A suspect in a Sunday night shooting north of Kettle Falls, Wash., was identified Wednesday as Jess M. Brown.
Brown, 34, is believed to have fired several shots at a man who tried to help a woman who reportedly was being harassed by Brown's roommate. One of the shots Brown is suspected of firing caused a superficial wound in the back of 43-year-old Mark Friend's right leg.
Police officers in Colville and other small towns in northeastern Washington say new "stealth" technology is improving their effectiveness.
Not only can they appear out of nowhere and catch bad guys in the act, they're better able to meet the good folks who pay their salaries.
Pend Oreille County Superior Court Clerk Winnie Sundseth faces a criminal charge for allegedly harboring a fugitive in her office.
Special Prosecutor Clark Colwell announced Wednesday that he will file a charge of second-degree rendering criminal assistance against Sundseth later this week or early next week.
Friends and neighbors gathered Saturday to party and build an Old World-style timber frame house, without nails, for Kettle Falls-area resident James Fish. Photo by John Craig/The Spokesman-Review
The second of two altercations Sunday night proved fatal for Colville area resident William J. Barr, 33.
Margarita Kingsbury, 32, said she shot Barr to death when he threatened her with a revolver. The shooting occurred about four hours after Barr had been involved in a shooting at the nearby home of April Kingsbury, 20, believed to be Margarita Kingsbury's daughter or stepdaughter.
Sportsmen are happy, but some landowners are upset about U.S. Bureau of Land Management efforts to trade small, scattered parcels of land for large, consolidated tracts.
The BLM is trading mountainous land in Stevens and Ferry counties for grassy "channeled scabland" in southwestern Lincoln County. The Colville National Forest has lots of land like the largely inaccessible parcels the BLM is trading away, but the public has relatively little scabland in northeastern Washington.
(From For the Record, Wednesday, August 16, 1995:)
Attorney Jeffrey Leppo was misidentified in a story Tuesday about the Dawn Mining Co. uranium mill at Ford, Wash. Leppo works for a Seattle law firm representing Dawn.
Assault charges are being dropped against a woman who slapped a Newport city councilman's teenage son when the boy used foul language on a downtown street corner.
"This case is going down the toilet and I'm flushing it," Deputy Pend Oreille County Prosecutor Greg Hicks said. "We are not able to proceed because we are not able to prove the charges at this time."
Springdale Marshal Jerry Taylor may not get paid at the end of the month if the Town Council gets its way, but Taylor says he'll keep working.
The council voted 4-0 in a special meeting on Monday to withhold Taylor's $1,500 monthly salary on grounds that an injury prevents him from performing his duties. Taylor's right arm will be in a sling for almost three months while he recovers from surgery to repair ligaments torn when he was thrown from a horse.
From left, Ashley Pillow, 10, Coulee Dam, gets help on a jingle dress from Dawn Phillips, 13, Judy Carson, 11, and Suzette Seymour, 12, all of Spokane. Photo by John Craig/The Spokesman-Review
Construction began last week on a $4 million "rice paddy" that will allow Dawn Mining Co. to receive out-of-state uranium mill tailings at its abandoned uranium mill site in Ford.
The company is building five evaporation ponds that officials say will be tiered like rice paddies because of a slight slope across the 97 acres the ponds will occupy. The ponds will be used to get rid of 138 million gallons of acidic, radioactive water in a 28-acre disposal pit.
Transportation promises to be the next big issue in the Dawn Mining Co. plan to import uranium mill tailings to pay for cleaning up its abandoned uranium mill here.
Dawn and the state Transportation Department are in sharp disagreement about the best route for shipping the waste, and there are questions about how much Dawn will pay to improve the roads it uses.
A series of informational meetings is under way for members of the Colville Confederated Tribes who will be asked to vote in September on whether to allow mining on their reservation.
Mining companies have expressed interest in exploring the reservation for minerals, but the Tribal Council placed a moratorium on the issue last August so members could be consulted.
A representative of the tribe's Geology Department said the council has not yet set a date for the vote, written the ballot question or decided whether the result will be binding.
Newport High School teacher Roger Coplen says two female co-workers are sexually harassing him and one of their husbands assaulted him with a handshake.
Newport police are investigating the handshake, and the sexual harassment charges are now before state and federal agencies after being dismissed by school officials. The high school is in turmoil and morale has plummeted, insiders say.
Pend Oreille County Clerk Winnie Sundseth is being investigated for allegedly helping a criminal suspect avoid arrest.
Washington State Patrol Sgt. Chris Powell confirmed Friday that the WSP is investigating Sundseth on a possible misdemeanor charge of rendering criminal assistance in the third degree.
Defense attorney Dennis Scott dropped a bombshell late Thursday on the vehicular homicide conviction of former Pend Oreille County sheriff's dispatcher Cathy Van Stedum.
Scott filed a sworn statement in which one of the jurors who convicted Van Stedum of the alcohol-related crime admitted to a history of drunken-driving convictions.
Newport High School student Joe Alyea, 16, practices building fire lines in a recent Forest Service firefighter trainning session. Alyea and other teens joined the adult class as part of a special program to train high school students in firefighting. Photo by John Craig/The Spokesman-Review
The second of two first-degree child rape charges against a 51-year-old Wilbur, Wash., grandmother disintegrated in court Thursday and was dismissed.
The voluntary dismissal undercut a potentially precedent-setting ruling that lie detector tests could be presented as scientific evidence. The dismissal prevents an appellate court test that could overturn the traditional exclusion of lie detector results in court.
Reggie and Becky Byrum wear authentic frontier clothing from the late 1800s at their Springdale area home. They hope to establish a local chapter of the Single Action Shooting Society, which re-enacts events from the Old West. Photo by John Craig/The Spokesman-Review
A mentally retarded teenager who admitted raping a 4-year-old neighbor boy two years ago was warned Thursday that any future problems could get him banished from his Camden Gap home.
Pend Oreille County Superior Court Judge Larry Kristianson made the blunt warning while renewing a protection order for the victim's family and granting a new one to another family that feels threatened by Shawn McIntyre.
Now there's Highway 395 barbecue to go with your Girl Scout cookies and your Camp Fire candy.
The treacherous truck route will join this area's tummy-tempting charities Sunday with a "Stayin' Alive Barbecue and Auction."
Okanogan County commissioners will hear opinions Monday on a much-diluted version of a proposal for the county to assert control over state and federal land decisions.
The commissioners will conduct a public hearing at 1:30 p.m. at Okanogan High School on a 43-page resolution that asks state and federal agencies to consider the county's "custom, culture, economic stability and environmental harmony."
Colville Confederated Tribes Councilwoman Frances Charette is under investigation in a stabbing incident on the Inchelium-Gifford ferry.
Tribal Police Chief Jay Goss confirmed Thursday that Charette, who represents the Inchelium District of the Colville Indian Reservation, is suspected of stabbing her off-and-on boyfriend Eugene Michel twice in his lower back June 2.
