In brief: Service planned for slain teacher
TACOMA – A service to commemorate the life of a teacher killed outside her Tacoma school has been scheduled for noon on Tuesday at Life Center Church in Tacoma. The public is invited.
Local clergy will also gather on Monday at Birney Elementary School for a brief ceremony in honor of Jennifer Paulson. The moment of blessing ceremony will begin at 5 p.m. at the Tacoma school where Paulson was killed Friday morning, shortly before classes were to begin.
The alleged shooter, 30-year-old Jed Waits, was killed in a shootout with law enforcement a short time later.
Log truck smashes house, injuring two
PORT ANGELES, Wash. – A parked logging truck rolled into a Port Angeles home Friday, injuring two people, including one man who was airlifted to Seattle for treatment.
The owner of the logging truck said he went back inside his home while the truck was warming up Friday morning. Jim Johnson’s home is slightly uphill from the damaged home. Johnson heard a noise and saw his truck had hit his neighbor’s house.
Johnson thinks someone released his parking brake while he was in his home. Port Angeles police said it’s too early to say what caused the truck to roll into the home.
A family member said Jim Webster was being treated for a neck injury at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center. His sister was treated for minor injuries and released from Olympic Medical Center.
New zoo director hails from Chicago
PORTLAND – The Oregon Zoo has a new director, beginning Monday.
Kimberly A. Smith comes to Portland from Chicago, where she was vice president of animal care at the Brookfield Zoo.
Portland’s is the oldest zoo west of the Mississippi River and is in the early stages of $125 million worth of improvements, thanks to a bond measure voters passed in 2008.
Smith said she’ll continue the zoo’s conservation mission, such as the captive breeding of pygmy rabbits and California condors. She also hopes to improve the zoo’s elephant facility.
Company fined for spill into river
LONGVIEW, Wash. – The state Department of Ecology has fined a Longview company $40,000 for a petroleum coke spill on the Columbia River.
The agency on Friday told Chinook Ventures to stop unloading petroleum coke from rail cars onto river barges until the company gets permits to make sure its conveyer belt is safe. The department says the conveyer belt is the source of the spill.
Chinook Ventures is conducting its own investigation of the spill. Chinook has hired an outside engineering firm to review the company’s operations, including the conveyor belt.