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A former Fayette County man will serve up to 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting a girl 20 years ago.
Lawrence Wesley Henry Jr., 50, formerly of Normalville and East Huntingdon, will serve his prison sentence in Virginia, where he first confessed to his crime in Westmoreland County following a 2018 arrest on charges he attempted to have sex with teen girl near Roanoke.
Henry, according to court records, was arrested when he drove to Virginia to have sex with a juvenile he met online. In reality, investigators said Henry communicated with a police officer posing as a child as part of a sting operation. While in custody in Virginia, Henry confessed to having sexually assaulted a juvenile in Pennsylvania in the early 2000s.
The spread of COVID-19 around jails in the Lynchburg area that started over one month ago now has infected more than 200 inmates and staffers, and one inmate died from the disease in the past week.
The Blue Ridge Regional Jail Authority, which runs facilities in Lynchburg and the counties of Amherst, Bedford, Campbell and Halifax, counted a total of 191 positive COVID-19 cases among inmates and 26 among staff as of Thursday, according to administrator Joshua Salmon. That works out to an infection rate of about 15% of the jailsâ collective population of 1,249 and about 6% of a workforce of about 400.
Joshua Salmon
The Bedford Adult Detention Center was the only facility that had no current cases among inmates, he said, and one staff member there currently is positive.
Within the past week, 39 inmates and 10 staff members at jails in and around Lynchburg have tested positive for COVID-19, and mass testing is still underway.