The former Lenoir man accused of stabbing political strategist Jamie Kirk Hahn is being investigated for questionable campaign finance reports he made while working in 2012 for then-Rep. Brad Miller, the former Raleigh congressman said Wednesday.

Miller said he hired Hahn’s firm, Sky Blue Strategies, for fundraising help in his 2012 re-election campaign, which he later abandoned. Jonathan Broyhill, 31, worked for Hahn and would have been the principal worker with access to fundraising software, Miller said.

“Some of the things that Jon said about the campaign finances were inconsistent with other information,” Miller said Wednesday. “It’s probably the case that Jamie was asking questions on behalf of the campaign about campaign finances. I think it’s bound to be part of the investigation of Jon’s motive” for stabbing Hahn.

Jonathan Wayne Broyhill was not known to Raleigh law enforcement prior to Monday except for a string of traffic-related incidents and a Feb. 16 charge of failure to appear in court for a misdemeanor.

And those who knew Broyhill in his hometown of Lenoir were as stunned as anyone by news that Broyhill is accused of fatally stabbing a friend and wounding another in Raleigh.

Amy Holsclaw, who worked with Broyhill about three years ago, said he recently told her he was thinking about moving back home to Lenoir.

City planners hoping to increase pedestrian traffic around Lenoir may soon complete their latest step: fastening onto sidewalks bronze directional signs pointing to landmarks and parks as a way to bring into relief the outdoor scene in the city.

The more than two dozen signs, separated by one-tenth of a mile, have started appearing in recent weeks on sidewalks along a few of the city’s main roads, including much of College Avenue and Mulberry Street.

The Breakfast Club Org is working with Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute and The Arc of North Carolina, a part of a national nonprofit with more than 30 chapters across the state, to prepare for the health clinic for the disabled, the only one that will be held in western North Carolina. It is scheduled for May 4 at the J.E. Boyhill Center. Doctors and other caregivers will be available to offer screenings and other services as part of an effort in five states by the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention to gather data, in part to gauge the prevalence of such disorders across the country.

Jonathan Wayne Broyhill and Nathan Richard Hahn were good friends growing up in Lenoir. Broyhill served as best man when married Jameson Kirk 2009 in Kirk's hometown of Orangeburg, S.C. The three of them stand together in photo on Facebook, happily sipping umbrella drinks at a resort, and all three entered political consulting in Raleigh.

But police say that Broyhill, 31, attacked the couple late Monday afternoon at the Hahns' house in Raleigh, and 29-year-old Jameson Hahn, known as Jamie, died early Wednesday at WakeMed hospital. A spokeswoman at WakeMed said Nation Hahn, 27, had been treated and released. Broyhill also was injured and was reported was in good condition.

Oh the times, they are a-changing, says the state's first female chair of the N.C. Hospital Association Board of Trustees, Caldwell Memorial Hospital CEO Laura Easton.

Easton served on the association’s board of trustees for three years before becoming chair on Jan. 1 for a one-year term. As a former member of the association’s policy development committee, which addresses legislative or regulatory issues in hospitals, she began to see the complexities that lay before her.

Since 2011, the Pisgah Sisterhood of Quilters has made a quilt for anyone the members think might need one – people who are sick, or have a new baby, or are confined in rest homes. Sometimes, it’s “just because.”

Lenoir is able to sustain three separate stores peddling vinyl records: Repo Depot, Dead Wax Records and Marvin's One-Stop Records.

Wherever there’s a robotic Frisbee shooter, Smokey the Bear and first aid for zombies at one venue, there's bound to be a crowd.

That’s exactly what took place during the Caldwell County Schools PTA/PTO Safety Fair, held Saturday at the fairgrounds.

Domestic violence is a cycle that’s hard to get out of, say those who work with its victims. Those who do get out often still live in fear. Others pay with their lives.

Such appears to have been the case with Tammy Benge Cassels,  38, whose body was discovered April 5 wrapped in a comforter, dead of blunt force trauma to the head. Her boyfriend, Michael Whisnant, 36, was arrested that night, and he was indicted April 15 on a charge of felony murder.

Google will double its investment in Lenoir, spending $600 million to expand its data center here, the company announced Friday.

Since its initial announcement in December 2006 of the $600 million investment to build the data center, Google has hired more than 150 people, said Enoch Moeller, the data center’s operations manager.

Also, Duke Energy will seek state permission to create a separate rate structure for energy produced by renewable energy for large users such as Google to purchase, said Paul Newton, Duke Energy’s president for North Carolina.

Amanda Pope wondered why 20 large, white tanks suddenly turned up on a property across from her house off Valway Drive.

“It’s kind of alarming, because you don’t know what’s in those tanks -- is it dangerous chemicals or what?” she said.

Turns out the 20 tanks are part of 63 spare water storage tanks donated by Google in February 2012 to the Caldwell Green Commission, Atlantic Caviar and Sturgeon Co., and the Caldwell Memorial Hospital Foundation.

“It was Mayberry-ish back then,” Sandie Cannon said, , referring to the small and sleepy mountain town that was the setting for the popular long-running TV series “The Andy Griffith Show,” while talking about what the Caldwell County Courthouse was like when she started working there in 1976.

Alan Huffman’s Antiquities Vending Company is home to the largest collection of antique soda machines in the world. He restores the machines for customers, both individual and commercial. Occasionally he gets calls from the History Channel and Discovery Channel.

Often, the customers are just people who found an old soda machine. Maybe it belonged to their grandparents, no one really took care of it, and it has stopped working.

They call Huffman and ask if he can fix it. He always can.

The planned Laurel Park Medical Pavilion is is planned for the intersection of Harper Avenue and Boundary Street, near the Thomas Sayre art installation. There, it will offer preventive medical services, including a range of health screenings and physical exams for women and children and pediatric care. A groundbreaking ceremony is set for Monday.

At a board meeting Wednesday, trustees voted unanimously to stop processing federal student loans. Students would still be free to take out private loans.

A group of Lenoir residents upset that plans to turn slightly more than six acres in their neighborhood into an apartment complex for senior citizens would create traffic hazards and raise property taxes did not find relief on Tuesday. The City Council unanimously approved the development.

The housing project calls for a three-story building designed for as many as 50 senior citizens at the intersection of Brookdale Place and Abington Road, around which opposition has mounted in recent months among homeowners concerned the building will tarnish the character of the largely residential neighborhood.

Sawmills Town Hall was standing room only Tuesday night.

Nearly 40 citizens filled every chair in the room and every parking space in the lot. Combine that with council members and town staff, and the room almost met its fire marshal’s occupancy limit.

The issue at hand?

Trees.

A $2 million contract has been awarded to Maymead Inc. of Mountain City, Tenn., by the N.C. Department of Transportation to apply asphalt surface treatments to 60.8 miles of secondary roads in Caldwell, Watauga and Avery counties. Work can begin as early as April 29 and be completed by Oct. 1.

Augustus Warren Howell of Lenoir pleaded guilty Monday in Caldwell Superior Court to failing to register as a sex offender and being a habitual felon.

The prospect of turning Lenoir into a regional supplier of renewable energy resources might have seemed farfetched not long ago.

But that very thing may start taking shape in the coming year, when Verdante BioEnergy, the only substantial renewable-energy venture in the county, plans to leverage the same natural resources that once helped sustain the furniture industry, such as wood, for liquid biofuel.

Jurors will be allowed to know what police found at Jeremy Mayfield’s house if his Caldwell County case goes to trial.

The man accused of killing a woman in Lenoir on April 5 doesn't even remember it, the man's father said Monday.

“He didn’t know what happened," Richard Whisnant said of his son, Michael Whisnant. “When you’re on drugs, if you did something, you don’t know about it. I’d be in shock too if I saw a dead woman in the house.”

The Caldwell County commissioners are considering supporting Burke County's plea for the state to abandon plans to close a youth prison employing more than 350 people, including dozens from Caldwell County.

The commissioners decided Monday night to postpone a vote on the issue, saying they need more justification before making a formal commitment.