In brief: Tribal gambling compact wins approval
A first-ever gambling compact between the state and the Spokane Tribe of Indians has won the OK of both Washingtons.
“It’s an exciting day and the end of a 16-year battle,” said tribal public relations director Jamie Sijohn.
The Department of the Interior told the tribe that it has no problems with the compact, which will take effect when published in the Federal Register.
The agreement, signed in February by Gov. Chris Gregoire, allows the Spokanes to own up to 1,500 slot-style machines for the next three years and up to 3,000 after that.
Sijohn said the tribe will likely expand and improve its two existing casinos in Chewelah and at the confluence of the Spokane and Columbia rivers.
The compact does not address a proposed casino complex the tribe wants to build on off-reservation land near Airway Heights. That would have to first be approved by federal officials, a difficult process that could take years.
– Richard Roesler
BOISE
Suspect arrested in UI student’s death
A 21-year-old man was arrested Tuesday in Nevada on a first-degree murder warrant in the weekend killing of a University of Idaho student.
John Joseph Delling, whose last known address was Antelope, Calif., was arrested about 4 p.m. Tuesday by police in Sparks, Nev., said Moscow Assistant Police Chief David Duke.
David Robert Boss, 21, of Boise, was found dead early Saturday in his apartment near the Moscow campus. He’d been shot twice in the head at close range, police said. There was no evidence of forced entry.
A telephone registered to Delling, who knew Boss when the pair attended high school in Boise and later college in Moscow, made a call to the victim at 12:12 a.m. Saturday, Duke said.
That was about the time Boss was believed to have been slain, the assistant police chief said. Moscow police worked with telephone company Sprint in order to trace Delling to Sparks.
“A motive hasn’t been determined at this point,” said Duke.
– Associated Press
New Idaho law bans ‘Internet hunting’
Gov. Butch Otter has signed legislation banning so-called “Internet hunting,” in which people go to a Web site, aim with a remote camera and shoot animals with the click of a mouse.
The measure passed unanimously in the Senate and 59-10 in the House during the 2007 Legislature.
Internet hunting started in Texas in January 2005 with a Web site that allowed people to pay a fee and shoot captive animals on an exotic game ranch, sometimes from thousands of miles away.
The animal was then shipped to the shooter’s home.
Five months later, Texas banned it, as have at least 25 other states since, with more considering outlawing the practice.
No Internet hunting operations are located in Idaho.
On Tuesday, Humane Society of the United States Vice President Mike Markarian praised Otter for signing the plan last Thursday, saying, “Traditional hunters know there’s no sport in shooting an animal remotely.”
– Associated Press