John Craig

A 17-year-old boy has been charged with setting the Dec. 21 fire that heavily damaged the Lincoln County Courthouse. Court documents filed by Deputy Prosecutor Clark Colwell suggest Davenport resident William O. Hill may have held a grudge against a juvenile probation officer.

A federal jury Thursday unanimously rejected a Suncrest woman's claim that Stevens County sheriff's officers illegally broke into her house in November 1993 to arrest her without a warrant. Glenda Brownell sought up to $1 million in damages in the weeklong trial in U.S. District Court in Spokane.

The Colville Confederated Tribes got 40 acres of reservation land back and a Spokane couple got a wool blanket in a gift exchange that pleased both parties. "They were so happy, we knew we had done the right thing," Spokane resident Anita Smith said of the decision to give the land back to the tribes. She said she and her husband, Hugh, and another couple, Harry and Agnes Jones, acquired the property by chance as part of a land transaction in the 1970s. The two men were partners in a number of land ventures.

The Stevens County Sheriff's Department is investigating a New Year's Day skiing accident that killed a Spokane college student. "I have assigned some detectives to do an investigation to determine whether there is anything from a criminal standpoint," Sheriff Craig Thayer said. Thayer said the investigation into the 49 Degrees North ski resort death is routine.

"I found a new reason to hate government paperwork," says Nor-West Construction worker Don Scott, as he removes the final boxes of county files from the basement of the Lincoln County Courthouse. Photo by Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review

The "prime suspect" in the torching of the Lincoln County Courthouse is a 17-year-old boy arrested on unrelated charges while watching the landmark burn, authorities said Tuesday. The Davenport boy is the only suspect "at this point," Police Chief Phillips Robertson said.

Colville artist Chris Anderson creates intricate steel silhouettes. Photo by John Craig/The Spokesman-Review

Newport Police Officer Ed Miller Jr. resigned Friday in the face of possible criminal charges that he abused his authority. Miller, 40, had been suspended with pay from his $22,128-a-year job since Oct. 11. He was suspended for entering a family's house in the middle of the night without a warrant for the strong-armed arrest of a man who allegedly harassed him on the telephone.

Prosecutors chalked up another paper victory Thursday in their 3-1/2-year quest for culprits in the burial of 80 mostly empty barrels of sulfuric acid sludge at the L-Bar Products plant near Chewelah, Wash. Former L-Bar General Manager Paul Ortman was sentenced Thursday to six months of unsupervised probation on two misdemeanor counts of failing to report the use of the acid and the sale of fertilizer made with the acid. Felony charges of illegally dumping hazardous waste were dropped.

1. Pierce 2. Sammons

A judge ruled Friday that jurors may hear Anthony W. Sammons' confession in a double murder that has angered the community's Hispanic population. Sammons, 25, and Scott D. Pierce, 20, are accused of beating two Mexican orchard workers repeatedly and dumping them in the Okanogan River in Omak on Sept. 27.

Eccentric is one of the kinder things some people in Stevens County call Joyce Tasker, but no one in fairness can deny she has an exceptional heart for animals. Tasker has turned her attractive semi-rural home into an animal shelter she calls Dog Patch. In a pending lawsuit, her neighbors call it a nuisance.

Joyce Tasker speaks for the animals. Photo by John Craig/The Spokesman-Review

Davenport fugitive Free A. Green never had a chance to become the most celebrated outlaw of Lincoln County - New Mexico, that is. That title is still held by Billy the Kid, who is buried at Fort Sumner, N.M., where local police corralled Green faster than you can say William Bonney.

Tony Maniglia used an ax to "terminate" a 7,200-volt electric line he didn't want on his property. Washington Water Power officials say he's lucky he lived to sue them over his claim that the underground cable was installed without an easement - and to face a felony charge of first-degree malicious mischief.

Colville Confederated Tribes is suing the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs to block Clinton administration budget cuts said to be more extreme than those demanded by the Republican Congress. The tribes claim in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Spokane that the bureau is pressing ahead with a 35 percent funding cut in its Colville Agency at Nespelem even though Congress apparently will require cuts of only 16 to 25 percent.

An Othello family claims in a federal lawsuit that heavily armed, masked city police officers mistakenly broke into their home and terrorized them in a botched drug raid three years ago. The police negligently failed to note that their search warrant specified the apartment across the hall from theirs, Juan and Ana Izarraraz say in a complaint filed this week in U.S. District Court in Spokane.

One of two men accused of torturing a 19-year-old Davenport man by beating him and throwing darts at him surrendered Tuesday. Jason C. Marquez, 19, of Davenport was released without bail until he is arraigned next Tuesday on charges of first-degree kidnapping and second-degree assault.

People are being convicted for burying hazardous waste five years ago at the now-bankrupt L-Bar magnesium recycling plant near Chewelah, Wash., but creditors are about the only ones being penalized. Plant manager Stan McCurdy on Monday got three years of probation and six months of home detention that won't keep him at home. McCurdy will be allowed to leave home to run the two convenience stores he owns in Lewiston, Idaho, and Clarkston, Wash., U.S. District Judge Frem Nielsen said.

Pend Oreille, the county, won a big victory Thursday in its multimillion-dollar tax assessment dispute with Ponderay, the newsprint plant. If upheld on appeal, the ruling wipes out an effort to cut in half the Usk, Wash., newsprint plant's property tax bill.

Marvin E. Jones, 25, has avoided a life prison sentence in an Adams County rape case, but probably can't avoid the death sentence of the HIV he carries. Health authorities say about 95 percent of people who have the human immunodeficiency virus will develop AIDS within 15 years, and AIDS always is fatal.

World War I veteran Paul Henry, 104, is reflected in an 80-year-old photo. Henry barely escaped the fighting with his life, but his friend wasn't so lucky. Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review

Voters in Springdale, Wash., made it clear Tuesday that they want the Town Council to quit sniping at Mayor Ernie Gehrke. Three supporters of the controversial mayor were voted onto the five-member council. Corky Peterson got a solid 68-vote call to return to the council. Store owner Floyd Pope defeated Gehrke's chief critic on the council, Ray Turner, 57-34. Turner supporter Bud Brown was defeated 59-33 by Gehrke supporter Mike Pammler.

Court documents suggest two orchard workers from Mexico who were murdered Sept. 27 in Omak, Wash., may have been killed for sport. Attorneys for the two men accused of the murders are fighting to keep potential jurors from hearing about the confessions police say the men made.