Here’s a roundup of news briefs from around Southwest and Southside. Send yours for possible inclusion to news@cardinalnews.org.
* * *
CEO of failed Patrick County hospital bid leaves country, named in new indictments
The central figure in a failed bid to reopen the hospital in Patrick County has left the country after being indicted in Illinois.
Foresight Health, a Chicago company, had pledged to reopen the closed hospital in Patrick County but did not. Then last year, Foresight CEO Sameer Suhail was indicted in Illinois on federal charges of scheming to embezzle more than $15 million from a hospital in Chicago between 2018 and 2022. Suhail was charged with six counts of wire fraud, six counts of aiding and abetting embezzlement, and two counts of money laundering, court records show.
The news site Block Club Chicago has reported that Suhail and an associate who is also under indictment “have fled and are working in Dubai.” A third associate charged was arrested while “she was sitting on a plane ready to take off for Dubai. Agents rushed to stop the flight and remove her,” Block Club Chicago reported.
Last week, federal prosecutors in Illinois unsealed new charges in the case. While Suhail doesn’t face any additional charges, he was mentioned in the new indictments, which targeted a former CEO of a Chicago hospital. Block Club Chicago reported that the indictments say that the former CEO “accepted more than $769,000 in return for sending contracts worth millions to companies run by Sameer Suhail.”
Suhail’s website describes him as a “distinguished medical professional” and a “globally recognized leader” who now offers plastic surgery in Dubai.
A Tennessee health care company has since acquired the Patrick County hospital property and is making an effort to reopen it.
* * *
Construction begins on Christiansburg passenger rail station
Construction is now underway for a passenger rail station in Christiansburg and a train layover site in Radford. The goal is for Amtrak to extend its route beyond Roanoke to Christiansburg in August 2027.
The push for New River Valley train service began in 2009, when Amtrak added daily service between Lynchburg and Washington, D.C., on its Northeast Regional line and continued when service expanded to Roanoke in 2017. Total ridership on Amtrak’s Northeast Regional line between Roanoke and Washington was 343,585 in 2024. And the first two months of 2025 both broke all-time records, with 27,130 riders in January and another 23,427 in February.
* * *
Barbara Johns statue gets unanimous approval from federal commission
The Commission on Historical Statues in the U.S. Capitol has unanimously approved the statue of Barbara Rose Johns, the teenager who led a walkout from a segregated school in Prince Edward County in 1951.
The statue must still be reviewed by the Architect of the Capitol and approved by the Joint Committee on the Library, according to a news release from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, but it is expected to be unveiled in the Capitol by the end of the year.
It will replace the state’s statue of Robert E. Lee, which was removed in 2020.
The bronze statue, created by Maryland-based artist Steven Weitzman, depicts Johns at age 16, when she led a student strike for equal education at Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville.
DHR Director Julie Langan will work with members of the Johns family and other stakeholders to plan an unveiling ceremony and a reception at the U.S. Capitol, according to the release. Both are tentatively scheduled to take place in November or December.