Charges filed in player death

Zack Buster Editor-in-Chief

This story contains mentions of death.

Police charged a 21-yearold Churchton resident on Feb. 2 with homicide and manslaughter in the death of a Riverhawks lacrosse player in a boating accident last summer.

In addition to three felony charges, former Virginia Wesleyan University lacrosse player Shayne Ken- neth Smith also was charged with seven misdemeanors related to operating a vessel while impaired by drugs and alcohol.

Smith faces up to 26 years in prison.

AACC lacrosse player Nick Barton died in June after the 17-foot boat he was riding in struck a support structure near the Parish Creek Marina on the West River, throwing Barton, 21, into the water.

Second-year communi- cations student Payton Williams, who played lacrosse with Barton last year, told Campus Current he feels indifferent about Smith’s arrest, saying while “justice was done,” people should remember how Barton lived and see him as an example.

“I just hope that everybody involved in the situation—everybody who knows Nick—just continues to live through Nick and live like Nick because Nick was just a great kid,” Williams said. “He had made everybody smile and, you know, I just hope that everyone will want to be like him.”

After the early June accident, former AACC defensive athlete Dylan Anderson described his teammate as a leader.

“He was a Riverhawk [and] he was holding people to that same standard,” Anderson told Campus Current last summer, noting Barton’s

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Grads take look back

In a new Campus Current feature, several notable AACC alumni talk to the student newspaper about their college years and their lives now. Read the full story by Managing Editor Sam Gauntt online at www. thecampuscurrent.com. “Web Exclusive” will appear monthly.