Thomas Clouse

A Spokane police officer has been suspended for two months without pay after the department determined he had been associating with a woman engaging in prostitution, drugs and burglary. Police Chief Frank Straub issued a “last-chance agreement” to Officer Darrell Quarles, according to a news release Monday.

Even with a predetermined term of life in prison, the sentencing of convicted killer Clay D. Starbuck was emotional Thursday as family and friends tearfully described the devastation of two broken families and the Starbuck children vowed to keep pressure on investigators to search for what they called their mother’s real killer. Superior Court Judge Greg Sypolt’s sentence was determined on June 4 when the jury convicted Starbuck of aggravated first-degree murder and sexually violating human remains in connection with the December 2011 torture slaying of 42-year-old Chanin Starbuck.

A Spokane business stalwart is struggling to find answers after his 15-year-old granddaughter was gunned down in Western Washington last month as she walked with friends. More than 2,000 family members, classmates and teachers attended the funeral last month of 15-year-old Mary C. “Molly” Conley, of Seattle. She is one of 71 grandchildren of 86-year-old John Conley Sr., of Spokane, who founded the White Elephant store in 1946.

As the Clay D. Starbuck trial reaches a national audience tonight, the prosecutor who convicted him filed motions this week to ensure any money made from the case goes into a state victim’s fund, as mandated by state law.

Spokane police investigators are seeking information about a distinctive orange sleeping bag found near the scene of a homicide that occurred more than a year ago.

The horde of floating craft looked like a cross between “Waterworld” and a Macy’s parade. As they have for decades, boaters on Loon Lake decked out their watercraft in stars and stripes and topped the event off with a war of water balloons as they paraded along the docks on Independence Day. “I was raised on the lake,” Shelly Weiland, of Spokane, said Thursday. “This is our favorite holiday of the year.”

Firefighters raced Thursday to save several north Spokane homes after someone reportedly shot a firework out of a moving pickup and started a brush fire that burned nearly an acre of grass and brush. Battalion Chief Clive Jones said crews were dispatched at 1:56 p.m. to reports of a brush fire near the intersection of Monroe Street and Cora Avenue, with a building threatened.

Spokane firefighters raced today to save several homes after someone reportedly shot a firework out of a moving pickup near the intersection of Monroe Street and Cora Avenue and started a brush fire that burned nearly an acre of grass and brush.

A mentally ill felon from Spokane who has a history of threatening violence and escaping custody has been arrested in connection with the June killing of a Lake Stevens, Wash., woman, who was found bound with electrical cords and stabbed to death.