Man sentenced to 38 years
A Pend Oreille County man has been given a double dose of prison time for a knife attack that left his victim paralyzed.
Superior Court Judge Rebecca Baker sentenced Troy Dean Stubbs, 40, to 38 years in prison for the first-degree assault in October that left 22-year-old Ryan E. Goodwin a quadriplegic.
Stubbs stabbed Goodwin in the back of the neck, severing Goodwin’s spinal cord, at a birthday gathering near Cusick, Wash., that witnesses said involved poaching and copious use of methamphetamine. Goodwin was showing another man how to blow a glass meth pipe when he was attacked.
Testimony indicated Stubbs had told a witness he wanted to kill Goodwin because of an insulting remark Goodwin made about Stubbs’ wife.
Stubbs faced a standard range of 13 1/2 to 20 years in prison, but the jury that convicted him opened the door to above-standard punishment by determining that the crime was particularly egregious.
Medical Lake
1,000 lose power from pole fire
About 1,000 Avista customers in the Medical Lake area lost power for more than four hours Thursday evening when a utility pole caught fire.
The outage occurred about 5:20 p.m., and power was restored by 9:45 p.m., according to Avista spokeswoman Laurine Jue. The affected area was bounded by Percival, Fancher, Pineview and Pine roads.
The exact cause of the fire wasn’t known, but Jue said rain and dust could have caused an electrical short.
PORTLAND
Wandering wolf seen in Oregon
Videotape and repeated sightings indicate a young black wolf is roaming a 120-square-mile area of Wallowa County in northeast Oregon, biologists said.
The wolf’s presence would confirm what biologists have long said – that it was only a matter of time before a booming wolf population in Idaho overflows into Oregon.
The wolf has been hovering in Wallowa County for more than a month, and there are no plans to remove it.
OLYMPIA
State hires group to clean oil spills
The state Ecology Department has hired a Virginia company to clean up oil spills left by unknown vessels.
For a $12,000 retainer, the nonprofit Marine Spill Response Corp. of Virginia will be on standby whenever an oil spill occurs in the state’s waters and the responsible party is unknown, unwilling or unable to respond effectively. The state will pay the company’s response costs, then investigate and try to recoup the money.
Marine Spill Response has more than 30 years of response experience in the region and has a fleet of 60 response vessels in the Northwest, including large oil-skimmers, said Ecology spokesman Curt Hart.