Jonathan Brunt

Tuesday's early morning arrest of a bicyclist suspected of breaking into cars and possessing drugs was rather ordinary – until police found the gun in his backpack. The high-powered handgun, valued at $1,200, could shoot through bulletproof vests, police said at press conference Tuesday afternoon.

Lakeland School District voters on Tuesday approved a $14.2 million tax proposal aimed at easing school overcrowding in booming northern Kootenai County. The levy will pay for a new elementary school, an expansion of Lakeland High School and land for future secondary schools.

Spokane County sheriff's deputies, apparently horsing around in downtown Spokane earlier this month, led unsuspecting city police on a bogus chase that ended with two damaged police cars and guns drawn at a plainclothes deputy. The deputies appear to have violated state law and department policy by engaging in the unnecessary chase, said sheriff's spokesman Cpl. Dave Reagan.

A west Spokane man was hospitalized Friday evening after he was shot in his home. The victim, Terry Herzog, who is in his 50s, was shot in his chest while he was sitting on a couch, neighbors said.

Spokane Valley firefighters are investigating whether a man tried to kill them by blowing up an oven when they responded to his call for help last month. "Our expectation is that they call us because they want us to be there," said Dave Lobdell, assistant chief of the Spokane Valley Fire Department. "We don't expect to become targets when we get to the scene."

Since law enforcement agencies in Spokane County changed how they take reports of non-emergency crimes, citizens have called in 40 percent fewer crimes where an officer was not required. That worries officials like Spokane County Sheriff's Lt. Earl Howerton.

Spokane Mayor Jim West said Saturday night that local leaders need the prayers of the community. "We elect them and assume that they are smarter than us, and they aren't," he told a prayer conference at the Korean Presbyterian Church in east Spokane. "… They are sinners. They have faults, any number of faults."

The last time Michelle Busick organized a hurricane relief effort, she was living less than 200 miles away from the victims. Although she now lives in Spokane, some 2,500 miles from a coast ravaged by two powerful storms, Busick once again is leading an effort to help hurricane victims.

A new fire detection system is scheduled to be activated next week at the Spokane County Juvenile Justice Center – days after a blaze forced the building's evacuation for the second time in less than a year. Neither Saturday's fire, which was confined to a laundry room, nor an earlier one that caused significant damage to the probation department, was discovered until visitors smelled smoke.

A fire forced the evacuation of inmates from their cells Saturday afternoon at the Spokane Juvenile Justice Center. The blaze, which was confined to a laundry room, was the second fire in the last year at the justice center, which houses the jail, court and other criminal justice services for minors.

A $2,000 reward is being offered for information that identifies who is responsible for the death of a man found on a downtown sidewalk last week. Medics were called at 7:55 a.m. Sept. 15 near Second Avenue and Madison Street, where Richard G. Morgan, 39, was laying after suffering head injuries. When crews arrived, Morgan could talk but refused to say what happened, according to an affidavit filed Thursday in district court.

Headed to the Gulf Coast with a truckload of food, water and other necessities for victims of Hurricane Katrina, three Spokane sisters have been forced to a motel until another brutal storm passes. Sharon Larson, Angela Geiss and Debbie McWilliams left earlier this week after gathering supplies from churches, schools and businesses. They made arrangements with a church to drop off the supplies in Hattiesburg, Miss.

A man was killed Wednesday evening when the plane he was flying hit a power line and plunged into the Pend Oreille River near Ione, Wash. The four-seat Cessna manufactured in 1949 hit the power line about 5 p.m. and sunk to the bottom, according to a Pend Oreille County Sheriff's dispatcher.

Airway Heights voters soundly rejected Tuesday a $5 million proposal to build a recreation center. Just 38 percent of voters supported the measure, which would have created a building with a pool and waterslides, a fitness center and meeting rooms. It needed 60 percent to pass.

Detectives arrested a habitual criminal Friday evening on suspicion that he killed a man whose body was found Sept. 5 in a rural area near Elk. Ben Alan Burkey, 45, is accused of killing Rick L. Tiwater, who was discovered dead by a man riding an off-road vehicle near the 13400 block of East Laurel Road.

The images from New Orleans may be shocking, but Inland Northwest religious leaders said the disaster of Hurricane Katrina may lead to a better world. "God makes no mistake," said the Rev. Dr. C.W. Andrews Sr., of Calvary Baptist Church in Spokane. "Out of all of this, some good will come."

Two brothers pleaded guilty Friday in last year's murder of a University of Idaho student. Brothers James J. Wells, 26, and Matthew R. Wells II, 27, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Eric McMillan, a 19-year-old freshman on the football team. The men shot McMillan in his chest and head at his Moscow apartment on Sept. 19; he died at a hospital the next morning.

A skinhead accused in last week's attack on a group of American Indian youths in Spokane was in jail Thursday – in Wyoming – after he allegedly assaulted another person. Daniel Gean Wilson, 28, was released from Spokane County Jail last week after Spokane Police failed to produce the necessary paperwork to keep him there.

The host of a nationally syndicated radio show was seriously injured Thursday afternoon in a motorcycle crash near Mount Spokane State Park. Laurie Roth, affectionately called the "Annie Oakley of the airwaves" by listeners, was airlifted to Sacred Heart Medical Center after she collided with a deer on state Highway 206 about 3:30 p.m., said Washington State Patrol Trooper Jeff Sevigney. She was listed in critical condition Thursday night.