Pedestrian badly hurt when hit by truck

A 20-year-old man was in critical condition after being hit Friday morning by a Chevy pickup in north Spokane.

Spokane police received a call at 4:10 a.m. about a man in the road at Assembly Street and Sanson Avenue, said Spokane police Officer Glenn Bartlett.

Nicholas Biglin has head and leg injuries, authorities said. He was listed in serious condition Friday night at Sacred Heart Medical Center.

The driver of the pickup, Robert Hutton, of Nine Mile Falls, stayed at the scene and cooperated with police, Bartlett said. Hutton was uninjured.

Outdoor festivities continue today

One of the biggest outdoor parties of the year in the Lake City continues this weekend.

Art on the Green, A Taste of the Coeur d’Alenes and the Downtown Street Fair began Friday and resume this morning.

The anchor festival is Art on the Green, a major fundraiser for the visual and performing arts in Coeur d’Alene. Hours are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. today and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday on the North Idaho College campus. In addition to the craft booths, Art on the Green provides continuous entertainment on two stages.

A Taste of the Coeur d’Alenes is 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. today and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday in City Park. It features 25 food booths with a variety of cuisine choices, plus more than 100 artists and crafters along the park’s Centennial Trail.

The Downtown Street Fair is 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. today and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday on Sherman Avenue. As a result, Sherman is closed to traffic until 6:30 p.m. Sunday, between Second and Seventh streets. Third and Fourth streets will be open for north-south crosstown traffic.

Parking is available in the city parking lot south of Sherman on Front Avenue. Free shuttle bus service connects all three locations every 15 minutes.

Today at 5 p.m., a sculpture will be dedicated to one of the founders of Art on the Green, Patrick Flammia, who died last summer.

STEVENSON, Wash.

Officials seize 8,000 marijuana plants

About 8,000 marijuana plants have been seized in one of the largest pot raids in the Pacific Northwest this year, and three people have been arrested, Skamania County sheriff’s deputies said.

Deputies found the marijuana growing Wednesday near a steep hillside in the Columbia River Gorge about 10 miles east of town. No houses were in the area, but items found at the site indicated people had been living there and tending the plants, deputies and members of the Clark-Skamania Drug Task Force said.

As many as six people in camouflage clothing were spotted from a Drug Enforcement Administration aircraft. One was arrested soon afterward about a mile away and two more were taken into custody Wednesday night near state Route 14, all for investigation of manufacturing marijuana, deputies said.

Late last month, in neighboring Clark County, sheriff’s deputies found more than 3,700 marijuana plants worth an estimated $750,000 in a remote forested area about two miles south of Lake Merwin.

On July 7, Oregon State Police reported the seizure of about 7,500 pot plants 2 to 4 feet tall on U.S. Forest Service land northwest of Lakeview in southcentral Oregon.

EUGENE, ore.

Environmentalist’s sentence reduced

A federal judge closed the sentencing for a group of 10 radical environmentalists known as “The Family” with a final hearing Friday for a woman who had asked the judge to reconsider her initial sentence.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken sentenced Kendall Tankersley to 41 months in federal prison, a reduction from her initial sentence of 46 months.

Tankersley, 30, had pleaded guilty to arson and attempted arson at U.S. Forest Industries in Medford in December 1998.

Tankersley and nine others were convicted of a conspiracy involving 20 arsons across five Western states from 1996-2001.

Three other defendants remain international fugitives: Joseph Dibee, Rebecca Rubin and Josephine Sunshine Overaker.

BOISE

Director impressed with Texas prison

A new private Texas prison to which Idaho hopes to transfer 56 inmates from a problem-ridden facility turned out to be a “pleasant surprise,” Idaho Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke said after a visit this week.

Reinke wants to move the Idaho prisoners next month to a new 659-bed addition at the Val Verde Correctional Facility and Jail in Del Rio, Texas, from the Dickens County Correction Center in Spur, Texas. Both prisons are run by Florida-based private prison operator the GEO Group.

Problems at Dickens, including decrepit conditions, lack of treatment and education programs and an Idaho inmate’s suicide, prompted this planned move to Val Verde, which, like Dickens, would cost Idaho about $54 per inmate daily.

Reinke, who visited the Val Verde prison Thursday to make sure it met Idaho standards, said he’s optimistic it will be an appropriate place to house inmates for as long as three years, by which time the state hopes to have enough new prison capacity to bring all its inmates back home.

“It was a pleasant surprise,” said Reinke, reached by cell phone Friday on his return from Del Rio. “The facility is in excellent condition because it’s new.”

Ada County, Idaho

Autopsy planned for inmate

Ada County sheriff’s detectives hope an autopsy on a 21-year-old prison inmate will provide answers about how he ended up dead at Idaho’s medium security prison Wednesday

Detectives are treating the death of Peter William Curtright as a homicide but did not identify any suspects in the case Thursday.

If the case is ruled a homicide, it would be the fourth time an inmate has been killed in an Idaho Department of Correction facility since 1981.

Investigators said Thursday they found no obvious cause of death for Curtright, a former Meridian resident who was found unconscious in a restroom near the prison’s gym around 7:15 p.m. Wednesday.

Curtright had a pulse but was not breathing when he was found, Correction officials said. Staffers attempted to revive him, but he was pronounced dead a short time later.

Curtright was in the gym area with several other inmates for a three-hour recreation session when he was discovered unconscious, officials said.

Ada County Sheriff’s detectives spent much of Thursday interviewing inmates and prison officials.

Curtright was serving a life prison term for aggravated battery, robbery, three counts of assault, and witness intimidation charges out of Ada and Twin Falls counties. He would have been eligible for parole in 2014.

He was arrested by Meridian police in 2005 at his family’s home, accused of stabbing a home health care worker during an argument, police said.