Spokane County commissioners filed a new flight plan Friday to compensate for a wrong turn that threatened future operations of Spokane International Airport and Fairchild Air Force Base. Imposition of an "interim official control" Friday reverses a zoning ordinance change last June that allowed homes to be built in close proximity to the economically vital airport and air base.
Spokane attorney E. Armstrong Williams was disbarred this week by the state Supreme Court for abandoning his practice, leaving clients in the lurch. Previously, Williams was suspended for two months in March 2005 for seducing a vulnerable client – a woman nearly 20 years his junior who was suing her employer for alleged sexual harassment. The woman had a troubled marriage and was in counseling for depression.
Bonnie Mager, in her third month as a Spokane County commissioner, moved Tuesday on her campaign promise to steer commissioners toward evening meetings that more people can attend. Commissioner Todd Mielke responded as though he were facing a roomful of department heads in the first round of budget negotiations.
Spokane County commissioners are taking a broader, more cooperative approach to criminal justice, economic development and a host of other issues, Chairman Mark Richard said in his State of the County address Friday. "Since I have been in office, we have been very passionate about this," Richard said, noting that a new regional council of governments is telling state and federal lawmakers that taking 20 years to complete the north-south freeway "is no longer acceptable."
Bail was set at $500,000 Wednesday for a woman charged with carrying a bomb into the Spokane County Courthouse Annex. District Court Judge Sara Derr found probable cause Wednesday to hold Sylvia Ceniceros, 35, on suspicion of unlawful possession of an explosive device.
Spokane County commissioners slammed the brakes Tuesday on a plan to route truck traffic through an Otis Orchards residential area for three years while a Spokane River bridge is replaced. "We need to find a better solution," Commissioner Bonnie Mager said, citing 83 letters of opposition to a plan to lift a truck ban on Wellesley Road, between Seltice Way and Harvard Road.
The manager of Olympic Security Services' Spokane County Courthouse branch, which screens visitors, has been accused of pocketing hundreds of dollars in contributions for the family of a subordinate who died. Olympic's courthouse security manager Billie Wynne didn't deliver money collected for security screener Ken Baze, who died in April 2006, until she came under police investigation last month.
A proposed $3.6 million expansion of the shooting range in Farragut State Park can't proceed as planned and existing use of the range must stop until safety improvements are made, a judge has ruled. Friday's order by 1st District Judge John Mitchell requires the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to install overhead baffles at each of the range's 10 existing firing lanes, to keep bullets from passing over bullet-stopping berms behind targets.
Delilah the Siberian tiger perched testily Thursday evening on the roof of her new house at the Cat Tales Zoological Park north of Spokane. Her mate, Samson, had retired for the night and their offspring, Romeo and Juliet, were nowhere to be seen. Zoo director Debbie Wyche and her mate, general curator Mike Wyche, were worn out from moving the homeless feline family across the state, and the sky was leaking cold slush.
A 25-year-old Spokane man was alive and well in the Spokane County Jail on Tuesday night, where police say he tried to strangle himself after severely beating his wife. Christopher A. Spegal had to be placed in a restraint chair in the jail Sunday when he was booked on suspicion of first-degree assault and first-degree kidnapping. He remained in jail Tuesday night in lieu of $75,000 bail, and on a warrant charging probation violation.
Former Spokane City Councilman Steve Eugster, now a truck-driving attorney, was ordered Thursday to pay unspecified attorney fees in a "frivolous" appeal of River Park Square parking garage litigation. Essentially, Thursday's ruling by the Washington Court of Appeals suggests, Eugster shouldn't have looked a gift horse in the mouth.
CURLEW, Wash. – People came from all over northern Ferry County on Saturday to celebrate the return of the nearly century-old, one-lane Curlew bridge. They could have had a new two-lane concrete bridge like everyone else, but there would have been nothing to celebrate in that.
A former Spokane Valley Scoutmaster who was convicted of grooming a 14-year-old Boy Scout for sex in 2003 is to be arraigned Tuesday on a charge that he had similarly abused another boy a year earlier. Ralph E. "Ray" Willcox Jr., 58, was arrested Monday on a first-degree child molestation charge filed Jan. 30. Court documents say Willcox molested a boy in the summer of 2002, when the boy was 9.
Police say vandals caused $10,000 to $15,000 worth of damage to Garland Avenue Alliance Church in a break-in discovered Thursday morning. It was the latest of three increasingly destructive burglaries within three months at the church at 2011 W. Garland Ave. All are believed to have been committed by the same youths.
Two Rogers High School girls will be arraigned today on charges they robbed a 67-year-old sex offender who was severely beaten during the crime. Jessica M. Jones, 15, and Amber R. Tooley, 14, were charged this week with first-degree robbery in the Dec. 20 attack on Donald Earl Evans – who was convicted in 2005 of taking a 12-year-girl as his live-in sex partner for three years.
If there were a trophy for recycling, there's a good chance it would be stolen and melted for scrap. Demand for recycled metal in developing countries such as China has driven prices so high that pulling wires from electrical substations and dismantling railroad signals makes sense – at least if you're on methamphetamine.
Meth-using thieves desperate enough to risk death from high-voltage electrical wires and determined enough to rip a building apart for a bit of copper aren't easily deterred. But a broad coalition of electrical utilities, contractors and law enforcement organizations is betting most tweakers wouldn't work so hard if metal theft didn't pay.
A 67-year-old Spokane man who took a 12-year-old girl as his live-in sex partner several years ago recently told police he was assaulted and robbed after refusing two young women's sexual overtures. Court documents filed Friday indicate police are seeking cellular telephone records to investigate allegations that a woman who called herself Jessica or "J" attacked Donald Earl Evans in his home at 6117 N. Cambridge Drive.
Spokane police are investigating the possibility that a Spokesman-Review employee used company computers to download child pornography. Search warrant documents filed Thursday in Spokane County District Court say numerous sexually explicit photographs and movies of children as young as 5 were found on a computer assigned to online producer Zachary L. Likarich.
A Spokane man accused of stealing $100,000 worth of diesel fuel was released from the county jail Thursday because jail officials incorrectly believed he hadn't been formally charged. Court records show Arthur Leon "Lee" Eakin, 44, was charged Wednesday, within the 72-hour limit for holding a suspect without formal charges. But Eakin was released from jail Thursday afternoon when his 72 hours were up.
A 40-year-old nursing assistant at Mount Carmel Hospital in Colville is awaiting trial on a charge of raping a patient. Terry Christopher Altvater was charged with second-degree rape earlier this month in Stevens County Superior Court.
Double-murderer Blake Pirtle's little brother, 18-year-old Jayce Leon Elton Pirtle Jr., is wanted for alleged first-degree kidnapping and other charges in what police say was a violent assault on his girlfriend and her father. Blake Pirtle was 23 in May 1992 when he ambushed and killed two workers at a Spokane Valley Burger King where he had been fired. He crushed a 24-year-old man's skull with a fire extinguisher and repeatedly slashed a 20-year-old woman's throat with a knife and a hacksaw.
A frozen 3-inch sprinkler pipe ruptured Friday night on the top floor of the Macy's department store in downtown Spokane and water poured through the 11-story building. Nine Spokane firefighters were called to the store at Main and Wall shortly before 9 p.m. when an alarm system detected the leak. Arriving firefighters reported two to three inches of water on the 11th floor, and water was still spilling onto lower floors an hour later.
Spokane police have rounded up the last of three suspects in the Dec. 28 robbery of a taxi driver who was choked unconscious. Jade Lee Hehner, 26, was arrested Wednesday on a warrant charging first-degree robbery and first-degree possession of stolen property. He remained in the Spokane County Jail Thursday night in lieu of $75,000 bail.
A 48-year-old Spokane woman who was arrested Thursday on suspicion of second-degree murder told police she stabbed a 62-year-old man to death because he sexually assaulted her. Jeannette M. May remained in jail Friday night in lieu of $200,000 bail.
