Mashburn Bridge down to one lane
Drivers may encounter delays of up to an hour today and Thursday on Highway 3 south of St. Maries.
The Idaho Transportation Department is paving the highway as part of the Mashburn Bridge project. Between 7:30 a.m. and 6 p.m., one lane of that bridge will be open, so traffic will have to take turns crossing it.
The bridge is about 12 miles south of St. Maries.
PORTLAND
Grand jury deciding liability in death
A Multnomah County grand jury is not expected to decide before next week whether anyone is criminally liable for the death of James Chasse Jr., a mentally ill man who died in police custody last month.
A ruling had been expected Tuesday, but Portland Police Chief Rosie Sizer said Chasse’s family asked that an additional witness be called. In addition, a member of the grand jury was unavailable until next week.
Chasse, 42, died Sept. 17 after three officers struggled to arrest him in downtown Portland’s Pearl District. According to police, the officers had spotted Chasse acting strangely – as if he were on drugs or had a mental disorder – and possibly urinating in the street.
An autopsy concluded that Chasse broke 16 ribs, including some that punctured a lung and caused massive internal bleeding. The state medical examiner, Dr. Karen Gunson, cited blunt-force chest trauma as his cause of death and wrote that the injuries were caused “by another person or a fall.”
Toxicology tests revealed that Chasse – a schizophrenic – had no alcohol or drugs in his system.
Police shackled Chasse’s ankles together and drove him to jail on charges of resisting arrest and interfering with police. There, jail nurses determined he needed further medical help.
Chasse died on the way to Portland Adventist Hospital.
KALISPELL, Mont.
Collision on U.S. 93 kills woman
A Kalispell woman lost control of her car while passing another vehicle on U.S. Highway 93 and was killed when her car was hit by oncoming traffic, the Montana Highway Patrol said.
Flathead County authorities said Cynthia A. Pederson, 37, died in the crash Monday afternoon. The patrol said Pederson’s car was behind another vehicle that had slowed to turn off the highway. She passed the vehicle on the right, then lost control on the shoulder and overcorrected, and her car slid into the opposite lane. It was struck on the passenger side by an oncoming car, the patrol said.
The death raises the state highway fatality toll to 212.
SEATTLE
Gates to help build charter schools
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is spending $30 million to help build 200 new charter schools for low-income students around the country.
The grant to the NewSchools Venture Fund, announced this week, is the foundation’s second donation to the organization that supports nonprofit charter management organizations, which start and run charter schools, said foundation spokesman Eli Yim.
A $22 million Gates grant in 2003 gave NewSchools the money to help create five new charter management organizations. The NewSchools Venture Fund supports charter organizations running schools in California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., that enroll more than 26,000 students a year.
This year’s grant will help support as many as 20 charter networks that are expected to start 200 schools and eventually educate 100,000 students in low-income urban communities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., the foundation said.