Briefly

Engineer says monorail flawed

Seattle A structural engineer who opposes the Seattle Monorail transit project outlined what he called serious design flaws at a news conference Thursday.

Jon Magnusson, of Magnusson Klemencic Associates, questioned the project’s ability to expand and said that sections of the proposed system where there was just one track would create choke points.

Seattle Monorail Project spokesman Eric Wilson said project officials were barred from Magnusson’s news conference.

“From everything we’ve learned from the media, there was nothing substantive that was new today that hasn’t been discussed and debated in hundreds of community forums in the last year,” Wilson said.

Magnusson also said there could be a problem on the West Seattle bridge in the event of an earthquake, and that chunks of ice and snow could fall from the Monorail in the winter.

As planned, the 14-mile, $1.6 billion Monorail line will connect downtown Seattle with the Ballard and West Seattle neighborhoods.

Wenatchee tornado confirmed

East Wenatchee The National Weather Service has confirmed a small tornado touched down here, part of a series of spring storms that hit northcentral Washington.

No injuries or damage were reported from Wednesday’s twister.

The tornado probably started out of a dust-devil. A mass of swirling air on the ground was probably sucked into a storm cloud by an updraft, causing it to spin faster, said Weather Service meteorologist Ron Miller in Spokane. This was the second tornado in the state this year, Miller said. The other occurred last month in Whatcom County.

Woman’s sister admits crime

Vancouver, Wash. A 24-year-old woman who spent more than three months in jail after being convicted of shoplifting was freed after her sister confessed to the crime.

District Court Judge Vern Schreiber overrode Reshenda Strickland’s Feb. 13 conviction for third-degree theft and ordered her released from the Clark County Jail Work Center on Wednesday. The Vancouver resident had received a six-month jail sentence.

Schreiber’s ruling came after City Prosecutor Josephine Townsend reviewed the store’s surveillance videotape at the behest of the NAACP, which hired a lawyer to represent Strickland.

The prosecutor determined the woman on the tape was Starlisha Strickland, Reshenda’s 21-year-old sister.

During an earlier interview with the (Vancouver) Columbian, Starlisha Strickland said she had been staying in Atlanta and didn’t know her sister had been charged.

“I’m not going to let my sister sit in jail for something I’ve done,” she told the newspaper.