John Craig

A north Spokane tavern's license was suspended Wednesday because of an effort to hide one of the owners' identity from regulators. State law requires anyone who owns more than 10 percent of a tavern or who has invested more than $10,000 in the business to be identified in the tavern's application for a liquor license.

Detectives from the sheriff's Major Crimes Unit are investigating four drive-by shootings Sunday and Monday nights in the northeast portion of Spokane Valley. Although the homes were occupied, no one was injured.

A trial judge properly denied The Spokesman-Review access to reports prepared for the Spokane School District when a third-grade boy died five years ago of a peanut allergy, the Washington Court of Appeals ruled Thursday. The appellate court's Spokane branch said Spokane County Superior Court Judge Jerome Leveque was right: The documents the newspaper sought are exempt from disclosure because they were prepared by a team of lawyers in anticipation of a lawsuit.

Showers of snow, sleet and rain Wednesday night sent dozens of cars sliding off roads throughout the region, including one that tested the service of a Spokane fast-food restaurant. The Washington State Patrol reported about 90 slideoffs and other weather-related accidents in the Spokane area, but none was serious.

Court records show a teenage gambler who allegedly robbed a woman of her card-game winnings was fingered by a girlfriend he thought would give him an alibi. The suspect, 17-year-old Jonathan D. Clausen, 4238 E. 40th Ave., was sent home on electronic monitoring a day after his arrest on Feb. 21. His next appearance in Spokane County Juvenile Court is scheduled for Friday.

A Coeur d'Alene man has been charged with perjury and criminal impersonation for trying to avoid traffic tickets with allegedly false claims to have been on top-secret missions with the Army Special Forces. Anthony L. Livano's uniform didn't look right to Spokane County District Court Commissioner Charles Rohr, when Livano appeared in Rohr's Spokane Valley courtroom in January and claimed to be in the elite Special Forces.

A Ferry County sheriff's detective who saved a state social worker from a machete-wielding parent last year was put on paid leave Tuesday, pending a second investigation into his personal association with several troubled teenage boys. By Wednesday, however, the investigation was on hold while the FBI considered taking over from the Washington State Patrol.

Sheriff's detectives now believe a confused 74-year-old Colbert man may have shot his wife to death accidentally. They're not sure, though, because Art R. Prichard's vague account doesn't square with physical evidence, and his wife, 72-year-old Loretta L. Prichard, died without being able to tell anyone what happened.

A 74-year-old Colbert man with memory problems was arrested Monday in connection with a shooting earlier in the day that left his wife critically injured. In a jailhouse interview, white-haired Art Prichard said he doesn't know what injured his wife, 72-year-old Loretta L. Prichard. But he thinks whatever it was also may have been responsible for cutting off the tip of the middle finger of his left hand.

A new political group, the Spokane Lack of Action Committee, blazed into existence on July 4 by burning some American flags at the under-freeway skateboard park downtown. By September and October, police were responding to break-ins at several vacant downtown buildings in which SLAC's name was spray-painted on walls and windows. The "A's" were circled to form a symbol used by anarchists.

A visiting judge sentenced a 43-year-old Adams County man to 52 1/2 years in prison for attempting to kill two sheriff's deputies, shooting one of them in the chest and leg before being hit by return fire. Adams County Prosecutor Randy Flyckt asked for an above-standard sentence for Florentino S. Barajas, but he said he thought "justice was served" by the maximum standard sentences imposed Tuesday by Lincoln County Superior Court Judge Philip Borst.

A convicted con man has been charged with bilking a Ferry County businesswoman who stole more than $670,000 from her clients so she could pursue a get-rich-quick scheme known as the Nigerian Letter. The scam offers victims a chance to share in fabulous riches if they help a foreigner smuggle money out of another country – typically Nigeria, where the con game apparently originated. The catch is that victims must put up large amounts of their own money for the smuggling operation.

A two-year operating levy for the Reardan-Edwall School District passed with 67 percent support Tuesday, 828-408. Special levies need at least 60 percent to pass.

Havermale High School was locked down Tuesday morning when Airway Heights and Spokane police searched a home behind the school for stolen equipment and found what looked like an improvised bomb. Officers also found the stolen property, but the "bomb" turned out to be coffee creamer.

Two Spokane men are to be arraigned Monday in Lincoln County, Mont., on charges that they kidnapped three people at gunpoint and robbed two of them. Christopher Clark Percy, 22, and Robert Anthony Cook, 29, are accused of robbing Libby, Mont., resident Martin J. Weaver, 43, and 18-year-old Danielle L. Hahn at gunpoint and leaving them bound and gagged with duct tape on Jan. 13. They also are accused of forcing Hahn's boyfriend, 19-year-old Jon E. Hepler, to be their getaway driver.

A Spokane man accused of beating a friend to death has avoided a manslaughter conviction – so far – because a juror conducted his own medical research and interpreted the law to suit himself. The state Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that a Spokane County Superior Court judge properly declared a mistrial in the April 2004 conviction of Brent William Boling, 27, because of juror misconduct. A three-judge panel rejected a prosecution appeal of Judge Kathleen O'Connor's decision.

A veteran corrections officer at Spokane County's Geiger Corrections Center resigned Thursday, a day after a female inmate accused him of rape. Director Leon Long said the 59-year-old corrections officer had been placed on paid leave, pending a sheriff's investigation, when he resigned.

An Oroville-area couple were convicted Thursday in the death of their 22-month-old son. Jurors in the 12-day Okanogan County Superior Court trial deliberated more than eight hours to conclude that Jon Gabriel DeVon, 27, was guilty of homicide by abuse while his wife, Yolanda Eleuteria DeVon, 21, committed second-degree manslaughter in the beating death a year ago of Aden R. Roth-Valdovinos.

Richard Melvin Culbreth got three thumbs down from the Washington Court of Appeals Tuesday. A three-judge panel rejected Culbreth's appeal of his July 2004 jury conviction for forcing his former roommate to chop off his own thumb as penance for what Culbreth said was the theft of a quilt and some lava lamps.

A trust fund has been established for three young girls whose mother died Saturday of carbon monoxide poisoning in a Spokane Valley garage "They're great little kids," said their great-grandfather, Jerry Snow. "They're going to have a tough row to hoe here."