In brief: Idaho sheriffs support campus gun bill
BOISE – Sponsors of the bill to allow guns on Idaho college campuses announced Wednesday that the Idaho Sheriffs Association is now backing the bill, even as opponents delivered petitions with nearly 3,000 signatures against the measure to the speaker of the House.
“There was a pretty wide margin that were in favor of this bill,” said Adams County Sheriff Ryan Zollman. “The main reason is legal citizens should not have their right to pack guns taken away from them.”
The bill, which is opposed by Idaho police chiefs, all of the state’s public college and university presidents, and the state Board of Education, would allow retired law enforcement officers or those with enhanced concealed carry permits to carry guns on Idaho’s public college campuses.
Rep. Judy Boyle, R-Midvale, dismissed opponents’ concerns. “Unfortunately, a lot of people do not understand what that enhanced carry concealed permit requires,” she said. “They have the idea that we are handing out guns on the campuses to 16-year-olds, and this is not true – you have to be 21 or over, you have to have taken this class, and it’s an extensive class.”
Baby in hospital; father arrested
A Post Falls father is facing a charge of felony injury to a child after his 4-month-old child was airlifted to Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center for emergency surgery for serious head trauma.
Jeremiah D. Weaver, 20, is being held in the Kootenai County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bond. He is also facing a charge of possession of drug paraphernalia, according to a news release from the Post Falls Police Department.
Officers and paramedics were called to the 1900 block of East Coeur d’Alene Avenue on Tuesday night on a report that the infant was having difficulty breathing. Medics discovered possible bruising on the back of the child’s head. The child was taken to Kootenai Health and then to Sacred Heart.
Weaver reportedly told officers that he had found the child unresponsive and not breathing, the release said. Weaver denied harming the child, police said.
WSU starts work on research building
Washington State University broke ground Wednesday on a state-of-the-art research facility in Pullman.
The $52.8 million, 96,000-square-foot interdisciplinary clean technology laboratory and educational building will be used to develop new, more environmentally friendly materials that are economically sustainable and develop research advances in sustainable design and infrastructure and mitigation of greenhouse gases, just to start.
The impact “will be immediate and significant,” said Candis Claiborn, dean of the WSU College of Engineering and Architecture. “The transitional research that will take place in this space will address some of society’s grand challenges around energy and environment.”
The laboratory is scheduled to be completed in October 2015, a university spokesman said. The lab will provide research facilities for faculty and students in key interdisciplinary areas of power engineering, renewable energy, and air- and water-quality engineering.