Pair fined for cruelty in cat sanctuary case
Two people who ran a sanctuary where more than 400 cats were found – more than half of which had to be euthanized because of illness – have each been fined $1,000 and placed on unsupervised probation for two years.
They are also forbidden from having more than 20 domesticated animals in their care.
Edwin J. Criswell and Cheryl L. Perkins entered Alford pleas last week in 1st District Court, declining to admit guilt but acknowledging they would be convicted if the matter went to trial.
Criswell, 43, and Perkins 58, each was charged with 20 counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty after the Humane Society in September seized the cats that were living in squalor in trailer homes.
Half of the 20 charges each faced were dismissed in exchange for the pleas.
Judge Debra Heise fined Criswell and Perkins $100 on each charges.
After the hearing, Perkins said that the ill animals taken from the shelter and euthanized were murdered.
– Associated Press
Kent, Wash
Man arrested after shootings at Denny’s
A 23-year-old man was arrested after a shooting at a restaurant in this south Seattle suburb sent five people to the hospital early Sunday.
Kent police received a call at 2:11 a.m. of shots at a Denny’s restaurant. A bystander pointed out the suspect as he entered a vehicle and started to leave the restaurant, Kent Lt. Bruce Weissich said.
Four men and one woman were wounded. A critically injured victim was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. The other four were in stable condition – two going to Harborview on their own and two going to Valley Medical Center in Kent on their own.
Police said the suspect came to the restaurant from a bar. Once inside, an argument led to a fight. The man then went outside, came back and began firing, Weissich said.
“It was a pretty wild scene down there,” he said.
– Associated Press
Caldwell, Idaho
College posts papers on Steunenberg
Albertson College of Idaho has posted on its Web site dozens of letters and other correspondence that detail events leading up to and including the assassination of Idaho Gov. Frank Steunenberg in 1905 from a booby-trap bomb.
“Frank was blown almost to pieces. It was all so horrible,” Steunenberg’s sister, Josephine Steunenberg, wrote in a letter to her sisters about the explosion in his Caldwell home.
Jan Boles, an archivist at the college, made that letter and others available online. The letters are from the George L. Crookham Papers, a gift to the college from Steunenberg descendants. Crookham, who died in 1999, was Frank Steunenberg’s nephew.
Steunenberg was assassinated, historians say, because of his efforts to suppress labor union uprisings. The papers can be viewed at www.albertson.edu/.
– Associated Press