the upper eighties through much of next week. Perhaps the 1st 90 degree day of the year at least coming awfully close. 88 Tuesday, 89 Wednesday and 88 again on Thursday, a very warm week, all due to this big ridge of high pressure that begins to build in next week. So the jet stream lifts well to our north. We're on the warm side of the jet stream. You couple that with an area of high pressure building in. It's warm and mostly dry, high temperatures near 90 degrees. We're tracking a front to our northwest that's not likely to impact us, but we are seeing some clouds moving with this system out ahead of the warm front. The mountains sink some showers today. The good news is your weekend looks pretty dry. 77 in Fayetteville, Saturday, mostly cloudy. 82 partly cloudy on Sunday in Fayetteville for the Dogwood Festival happening there. Always a good time. We've got Brugal happening in downtown Raleigh as well. It will be in the upper sixties early on this evening. But by 11 o'clock, right around 60 degrees and the dueling dinosaurs, the exhibit opens up Saturday at 10 a.m. at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Such a cool event. I'm so excited that I got to go preview it. I highly recommend heading that way. It's completely free 59 at 10 a.m. And by the end of the event, it ends at five o'clock. It'll be in the seventies. It's a mostly cloudy day on Saturday. So some indoor activities are welcome, but at least it looks dry out there. We also have spring days happening at a Bond Park in Kerry should be a great day for the event. 11 a.m. It's 60 degrees, mostly cloudy 3 p.m. 73 degrees and still mostly cloudy. Don't expect to see a lot of sunshine Saturday, but it's pretty comfortable temperature wise. Sunday, we will warm back up into the lower eighties, partly cloudy skies with a southwest wind helping to drive us up into the eighties. Then comes the big warm up next week with highs in the upper eighties all week long. Low temperatures only dip into the sixties as for rain chances they are very low for the next seven days. This warm pattern is also a dry one for us. Just a 20% chance of rain Tuesday night. There is some concern that if we see this continue. We could be headed for a flash drought so we'll be keeping a close eye on the next opportunity for some decent rain.

WRAL WeatherCenter Forecast

Daytime Pick 3 and Pick 4 drawings are held at 3 p.m. daily. They can be seen as live or on-demand video.

Good afternoon. I'm Grace Holland. Welcome to this afternoon's drawings for Thursday, April 25th, 2024. Let's get started with the Carolina pick three. Your first pick three number is five followed by seven then seven and your fireball is eight. Joining me for this afternoon's drawing is our auditor from A L LP. Now let's move on to the Carolina pick four. The first pick four number is seven followed by one 60 and your fireball is five. The North Carolina Education lottery has contributed over $10 billion to education. Thank you for your support. You can get your winning numbers each day at 3 p.m. and again at 1122.

Daytime Pick 3 and Pick 4 Drawing

Boviet Solar plans to spend $294 million by the end of 2027 as part of the deal, state economic development officials said Friday. Commerce officials approved an incentives package worth up to $16.4 million.

<p>To, to all of you and we bring you greetings. I would like to also extend gratitude to other elected officials who are joining us today. If you'll please stand. Thank you. I want to also start by expressing how thrilled we are to have you here today. We are proud of our city here in Greenville. And I think that pride is evident in this room today and why wouldn't we be proud? Greenville is a thriving hub of, of eastern North Carolina. We have a growing population, a diverse based manufacturing manufacturers, top notch educational institutions, state of the art, medical facilities and vibrant art and entertainment scenes. The people in Greenville are as friendly and as talented as they come. We all work well together and that is a tremendous, tremendous key to progress. There are so many reasons to be proud of Greenville and today I'm thrilled that our city is getting even better with all of that being said, I would like to introduce to you a Greenville native and Chief Deputy Secretary of Commerce Jordan Richard. Well, thank you so much. Uh Mayor Pro Daniels. Uh it is a beautiful day and uh uh especially great day to be back home in Greenville, North Carolina. Uh So, on behalf of uh our North Carolina Secretary of Commerce Michelle Baker Sanders, uh Good afternoon. Uh Today really is not only the celebration of an incredible partnership uh with the city of Greenville, Pitt County, uh the Greenville Eastern North Carolina Alliance, the Department of Commerce, our, our partners across the state. Uh But it's also calls to celebrate uh some really exciting news and the first uh such announcement this year in Pitt County across the state in North Carolina, we are uh already ahead of our pace from last year. Uh Having a wonderful year in terms of economic development. Today is a wonderful announcement of that. Since January across the state, we've announced uh 39 projects and this will be our 40th, more than 3600 jobs across North Carolina and over $2.5 billion in economic development investment statewide. And today's news uh is also great as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of Greenville, North Carolina. Over those 250 years, we've seen Greenville change and evolve and the evolution of Greenville as a community is parallel to what we've seen across the state from an economy once dependent on agriculture and tobacco. Pitt County and Greenville is transformed into an economy that's supported by medicine uh and advanced manufacturing and clean energy jobs like we're here to talk about today. Uh having grown up here and watch that evolution and watch Downtown and Dickinson Avenue evolve and having gone to school across the street at CMXS Middle School, it's especially gratifying to be back and to be working on wonderful announcements like this. Uh And today, it's also an incredible honor to introduce uh someone who I've had the great pleasure of working for in Raleigh for the past 7.5 years. Uh He's been working to build a stronger North Carolina uh where everyone has as an opportunity to live in safe communities, get a quality education, uh have good access to great jobs and great health care. Uh And where everybody has a chance to live lives of purpose and abundance. And today he'll share with the Greenville community some outstanding news. Uh that'll help get us closer to North Carolina, North Carolina. That's more diverse, more inclusive works uh even more for all the people of this great state. Uh So it's my honor now to introduce to you the 75th governor of North Carolina Roy Cooper. Thank you so much, Greenville, aren't you proud of Jordan Witcher? Let me just say, Chief Deputy Secretary of the Department of Commerce. And uh you might notice that I have a lot of people in my administration who are from Eastern North Carolina. It's because I grew up here and I know the kind of people that they are. So I am so happy to be here. With you today, seeing so many friends and familiar faces uh and to celebrate what's gonna happen today. Uh Thank you Marquita for being here, Representative reader. Thank you for, for, for being here. Thank you representative for you. Uh Thank you, appreciate all of you guys candy. Thank you for coming. Very grateful for you coming and being part of this. Um II, I wanna thank Mayor Pro TEM Daniels and say thank you very much for your hard work here. But it's great to join with you today with an outstanding announcement for the city of Greenville, Pitt County, eastern North Carolina and I am our entire state. I am so proud to announce that Bovi at Solar, an international renewable energy company has selected North Carolina for its first North American solar panel manufacturing facility that will create 900 jobs and invest $294 million right here in Greenville, North Carolina. Our economists predict that this project will lift North Carolina's economy by more than $2.9 billion over the next 12 years. This economic development. When shows us how teamwork, teamwork and that's a fitting word here in front of Dowdy Ficklin Stadium, teamwork and our amazing workforce. Keep bringing advanced manufacturing jobs to our state here in Pitt County. You have a great legacy of manufacturing, making everything from life saving pharmaceuticals to packaging personal care products and now comes important components for clean renewable energy. North Carolina is becoming an epicenter for clean energy that's putting money in the pockets of North Carolina families and small businesses. And as we've learned in North Carolina the last few years, a clean energy economy is a strong economy, providing American security. North Carolina is a leader in that 19 billion in capital investments and nearly 16,000 good paying manufacturing jobs created here since 2021 with the fourth largest producer of solar energy in the country. And with our bipartisan clean power plan that will get us producing zero emission clean energy by 2050. That means a lot more solar panels need to be made right here in North Carolina. This announcement means that they're going to be made right here. And North Carolina's emergence as a clean energy leader has fueled our growth and helped set us apart as the number one state to do business in the country for two years in a row, we all get to celebrate that recognition and much of the credit goes to our well trained, dedicated and diverse workforce, the people of North Carolina, they make up the best workforce in the country. And Bovi at solar is gonna find out about that. And our university Chancellor Rogers, thank you for hosting this today. Our university and community college systems including East Carolina Pitt community College and our research institutions and workforce partnerships help North Carolina stay first in talent coupled with our central east location, East coast location and includes easy access to transportation infrastructure by land, plain sea. And of course our excellent quality of life. North Carolina continues to be a top choice and we don't take opportunities and announcement like these for granted because we know that companies like Bovi at solar can choose to locate anywhere in the world, but they chose us. And that's why we must continue to increase our investments in education, workforce training in our public schools and in early childhood education, that is absolutely critical. This announcement is the result of strong collaboration by company executives, elected officials across both aisles and economic development professionals. In addition to Secretary Sanders and the Department of Commerce, I'd like to thank our Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina that works so well led by Chris Chung works so well with our Department of Commerce, our North Carolina General Assembly. Those members are here today, our Golden Leaf Foundation, our Greenville Eastern North Carolina Alliance, Pitt County Electric Cities, Greenville Utilities Commission and the city of Greenville. At this time, I would like to, to welcome to the podium, the CEO of Bovi at Solar, Jimmy Shea. And I'd like to present him with a gift on behalf of the people of North Carolina, Jimmy. If you could come forward, Jimmy, this is a piece of pottery made one of our, by one of our famous artists uh Ben Owen. And on it has the great seal of the state of North Carolina and it has a part of it. Our, our motto, Si Quam Beri, which means to be rather than to seem, we want you to know in North Carolina we are who we say we are. And we look forward to this partnership for years and decades to come. Congratulations. Thank you for being here. Uh This is uh cup of the Chinese tea. Oh, outstanding. Thank you very much. Well, on behalf of the people of North Carolina, we accept this gift and hopefully we can sit and drink some tea and talk about the great success of this company. Thank you, Jimmy very much. Thank you. Mm Let uh let me begin to say uh by saying, thank you to the press, our partners and everyone who took the time to join us at today's event. Uh We are around to be receiving this investment grade and uh we are excited uh for how it uh will enable us to get our first us solar panel manufacturer facility up to and running and uh created, created uh economic uh uh our opportunities for the pul air. Yeah, for those who uh who aren't familiar. Let me introduce the about the poet founded in 2013 poet, solar head office in Unite, unite us Germany and our group uh headquarters in Vietnam. We have a proven track record of successful working with many of the industrial leading players. And our PV module are known for their power performance. And quality. This is evident because Bo has uh maintained its uh pos uh position at a Bloomberg new energy financing T one solar module manufacturers. Since 2017, we have been written at the top performance on people's PV module reliability uh score card since 2019 BB. Successfully completed. And in the independent e estimate of bo uh uh water solar manufacturers facility in 2022 the US uh solar industrial had been in K for water solar since we first uh entered the uh in 20 17 as of 2020 f uh three world solar PV sales and the PV models manufacturing capacity is more than three gigawatts and it's a shar a total of more than 6.6 gigawatt since uh in fabric, manually operating in us. Marketing. We are dedicated uh to helping to build uh American solar manufacturers uh with our new facility and uh filing, you know, cutting power in uh petit county, North Carolina and the, the natural. Uh let me tell you more about our plan for the manufacture plant. First one of the project, we use the building to manufacture our solar modules per to will including contracting uh start uh start off the art 500,000 to 60 thou uh 100,000 square foot factory on 34 acres to manufacture of PV cells which are used to build the solar panels. The location is expected to output the two gigawatts of solar and the two gigawatt uh PV cells since the future, uh uh will help bring our top performance PV modules to our variable clients to foster stronger connections with the independent uh power products. EP CS product uh developers, solar in, in installs and the contractors. We will have product uh they need uh in increase the deve deployment of uh uh U utilities, commercial industrial and uh dangerous solar project. We will require a strong workforce to product pro produce these solar panels so we will hearing about uh 900 employees uh over the next five years, job are expect expected to increase engineers, product workers. And so on, on behalf of uh B solar, I would like to thank everyone in involved in making this uh weight of product uh possible. The first is the governor uh Rio Cooper and uh and the secu uh secondary security Sanders and the North Korea development of the commerce tr uh territory uh D feature and the e economy uh economic uh developer partners of the North Korea Carolina, North Carolina General and Een North Korea uh communi Community College System, Go Goen Le found uh Foundation, Yanda down uh and the team at the Greenville East, North Carolina Islands, Kelly Andrew and the Peter County developer office, as well as the Pitter county government, Kathy Howard and the leadership team at the Greenville Utilities Commission City of the Greenville Electricity of the North Carolina and our advances today, our dream are coming true. We are upon the to begin pro product in our pe models in the US, bring our manufacturers exciting excellence to our most important uh solar market, creating jobs and the ma uh making up in impact. Solar energy in the United States is a bombing driving by its many benefits. Solar is an economic engine, a source of clean cheap um produce energy set and make a electricity affordable for customers and improve the air quality for health uh communities. We are surrendered to help uh future wills rep reputation for the green. I I can economic and uh manufacturing. We look forward to working with all of our partners, our path towards a cleaning future in the United. Thank you. I wanted to make sure I recognized Senator Candy Smith and Representative Glory Steam Brown and Representative reader, the legislature helped us a lot with this too. So, thank you very much for. Ok. Mhm. Good afternoon. My name is Anne Lord Huggins and I serve on the Pitt County Board of Commissioners. In conclusion of this momentous announcement, we must emphasize how truly honored we are that Pitt County was chosen over the many communities that were under consideration for this project. We are not only announcing the selection of Pitt County for a new industry that will bring strong economic growth to our community, but we are celebrating the collaboration that have developed and will continue to develop among Pitt County. Our partners and this esteem company. This announcement is the culmination of shared vision. This company's vision for its first us manufacturing facility in a business friendly asset, rich and welcoming community and Pitt County's vision for growth through strong industry partners that create highly skilled high paying jobs for our citizens. This vision will come to life in the, in the gr in the green corporate park and we look forward to our continued partnership to make this project successful. Beyond expectation. On behalf of Pitt County and the Board of commissioners, we extend our appreciation to each and every individual who has contributed their time, expertise and passion to make today possible. Most importantly, we extend heartfelt thanks to Bovier Sola for choosing us to communicate, to commemorate. Excuse me, this day, we would like to present a sculpture crafted by local artist Jordan Pera titled Connecting the Links May this day be a continuation of connections that will ensure your continued success. We are honored to be your partners and your chosen community. Welcome to your new home, Pitt County. OK. And I accept this on behalf of pick him and now and welcome to the podium, Thomas Taft Junior Board of Directors of Greenville, NENC Alliance for a toast. That's good. Not a force of guys. II, I had a prepared speech, but I'm gonna take this in a slightly different direction because II I, everyone has, has talked so much about the relationships and everything else. That got us to this point. But all I can say on behalf of Pitt County and on behalf of the Greenville NC Alliance is we won. We have won, we have beat out other communities, phobia technologies to come here. It's everything that we've all been working for, for years and years and years. I look at so many of you out here that uh were participants in that. And again, all I want to say is we won. Pitt County won North Carolina won. Thank you, Governor Cooper. Cheers, everyone. Cheers. Thank you. I don't mind. That's fine. No, no, no, no. Well, I would just add that this is the single largest jobs announcement in Pitt County's history. Uh, I don't believe we've had a governor here in, uh, about 15 years to announce anything, uh, economic development, a new, a new, uh, I'm sorry. But, uh, but either way we're proud to have you here. We're proud to have you guys here. Cheers again to a victory for Pitt County here here. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ok. Thank you so much. I'm ready to provide. Yeah. Yeah. Ok. They see. All right. Right. Yes. That's first. He said going across the way, come back in time.</p>

Gov. Cooper announces major economic development deal in Greenville

A lockdown has ended at Enloe High School in Raleigh, police said Friday.

Good afternoon. My name is Lieutenant Jason with the Public Information Office of the Raleigh Police Department. Deputy Chief Boyce is going to provide an update on the incident that happened at a high school today. Uh Good morning, uh Deputy Chief Rico Boyce of the Raleigh Police Department. I want to provide an update of the incident that occurred here at in low high school this morning. I'm joined here with Major Harrison of the Field Operations Division as well as major latour of the field operations division. I want to begin by saying that everything and everyone is safe at Inlow High School. There's no students, no staff that has been injured as a result of this. Obviously with uh with the allegation of a firearm on campus, it really has an effect on the students and staff, but I want to alert the public that everything is ok. Uh Wake County schools have been very helpful in investigating this matter with the Raleigh Police Department. So what happened just after 10 a.m. this morning, a student approached the principal and made the principal aware that there is a subject on campus with a firearm. The principal immediately placed a school on code red lockdown and with the assistance of the school resource officer, additional officers were called to the scene. Once officers arrived on scene, they began to do a systematic search of the entire school interior and exterior of the school to determine that there was no one on campus with the firearm. Obviously, when you talk about a firearm on campus, it has a very large impact in our community and that's why we had a very large presence of law enforcement. But I will say Raleigh PD working with the Wake County public schools, we have determined that there is no threat on campus. We took this matter very seriously. We're going to continue to investigate and see how this all originated. But at this time, I just want to let the community know that this threat is unfounded, right? There's no threat, there's no firearm, there's no one injured at in high school. So we're going to continue to make sure that the message get out and Wake County public schools will put out an update of how the rest of the school day is going to go as far as any potential early release. I cannot say that right now, what I can say is a student made the principal aware that there is a potential of someone on campus with a firearm. The principal took that information very seriously and placed the school on a code grade lockdown and we began to investigate from there. So at this time, I can't determine if it was a hoax or not. Are you looking for anyone else? I mean, there have been a report that there was a student who said her boyfriend was with a gun. Are you looking for that person? Since no one was found in the school with a gun? We're investigating right now, like say this originated from a student and the information was shared with the principal. So we're still trying to determine what exactly was shared with the principal to lead to the core lockdown. So right now that is like say under investigation, did you guys do a systematic room by room search? Yes, we did. Like I say with this being a school and the threat of a firearm on campus, the Raleigh Police Department's selective enforcement unit, state capital PD County Sheriff's office, they all responded to help us do a systematic search of the entire campus, not only inside the school but it outside school in the surrounding neighborhoods is the lockdown lifted currently. No, it's still code red lockdown right now. We're just finishing up like say some last minute details with Wake County public schools and they will update us when they're going to lift that code red. One more question. I just want to make sure I'm clarifying this correctly. A call from the principle that a student had reported this. Are you still on the lookout for someone who might have been on campus and then left or are you investigating this in a different way? We're investigating this in a different way that this was a alleged threat of someone with a gun on campus. So right now, there's nobody on campus, but we're trying to get the exact details. Like what else was involved in this communication with the student and the principal. Can you really quickly just talk about the response? I mean, this is a massive response to something like this and the impact that has on officers, parents, students out there actually has a huge toll, a huge effect on our officers responding to any school with the potential of a firearm b on a campus. That's why you saw the response to get today. Uh We work very well with our law enforcement partners and we're very thankful for them helping us to clear the school. Uh And obviously with parents, of course, this is going to have a huge impact on parents as well as student and staff. Anytime you see a large police presence on a, on a school campus, but it's all to make sure that everyone is safe. Uh And then we're quickly, we'll try to get the school back to normal operators uh operating as soon as possible. So yes, we came with a lot of resources if there was a threat or would someone would have gone, we wanted to quickly mitigate that. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you.

No threat at Enloe High School, releasing students early

Sky 5 flies over code red lockdown at Enloe High School 

Enloe High School is under a code red lockdown. Sky 5 is flying over the school.

Nightly N.C. Education Lottery drawings during the 11 p.m. News.

Good evening. I'm Gail. Hi, welcome to tonight's drawings for Thursday, April 25th, 2024. Well, let's get started tonight with our Carolina pick three. Our first winning number is a one. Our second number is eight and our third number tonight is a nine and our pick three fireball number is eight. Again, join me for tonight's joining us on Auditor from mcconnell and Jones L LP. Now let's move to the Carolina pick four. Good luck. Everyone who's their first winning pick four number. It's a six. Our second number is eight. Third number tonight is eight again and our fourth number is a three in our pick four fireball number. There it comes. It is a one. Well, turning now to the Carolina cash five and no one wins our prize tonight. Tomorrow's, our prize is estimated at $721,000. Good luck. Everyone here's our first winning cash five number. It's the number eight. Our second number is five third number. Tonight is seven. Our fourth number here it comes. It's a 41 in the final number, NRC five. This evening is 27. The North Carolina Education Lottery has contributed over $10 billion to education. Get your winning numbers right here every night in your exclusive station for the North Carolina Education lottery. Thanks for playing. Have a great night.

Focal Point: Mechell's Story

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