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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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News >  Spokane

Court to divide assets of gay couple

In one of the first cases of its type in the state, an estranged gay couple is asking a Spokane County court to divide assets they shared while living together. A trial starting today before retired Superior Court Judge Harold Clarke tests a Washington Court of Appeals ruling last April that gay couples should be treated like other unmarried couples when they split up.
News >  Spokane

Spokane man gets four years in assault

A Spokane man with a history of violence, including imprisoning a woman, has been sentenced to four years in prison for choking, beating and sexually assaulting another woman in August. Clayton Dennis Jones III, 38, also known as Billy Jack Twoeagles, pleaded guilty in October to second-degree assault with sexual motivation in a plea bargain in which a first-degree rape charge was dismissed.
News >  Spokane

Ione gets funding for dam removal

Demolition of a 19-foot-tall dam on Cedar Creek in northern Pend Oreille County is to begin next summer. Its removal will restore fish habitat and keep the 53-year-old structure from breaking and washing away downstream residents. The concrete dam, about 1 1/4 miles from the creek's confluence with the Pend Oreille River, used to collect domestic water for the town of Ione. It hasn't been used since 1988, when the town began getting its water from wells.
News >  Spokane

Up-skirt voyeurism alleged

Miniature digital cameras are everywhere: on just about any cellular telephone you can buy, on handheld computers, and all by themselves in lipstick-size cases attached to key rings. Sometimes they're in the wrong place, such as under an unsuspecting woman's skirt.
News >  Spokane

Man convicted in stabbing

A Spokane Valley man faces up to a dozen years in prison in what could almost be described as a drive-by stabbing. Testimony in a non-jury trial this week indicated Denis Fedorovich Ekkert, 20, got out of a car just long enough to stab another young man in the stomach before speeding away on a Sunday evening last April.
News >  Spokane

Woman gets 23 3/4 years in man’s murder

A Spokane woman who was a central figure in the murder and attempted robbery of a suspected California drug dealer has been sentenced to 233/4 years in prison. Alyssa C. Knight, 22, is the second of four defendants to be sentenced in the Sept. 26, 2003, murder of San Diego resident Aaren T. "Ghost" Cole in an alley near Division and Main.
News >  Spokane

Courts facing ‘pandemonium’

The Spokane County judicial system is facing an instant backlog of as many homicides as might normally occur in an entire year. Nine state prison inmates are to be transferred to the Spokane County Jail next week for new court proceedings in their second-degree murder convictions. Fourteen more are expected early next year.
News >  Spokane

Simple solution sought for sentencing system

The Washington Sentencing Guidelines Commission voted overwhelmingly Friday to seek a simple repair of the criminal sentencing system the U.S. Supreme Court broke in June. The high court created chaos in Washington courts with a ruling that prompted many judges to conclude they no longer had authority to hand down above-standard sentences.
News >  Spokane

Man convicted in shooting

A 21-year-old Spokane man was convicted Tuesday of third-degree assault for shooting a teenage girl in the head while pretending to be a gangster. Remarkably, she lived to testify in the two-day, nonjury trial that resulted in Reza Abghari's conviction.
News >  Spokane

Sailor gets life in son’s killing

A Navy seaman from Colfax was sentenced Monday to life in prison for assaulting his 28-day-old son and murdering the infant by sitting on him. Robert J. Howard, 21, currently is posted to the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan, about 40 miles south of Tokyo, but he likely will serve his sentence at Fort Leavenworth, near Leavenworth, Kan., a Navy spokesman said.
News >  Spokane

Lawyers work on sentence changes

The future of Washington's criminal sentencing system, broken this summer by the U.S. Supreme Court, may look a lot like its past. It will, at least, if the Legislature listens to a committee of lawyers that is trying to dig out from what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor called a "No. 10 earthquake."
News >  Spokane

Jury clears companies in death at UI

A Spokane County jury refused Thursday to blame a manufacturer and two other companies for an April 2000 accident in which a University of Idaho maintenance worker was killed in a giant ventilation fan. Instead, the jury said, technician Joel P. Crisp and the university were responsible for Crisp being sucked into the 4-foot maw of a 75-horsepower squirrel-cage fan capable of generating an 80 mph wind.
News >  Spokane

Man admits trying to burn girlfriend

A Spokane man who tried to burn his girlfriend in bed and stab her after an argument over religion pleaded guilty Tuesday to reduced charges. Christopher M. Carter, 24, pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and illegal possession of an incendiary device. He had been charged with attempted first-degree assault and attempted first-degree arson.
News >  Spokane

Officials drop assault charge against man

A first-degree assault case against a Spokane Valley man began with a bang in February and ended with a whimper Tuesday. Three Spokane County sheriff's deputies said they fired 21 shots into Brian Thomas Anest's home on Feb. 7, killing a dog, because they thought he had fired a shotgun.
News >  Spokane

Sex offender gets more than 37 years in prison

A serial sex offender who terrorized women in Spokane and North Idaho was sentenced Friday to almost 38 years in prison for his Washington crimes. Joseph Ray Walton, 31, already is serving an Idaho prison term of 10 to 25 years for rape and assault convictions.
News >  Spokane

Woman receives 27 years for killing

A Spokane woman was sent to prison Friday for 27 years for stabbing a friend in the head eight times in a murder case that Superior Court Judge Kathleen O'Connor said was "permeated with crack cocaine." Sabrina Marine Kendall, 29, jumped on 20-year-old Tiesha T. McIntyre's back and stabbed her to get more crack cocaine when she ran out of money to buy it from McIntyre. Then she went to another room to smoke the drug with two men while McIntyre died.
News >  Spokane

Rapist sentenced after holding woman in ‘torture chamber’

A weaker woman might not have been in court Thursday to help send Jonathan Carl Hair to prison for kidnapping and sexually torturing her. A weaker woman might have been dead, just as Hair threatened during a two-day ordeal in April 2003, the victim told Spokane County Superior Court Judge Michael Price.
News >  Spokane

Chiropractor faces year in jail for theft

A Spokane County chiropractor with a history of drug abuse and an allegation of stalking will be sentenced today in Pend Oreille County for stealing a bank card and a checkbook from a Newport home where he was a guest. A Superior Court jury convicted Shawn David Sweeney, 43, Tuesday of one count of second-degree theft and one count of third-degree theft – as charged.
News >  Spokane

Court upholds conviction for explosion threats

An Okanogan County man was properly convicted of threatening to kill a judge and a sheriff's deputy by blowing up the county courthouse, according to an appellate court ruling released Tuesday. The Washington Court of Appeals in Spokane rejected arguments of Richard Duane Batson, 48, that his speedy trial rights were infringed and that his threats against Okanogan County District Court Judge Christopher Culp weren't specific enough to be illegal.
News >  Spokane

WSP trooper resigns in face of misconduct probes

A state trooper from Colville whose sale of unregistered securities cost investors an estimated $500,000 resigned Monday before new misconduct investigations could be completed. Trooper Ken Sjordal's resignation took effect immediately, according to Capt. Jeff Otis, commander of the seven-county Washington State Patrol district based in Spokane. Otis said Sjordal sent a memo Monday indicating he was resigning to pursue an unspecified business opportunity.
News >  Spokane

Suit against Cat Tales dropped

A South Korean television personality has at least temporarily dropped her lawsuit over a tiger attack at the Cat Tales zoo north of Spokane. Actress Eun Joo Goh's attorney, Jong Yi, moved to dismiss the lawsuit Friday before a judge could rule on a defense motion to throw the case out of court.
News >  Spokane

Man angered by river use faces charge

A Ferry County man who claims to own a section of the Kettle River faces a criminal charge for allegedly threatening to shoot nine people who were floating down the river this summer. The river is public, and Orient resident Harold Honeycutt has no more ownership than the nine people he accused of trespassing, according to Ferry County Prosecutor James von Sauer.
News >  Spokane

Mom can’t collect for tot’s injuries, court says

The mother of a Spokane girl who was critically injured in a car-bicycle accident isn't entitled to collect damages for herself, the Washington Court of Appeals ruled this week. Christina L. Vick Blumenshein is barred from claiming damages in the July 1999 accident because she had no contact with her 5-year-old daughter and didn't help support the girl, according to the appellate court.
News >  Spokane

Man convicted of dealing drugs

A Spokane man accused of murdering his wife by running her down with a van while their children watched was convicted Tuesday of dealing drugs. Richard A. Atkinson, 32, sold methamphetamine to a police informer at the Top Hat bar, 6412 N. Division, on Jan. 15, a Spokane County Superior Court jury ruled at the end of a two-day trial.
News >  Spokane

Trial opens in suit over man’s death

Being sucked into a giant fan often is portrayed in suspense movies as an ultimate horror. It shouldn't happen in real life, a Colfax widow says in a wrongful death trial in which testimony will begin Monday in Spokane.