Region in brief: Deaths treated as homicides
The deaths of a 31-year-old woman and her 18-month-old son in a case that left two other children wounded are being investigated as homicides, Asotin County sheriff’s Lt. Dan Hally said Friday.
Found dead in the home Thursday were Elizabeth Duman, 31, and Abraham Duman, 18 months, Hally said.
He said officers went to the home at 12:22 p.m. Thursday after receiving a call from William Duman, 33, Elizabeth Duman’s husband and the children’s father.
“This incident is still being investigated as a homicide. Firearms were involved,” said Hally, who gave few other details and declined to answer questions at a news conference.
Hally said the father was not at the home at the time of the shootings and came later and found the bodies.
“At this time we don’t see any danger to the community as a result of this incident,” Hally said.
Neighbors said the family has eight children. Hally said William Duman is with the surviving children. Officers have said at least one child was found uninjured in the home.
Ruby Duman, 3 months, was flown to Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane and was in critical condition Friday evening, a nursing supervisor said. Johannes Duman, 3, was in serious condition at the same hospital with a leg wound. Both children had been shot.
Spokane
Fire Department adds news blog
A news and information blog has been added to Spokane Fire Department’s Web site.
The goal is to promote fire safety, provide timely information and open lines of communication with residents, said Assistant Spokane Fire Chief Brian Schaeffer.
The blog can be found at spokanefire.blogspot.com. There’s a link from www.spokanefire.org.
It will allow the department to pass on immediate and timely information to the public, Schaeffer said.
Users will also find photos and video clips of recent incidents on the blog, as well as latest consumer product safety recalls, fire safety videos and an online photo gallery, Schaeffer said.
BOISE
Court rejects death row appeal
The Idaho Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal from the state’s only woman on death row.
Robin Row, convicted of aggravated arson and three counts of murder in 1993 for setting the fire at her Boise apartment that killed her husband and two children while they slept, said the state wrongfully withheld information that could have been helpful to her case.
But in a unanimous ruling handed down Friday, the high court said the allegedly withheld evidence did not cast any doubt on the reliability of her conviction and sentence.
The evidence in question was that a law enforcement officer was present when one of Row’s friends recorded a telephone conversation with Row discussing the night of the murders.
The fire that killed 32-year-old Randy, 10-year-old Joshua and 8-year-old Tabitha Cornellier happened in February 1992.
Row was sentenced to death on Dec. 16, 1993, by 4th District Judge Alan Schwartzman, who called her a pathological liar, citing her purchase of $276,000 in life insurance on her family in the year preceding their deaths and her admission that she was having an affair with a married man.