Top stories of January
1 — Kinston celebrates the upcoming 250th anniversary of the town with a spectacular fireworks and “raising” of a plane by Spirit AeroSystems.
1 — Community celebrates the final day of Kwanzaa.
2 — Raymond Allen Goff Jr., 35, dies in a vehicle crash in Falling Creek.
3 — Former Lenoir County Sheriff’s Office lead narcotics investigator Henry Clayton “Clay” Keel appeared in court on an opium trafficking charge.
3 — Three-car pileup in La Grange sends two to Lenoir Memorial Hospital.
3 — Lenoir County Board of Commissioners approves $150,000 to replace the county’s health department roof.
3 — Lenoir County’s first baby of 2012, Mario Godinez Martinez, is born at Lenoir Memorial Hospital.
4 — Busted jumper leaves 75 percent of Kinston in the cold during a power outage that lasted several hours.
4 — Jones Senior’s Travonda Haddock scores 21 points in a girls’ basketball game against Lejeune to go over 1,000 points in her career.
6 — Pair of vehicle accidents lead to a car crashing into the side of an apartment in Kinston and another car ending up on its roof in La Grange.
6 — A meth lab is discovered in room 202 of the West Parke Inn and Suites on U.S. 70 north of Kinston.
7 — Chef & The Farmer sustains thousands of dollars worth of damage in a fire. No one is injured in the blaze.
7 — Dontino Lamont Forbes, 40, of Greenville, dies in a motorcycle accident in Snow Hill after going 70 mph in a 45-mph zone.
8 — St. Mary’s Episcopal Church holds 23rd annual Boar’s Head Festival.
10 — 24-year-old Krystal Jones crashes into the former Family Pet Shop on Vernon Avenue after allegedly “huffing” toxic vapors.
14 — A 31-year-old registered sex offender, Christopher Adams Czyzewski, is jailed after taking his daughter to a Girl Scouts meeting in Snow Hill.
15 — More than 80 people march through Kinston to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day; other activities take place a day later at St. Augustus AME Church in Kinston and at a parade in La Grange.
17 — Airport Road temporarily closes to help build part of the Global TransPark’s rail spur.
18 — 16-year-old Ricardo Rafael Nava is accidentally killed by his 15-year-old friend, Adrian Lopez, while Lopez was playing with a 12-gauge shotgun in a Lenoir County mobile home community near the Jones County line.
18 — Kinston’s Ashlee Altise wins a trip to Hollywood to vie for the title of “American Idol” with her rendition of The Beatles’ “Come Together.”
19 — Gary Black, the president and CEO of Lenoir Memorial Hospital, is named the Lenoir County Citizen of the Year by the Kinston/Lenoir County Chamber of Commerce. Jane Wynne is named the chamber’s Ambassador of the Year.
28 — Meredith Sutton, Priyanka Anand and Cierra Cotton arrive in Greensboro to compete for the title of N.C. Distinguished Young Woman.
29 — Hundreds of residents turn out for the 13th annual “Soup and a Bowl” at the Kinston Community for the Arts.
Top stories of February
1 — Carl Wilkens, an author, speaks to North Lenoir High School students about crimes against humanity he witnessed when he lived in Rwanda in the 1990s.
1 — Six area athletes — South Lenoir’s K’Hadree Hooker (N.C. State); Kinston’s Shaheed Swinson (N.C. Central), Angelo Keyes (N.C. A&T) and C.J. Bradshaw (Old Dominion); and Ayden-Grifton’s Kariym Gent (Charlotte) and Brandon Whitaker (Chowan) — sign their national letters of intent to play college football.
2 — Kinston High School student Lynn Edward Harris, 17, appears before a Lenoir County District Court judge on a charge of false bomb report.
3 — Greene County breaks ground on new farmer’s market in Snow Hill.
4 — The Lenoir Community College baseball team opens its 2012 season with a sweep of Craven Community College.
4 — A 23-year-old “scared” Maury man, Justin Lequin “Jay” Wellington, leads authorities on a two-mile car and foot chase in Greene County. Wellington was wanted for misdemeanor larceny charges.
7 — A Kinston man, McKinley Gastelum Fogg, 31, is sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for illegal drug sales in the Pitt County area.
7 — Bethel Christian Academy’s Isaac Brown has his No. 41 jersey retired by the school after breaking the school’s all-time scoring record.
9 — Black & Veatch, the international engineering firm tasked with supervising the removal of sludge from Kinston’s defunct Peachtree Wastewater Treatment Plant, settled a lawsuit with the city for $500,000.
10 — The U.S. Department of Justice OKs nonpartisan elections in Kinston.
10 — The Kinston High School boys’ basketball team wins an unprecedented sixth straight regular season conference championship with a rout of host North Pitt.
13 — Filing for the local 2012 election cycle begins.
13 — N.C. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Walter Dalton visits Kinston.
13 — The Snow Hill Dollar General is robbed by two men with a handgun and shotgun.
15 — Kinston’s Ashlee Altise is eliminated from “American Idol” after being selected to go to Hollywood for the Fox-TV talent show.
17 — The Neuse River Music Festival kicks off at Lenoir Community College.
17 — Kinston High School’s boys and girls basketball teams win Eastern Plains 2A tournament titles at Viking Gymnasium against Tarboro, Farmville Central, respectively.
18 — A Farmville man, Cajron Rashan Hunter, is jailed under a $121,000 bond after leading Greene County Sheriff’s Office deputies on a 20-mile chase.
22 — Snow Hill Bojangles’ robbed for the second time in a month; 22-year-old Justin Lamar Tyson of Farmville arrested for the crime.
22 — Banks Elementary first-grader Crystal Cheyenne Cheston, 6, competes and wins at Amateur Night at the Apollo in New York City.
24 — District Court Judge Lonnie Carraway pleads guilty to driving while impaired in Snow Hill.
24 — The First Citizens Bank at 607 Plaza Blvd. is robbed at gunpoint.
25 — South Lenoir High School wins the 34th annual Quiz Bowl at the Kinston/Lenoir County Public Library.
25 — Sierra Kinsey Waller is named Miss Neuse 2012 at the Grainger-Hill Performing Arts Center.
26 — The Freedom Classic, a three-game series between the baseball teams of the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Air Force Academy, concludes at Grainger Stadium. The Air Force Falcons win the series, two games to one.