EDNEYVILLE – State and local crime fighters huddled near the football field at the former Edneyville High School Tuesday morning to carry out a game-changing play to ease a backlog of criminal cases awaiting evidence analysis throughout the state.
Shovels in hand, State Crime Lab Director John Byrd and N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper broke the ground beneath them and “dug up a little dirt” to ceremoniously prepare the land for a larger, state-of-the-art Western Regional Crime Laboratory. The new 36,000-square-foot lab will test the evidence of 30 counties west of Interstate 77, giving officers in Western North Carolina a drive much shorter than Raleigh to submit their samples.
“It’s convenient for everyone in Western North Carolina, but it’s real convenient for Henderson County,” said county Sheriff Charles McDonald at the groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday.
The new lab, less than 10 miles away from the sheriff’s office, will be roughly twice as large as the current crime lab in Asheville and is expected to open in 2017. The groundbreaking was held on the grounds of the Larry T. Justus Western Justice Academy at 3971 Chimney Rock Road.
