The Washington Post - USA (2021-11-22)

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 B3

the event, said there were about 25 sailboats in and around the creek this year. The project has grown into a beloved part of the holiday season in the city. This year’s event has more sailboats than ever. The sailboats will stay on Carroll Creek until March, with each of the boats being fitted with lights and decorations. But the goal isn’t just to make the downtown look nice. The project also helps raise a significant amount of money for local charities. Kremers said each of the sailboats sponsors a different charity, and fans of the sailboats can go online to help raise money for the boat they think looks best, their favorite charity, or perhaps a bit of both. Each vote costs $1. Voting is available on Color on the Creek’s webpage, Coloronthecreek.com. — Associated Press

VIRGINIA

Woman’s body found floating in Potomac

Someone walking along the waterfront in Alexandria discovered a body in the Potomac River near Duke Street on Saturday morning, police said. Officers responded to the call about 10 a.m. and found the body of a woman, who they said appeared to be in her 60s, floating near the pier at Point Lumley Park. Police said that a medical examiner will determine a cause of death but that foul play was not suspected. The woman’s name will not be released until after her next of kin are notified. Police asked anyone with information to call Detective B. Gill at 202-420-6209 or the Alexandria Police Department’s non-emergency number at 703- 746-4444. Tips can be anonymous. — Steve Thompson

MARYLAND

Nursing students allowed to leave early

Nursing students at the University of Maryland are getting an early jump on their postgraduate careers. The university’s nursing school is allowing its students who are scheduled to graduate D ec. 23 to leave a few weeks early and begin working in the field. The move is motivated by a nursing shortage during the coronavirus pandemic. The Baltimore Sun reported that it’s the fourth time the school has approved such an early-exit program. This time, it was in response to a request from Republican Gov. Larry Hogan (R). All 161 bachelor’s degree students and 11 master’s degree students will leave early during a period that runs from Friday to the first week of December. “Nurses throughout Maryland have served courageously on the front lines for over 20 months,” the school’s dean, Jane Kirschling, said in a statement. “I am proud of our entry-into- practice students for their willingness to support these efforts, and I applaud all of our students for their resiliency and for persevering in their studies during a difficult time marked by uncertainty and ongoing challenges.” — Associated Press

Charity sailing project launches in Frederick

With sailboats taking over Carroll Creek, a holiday tradition has returned to downtown Frederick for its sixth year. About two dozen sailboats were launched in the creek on Saturday as part of the annual Sailing Through the Winter Solstice project. Peter Kremers, who co- founded and serves as the chair of

LOCAL DIGEST

Results from Nov. 21

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LOTTERIES

Part of me hoped it would be bought by someone local, so I could glimpse it on the road. More of me was glad it wasn’t. A man in Florida won the auction. He told me he owns 17 collectible cars. As I watched his newest purchase go onto the car carrier, I remembered the first thing I did when I was shopping for it back in 1996: I cleaned my garage, shifting boxes into the basement, hanging bikes from hooks on the wall, sweeping the floor with a push broom. I was nesting, preparing for a new arrival the way expectant parents do. And I thought of one of the last things I did: I washed and waxed the car before taking photos. I moved the soapy sponge over the Datsun’s sinuous metalwork, dried it with a chamois, anointed it with Turtle Wax. It was like a burial ritual. Am I still a car guy? I hope so.

Car karma Are you? Tell me the story of the vehicle you regret selling. Write me — with “Old Car” in the subject line — at [email protected].

Helping Hand It’s Helping Hand season. That’s The Post’s annual fundraising drive for three worthy local charities: Bread for the City, Friendship Place and Miriam’s Kitchen. To learn about them — and make a donation — visit posthelpinghand.com. [email protected] Twitter: @johnkelly

 For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/john-kelly.

never became the mechanic I hoped to be. I was more adept at writing checks than bleeding brakes. The number of long trips I took dwindled, as I obsessed over the prospect of being stuck by the side of the road, unable to diagnose and repair a fault. Even when the car was running well — my Datsun was always more reliable than the MGB I once owned — driving it around Washington was a white- knuckle experience. On the Beltway, it was a fragile canoe amid the tankers and battleships of SUVs and 18-wheelers. Driving it wasn’t fun anymore. I paid a mechanic to get it running safely then listed it on an auction site where potential bidders could comment on the car’s attributes. I watched as strangers assessed my little car, a car that reminded me of my father, a car that will always remind my daughters of me. I watched as the bids exceeded the reserve price. The car sold for six times what I paid for it 25 years ago.

mechanically sound but far from concours, one that I wouldn’t be afraid to drive. I finally found the perfect example and, on a bitterly cold day, drove it down from New Jersey. Over the years, I drove it with My Lovely Wife to southwestern Virginia, attended car shows in Pennsylvania with one of my daughters buckled beside me, and piloted it in convoys with other Datsun owners. So why did I sell it? It was that old reason: I just wasn’t driving it. I hadn’t turned the key in three years. That’s the worst thing you can do to an old car, which like a human body must course with its life-preserving fluids. An old car sitting, undriven, in a garage becomes an anchor on the soul. You know you should drive it, but you don’t. You know you should fix it, but you don’t. You know you should sell it, but you don’t. If I’m being honest, I’d grown a little scared of the Datsun. I

Can I be a car guy
without a car?
That’s the
question I asked
myself as I
watched my 1968
Datsun roadster
roll onto a
Florida-bound car
carrier. The tiny
red sports car took the final
space on the trailer, joining a
late-1990s Corvette, a modern
Jaguar convertible, a Lincoln
crew cab pickup, a Kia Stinger
and a Volvo SUV.
Mine was the oldest car on
there. And the cutest.
“Mine.” Well, not anymore.
The buyer’s money was in my
bank account and now I was “a
guy who used to own a cool car.”
I’ve met plenty of people like
that over the years: guys — and
gals — who would see my
Datsun at a car show and say to
me, sadly, “I used to have one
just like that. Wish I’d never sold
it.”
Well, now I’d gone and sold
mine.
I’d wanted a Datsun roadster
because my father had one when
I was growing up. That’s how
most car people are created:
They seek to recapture the past
through the sound of
combustion; the glint of chrome;
the smell of oil and gas.
I bought mine in 1996. I’d
gotten a bonus at work. Not a big
one, but you didn’t need a big
one back then to buy a car like
that: a zippy little two-liter, five-
speed convertible that looks like
an MGB but — pedants will tell
you — actually predates that
British model.
It took me a while to find my
Datsun. I scoured the onionskin
pages of Hemmings Motor News
in search of what the English
call a “well-sorted” car:

Am I still a ‘car guy’ if I no longer own a cool old car?

John
Kelly's

Washington

JOHN KELLY/THE WASHINGTON POST John Kelly's 1968 Datsun roadster — which he owned for 25 years — o n a car carrier before heading toward its new home in Florida.

man, Leonard, and said they had searched his apartment not far from where Andrea Cincotta’s car was found, took DNA samples and fingerprints, and gave him two lie-detector tests. The police said in 2002 that there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Leonard. In 1999, Leonard took a 13-year- old girl from the District to a va- cant apartment in Herndon and raped her, choked her and left her for dead in a closet. The girl identi- fied Leonard and he was arrested. He went to trial in Fairfax in 2000, represented himself, and was con- victed and sentenced to life plus 30 years. Arlington police said they re-interviewed Leonard after his Fairfax trial but still didn’t have enough to charge him. Kevin Cincotta kept pushing. Arlington police said in a news release Thursday that their cold case unit revisited the case in 2013, reviewed evidence and lab results, and did additional witness inter- views, then presented it to a grand jury. There was no indication of how Johnson and Leonard might have connected. Both are charged with killing Cincotta “with pre- meditation... for hire.” “The passage of time does not diminish the need for answers and accountability in this senseless crime that took Andrea’s life,” said Arlington Police Chief Andy Penn. The indictments indicate that Penn testified before the grand jury, and he apparently worked on the case when he was a homicide detective. “The indictments are the culmination of years of dedi- cated investigative work in our ongoing pursuit of justice on be- half of Andrea and her family.” [email protected]

blood or apparent trauma, the statement said. There was no forced entry to the home and no obvious signs of a struggle, police said. Police questioned Johnson until 8 a.m., according to his statement. Later that day, Johnson drove to Andrea Cincotta’s parents’ home in Maryland, and when he drove back toward Arlington, he spotted Cincotta’s car on the shoulder of Interstate 295. “This is the last nail in my cof- fin,” Kevin Cincotta said Johnson told him at the time. “They’re go- ing to think I did it because I found the car.” Meanwhile, Kevin Cincotta fo- cused on a man who had been in his mother’s apartment several weeks earlier, in late July or early August 1998. Andrea Cincotta was planning on throwing out an old computer when she saw a large white truck outside her building labeled “Trash Masters.” Thinking they were with a trash company, she approached one of the work- ers, who told her they were not. But the man needed a computer for himself, if she didn’t mind, Kevin Cincotta recalled his mother saying. The man took Andrea Cincotta’s computer and her dot matrix printer, loaded them into his truck and then resumed working on the apartment building’s mailboxes. Johnson and Kevin Cincotta were “appalled, just letting a stranger in,” Kevin Cincotta said in 2002. “But we didn’t worry because it was already over. We thought the danger had passed.... She approached him. He couldn’t have been planning anything.” Arlington police located the

The indictments were handed up last Friday, and court records show Johnson is being held in the Arlington jail with no bond. Leon- ard remains in Wallens Ridge State Prison. The indictments indicate that both men testified before the grand jury. “It’s the happiest day of my adult life,” Kevin Cincotta said. “This has been like a cloud that’s been hanging over me for my whole adult life. I feel like it’s been lifted.” Kevin Cincotta said his mother grew up in the District and south- ern Maryland, and graduated from Ballou High School and George Washington University. She worked as a reference librari- an for the Arlington County Public Library and raised Kevin as a single parent. Johnson worked at Home Depot in 1998 but had experience in construction and was building a house together with Andrea Cincotta on the Rappah- annock River near Warsaw, Va., Kevin Cincotta said. On the morning of Aug. 21, 1998, Andrea Cincotta had the day off. After her daily morning swim at Washington-Lee High School, she arranged to have lunch in Spring- field with one of her swimming friends. Her friend left messages on Cincotta’s answering machine when Cincotta didn’t appear. Johnson told police that he came home at 6 p.m. and noticed her car was gone, according to a detailed typed statement Johnson gave to a private investigator in

Johnson reported that he did
his laundry, went to bed and
around 1:30 a.m. noticed that her
closet door was shut, opened it and
found his fiancee’s body, with no

1998 shortly after the slaying that
led to an incriminating statement
he said was false. “It is based en-
tirely on information that they
gave me,” Johnson said. He said he
was extremely vulnerable when
interviewed by then-Detective
Robert Carrig.
“She was the love of my life,”
Johnson said of Cincotta. “I had
just found her. I was not in a very
rational state.” He denied killing
Cincotta.
Leonard is already in prison in
Virginia serving a life sentence for
raping and assaulting a 13-year-
old girl whom he strangled and left
for dead in a closet. The girl sur-
vived. That incident happened in
1999 in Fairfax County, a year after
Cincotta’s slaying.
Cincotta reportedly donated an
unwanted computer to Leonard,
her son said, and police have said
they targeted Leonard in 1998, in
part because he had prior convic-
tions for armed robbery, assault
and forcible sodomy, but they were
unable to link him to Cincotta’s
death.
Court records do not list a law-
yer for Leonard, who has not yet
been arraigned. In a 2002 inter-
view with The Post, Leonard de-
nied any role in Cincotta’s death.
“I’ve cooperated in every way that
the Arlington police wanted me
to,” Leonard said in a telephone
interview from prison. “I submit-
ted to a polygraph; the examiner
told me I passed. I submitted DNA
and fingerprints. They searched
my apartment. I was totally co-
operative, never asked for a law-
yer. I didn’t have anything to do
with that.”

SLAYING FROM B1

Live-in fiance, second man indicted in 1998 killing

pletely disrupted.” In the summer and early fall, professors nationwide voiced concerns about the decision to return to classrooms amid the delta variant. But many expressed that mask usage would help en- sure a safer work environment. In addition to vaccination and mask rules, D.C. universities have also offered free-of-charge coronavirus testing, combined with contact tracing. Each part of the covid-19 strat- egy, Goldman and Watson said, works together to keep campuses open. “Schools that have been most successful, I think, have been do- ing some routine testing of even vaccinated people on campus, because we know if someone does get sick and they’re vaccinated... they are not less likely to pass it on to someone else,” Watson said. “... So while they’re less likely to get infected in the first place, it’s important to mitigate these out- breaks on campus as best we can.” [email protected]

continue to require m asks indoors except for those who are alone in private offices or resi- dences, when eating or drinking, and a few other circumstances. Trinity Washington University, which mandates masks in public spaces indoors and encourages them in groups outdoors, will reevaluate its policies in January, a university spokesperson told The Washington Post. Staying the course with masks — especially as the delta variant continues to spread — makes sense for universities, public health experts agreed. “Requiring masks sends a real- ly clear message that this is to protect everyone and to make sure that campus is a safe place to be and to learn and to maintain operations,” said Crystal Watson, an assistant professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins University Bloom- berg School of Public Health. “Frankly, if you have big out- breaks on campus, in-person classes at some point can be com-

for the duration of the fall semester, spokesman Frank Tramble said. Thirty-eight coronavirus cases were reported at Howard during a tumultuous first week of the fall semester, and infection numbers remained elevated throughout September. But thanks in part to its implementation of masking and vaccination requirements — 98.7 percent of Howard’s students and 80 percent of its employees are fully vaccinated, according to Tramble — the campus now has reported single-digit student cases each week since early October. “Along with our vaccine requirement and routine testing, the use of masks has directly contributed to low covid-19 cases throughout the semester and a marked decline in positivity over the past month,” Tramble said. Georgetown University an- nounced Tuesday that its mask requirement will remain in effect at least through the end of the semester. American University said in a statement that it will

ernment facilities “where there is
direct interaction between em-
ployees and the public.”
A spokesperson for Catholic
University said that it had
reached out to Bowser’s office for
clarity on the requirements and
was told that “schools” does in-
clude institutions of higher edu-
cation. Catholic, which estimates
it has had 35 total coronavirus
cases since Aug. 9 and just three
active cases, will continue its pol-
icy that faculty, staff and students
wear a mask whenever they are in
a shared space indoors.
“If there is an opportunity to
lift the mandate, we will assess it
and revise the policy when cir-
cumstances warrant,” Catholic
University said in a statement
Thursday.
Other schools said they were
taking a similar “wait-and-see”
approach.
Howard University’s mandate,
which includes masking in
groups outdoors, will continue

MASKS FROM B1

In a nod to safety, area colleges wait to s hed masks

I-395/Seminary Road HOV Ramp City of Alexandria

Virtual Public Information Meeting

Monday, December 6, 2021, 6:30-8:30 p.m. https://www.virginiadot.org/395ExpressLanes

Find out about plans to convert the 395 Express Lanes and Seminary Road ramp from a High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV)-only ramp to a High Occupancy Toll (HOT) ramp. This south-facing reversible ramp at Seminary Road falls within the limits of and provides access to the 395 Express Lanes and currently operates as an HOV-and transit-only ramp. Transurban, VDOTs private operator of the 395 Express Lanes, has proposed converting this ramp from HOV to a HOT lanes ramp. The ramp would continue to provide access to the 395 Express Lanes, but would be available to vehicles with fewer than three occupants who pay a toll, and for free to vehicles with three or more occupants.

The meeting will be held as a virtual/online meeting. Information for accessing and participating in the virtual meeting is available at https://www.virginiadot.org/395ExpressLanes. The project team will make a presentation beginning at 6:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period.

Review project information and meeting details on the webpage above or during business hours at VDOTs Northern Virginia District Office, 4975 Alliance Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030. Please call ahead at 703-691-6715 or TTY/TDD 711 to make an appointment with appropriate personnel.

In compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and 23 CFR 771, VDOT has received guidance from the Federal Highway Administration that if the modification was to proceed, no additional environmental documentation would be required for converting the 395 Express Lanes/Seminary Road ramp from an HOV-only ramp to a HOT- ramp. The findings documented in past Environmental Assessments and subsequent Findings of No Significant Impacts from the Federal Highway Administration remain valid.

Give your comments during the meeting, or by December 16, 20 21 via the comment form on the project website, by mail to Mr. Abi Lerner, P.E., Virginia Department of Transportation, 4975 Alliance Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030 or by email to [email protected]. Please reference I-395/Seminary Road HOV Ramp in the subject line.

VDOT ensures nondiscrimination and equal employment in all programs and activities in accordance with Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. If you need more information or special assistance for persons with disabilities or limited English proficiency, contact VDOT Civil Rights at 703-259-1775.

State Project: 0395-96A-206, P101 UPC: 10 8361

The Washington Post - USA (2021-11-22)

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