In brief: Two brothers accused of raping girl, 14
Two brothers have been arrested in connection with the rape of a 14-year-old girl in Spokane Valley, authorities said.
Ramadan Abbas, 19, and Salah Abbas, 23, reportedly met the victim at a Value Village thrift store Saturday night and invited her and two of her friends to an apartment near the 500 block of South Farr Road, according to the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office. The alleged sexual assault occurred in the living room while the victim’s friends were in a separate room.
Deputies interviewed the girl at a local hospital after being contacted by her mother. Deputy Craig Chamberlin, a department spokesman, said deputies then interviewed the brothers, who made incriminating statements about the encounter, and took them into custody on suspicion of second-degree rape.
Passenger dies when truck hits tree
A 73-year-old St. Maries woman is dead after a truck she was riding in left the roadway and crashed into a tree on Monday along Benewah Road in Benewah County.
Marjorie F. Welch was thrown from the pickup as it crashed into a tree and caught fire, according to the Idaho State Police.
The truck was driven by 76-year-old Edward M. Nordin, of St. Maries. He was injured, along with another passenger, 68-year-old Connie K. Nordin.
No one was wearing a seat belt. The crash is under investigation.
Condon agrees to lift alcohol impact zone
Spokane Mayor David Condon has agreed to dissolve the zone that could have led to restrictions of high-octane beer sales in the West Central neighborhood.
Condon declined to veto a 4-3 Spokane City Council vote that removed the neighborhood’s designation as an Alcohol Impact Area.
The West Central Neighborhood had requested the designation a year ago but recently reversed its stance. The majority of City Council members said they wanted to honor the neighborhood’s position.
Hanford waste tank slowly leaking
RICHLAND – There is a slow leak in the oldest double-shell waste tank at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation that’s allowing highly radioactive and hazardous waste to leak into the space between the inner and outer shells, the federal Department of Energy said Monday.
No waste is believed to have leaked from the outer shell into the soil beneath the underground tank on the south-central Washington reservation, the agency said.
Earlier testing showed that some of the material seen between the two walls of the tank was radioactive waste, the Tri-City Herald reported. Now DOE has confirmed a leak. While the exact amount isn’t known, the agency said perhaps a couple of tablespoons of additional waste were seen between the two tank walls between Thursday and Sunday.
The tank is one of 28 double-shell containers used to hold waste from older, leak-prone single-shell tanks. They hold 56 million gallons of radioactive waste from the past production of weapons plutonium until it can be treated for disposal.
The tank is roughly 40 years old and contains about 850,000 gallons of sludge and liquid waste.