Mom, two girls dead in Granville

CREEDMOOR -- North Carolina state troopers say a woman and her two young children died Wednesday in a one-vehicle crash in Granville County.

Authorities told multiple media outlets that 26-year-old Melissa Jo Bullock of Louisburg, her 5-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son all died at the scene of the wreck around 9:40 p.m. Wednesday.

Trooper say Bullock lost control of her car on a rural road near N.C. 96, running off the road then overcorrecting, striking a ditch and flipping into a tree.

2009 boom year for N.C. yule trees

COLFAX -- Just as shoppers in North Carolina prepare to find Christmas gifts, some of them will be looking for a tree to place them under.

State Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler says the state has one of its best crops ever thanks to cool weather and adequate rainfall. Troxler said North Carolina's 2009 Christmas tree harvest should top five million trees from more than 1,500 growers.

More than 96 percent of N.C. Christmas trees are Fraser firs, which are grown in the mountains. Farmers in the Piedmont and coastal plain grow pines, cedars and other varieties well-suited to warmer conditions.

North Carolina was second in the nation in Christmas tree sales in 2008 at $100 million.

Three killed in five weeks

GREENSBORO -- Police are trying to figure out how to root out drugs and prostitution from a North Carolina motel that has been the scene of three homicides in the past five weeks.

Greensboro Police Chief Tim Bellamy told the News & Record of Greensboro officers increased patrols and sting operations at the LandMark Inn near Interstate 40 in the spring.

The extra patrols helped somewhat, but Bellamay says a lot of crime happens inside the rooms.

The newspaper couldn't get the owner of the extended-stay motel to comment, but police say it has a state-of-the art security system and workers help police any way they can.

Bellamay says hiring off-duty security at the motel could help.

Dead vet's ashes crash into yard

GREENSBORO -- World War II veteran Robert Comito's ashes were supposed to be spread across the North Carolina sky.

Instead, WXII-TV reports the plastic box with the ashes ended up in a 5-inch crater in a Davie County yard.

Sheriff's Capt. J.D. Hartman says if the box had hit anyone on the way down, it likely would have killed them.

Comito's son says he is angry at the Collings Foundation, which was supposed to spread the ashes as part of a local airplane exhibition. He thinks what happened was disrespectful to his father's memory.

The foundation says ashes are supposed to be given to them in a cardboard box so they will disperse easily, and they would not have accepted the remains if they knew they were in a plastic box.