In brief: Mother found guilty in son’s abuse death
A Grant County judge on Wednesday convicted Maribel Gomez in the 2003 homicide-by-abuse death of her 2-year-old son, who spent more than half his life in foster care.
Superior Court Judge John Antosz heard the trial from the bench after Gomez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, waived her right to a trial by jury.
He convicted the 32-year-old Ephrata woman on both of the charges she faced – homicide by abuse and first-degree manslaughter. Gomez wailed as she was led from the courtroom by law enforcement officers.
Antosz read for about an hour from 14 pages of notes before finding Gomez recklessly and with extreme indifference to human life caused her son’s death after a pattern of assaults.
Rafael “Raffy” Gomez died Sept. 10, 2003, a day after his mother said her son violently fell backward and hit his head during a tantrum over food. Prosecutors said the boy died of blunt trauma to the head inflicted by his abusive mother.
Sentencing was tentatively set for Tuesday. Gomez faces up to 26 years in prison in a case that spotlighted failures in the state’s foster care system.
An autopsy indicated the 25-month-old toddler had suffered two broken legs, as many as four skull fractures, shoulder separations, burns and other injuries during his short life.
Olympia
509 area code gets the squeeze
The 509 area code is becoming a victim of the region’s growth.
Trying to forestall the inevitable, state utilities regulators in Olympia on Wednesday ordered Eastern Washington phone companies to “recycle and conserve” phone numbers that begin with 509.
That’s been the area code for all of Eastern Washington since 1957, according to the state Utilities and Transportation Commission. And since people have a lot more phones than they used to, the state’s running out of those phone numbers.
Without changes, the commission warned, the state will have to create a new area code in Eastern Washington within five years.
The commission staff estimates that 509 should now last until at least 2011. One major change: New phone numbers will be assigned in blocks of 1,000, instead of 10,000. That way, unneeded numbers aren’t needlessly put off-limits to other companies.
Billings
Library looking for person who bought rare book
Librarians at Rocky Mountain College are hoping to find the person who bought a book, published in Ireland in 1719, at the Paul M. Adams Memorial Library’s annual book sale last spring.
The book is the first in the three-volume “History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England” by Edward Hyde, First Earl of Clarendon, published in Dublin, Ireland. The large, calfskin-bound books could be worth a few thousand dollars as a complete set, though the single volume would fetch only a fraction of that.
Library Director Bill Kehler said that if the person who bought the volume returns it, the complete set will be sold on the Internet and the profits will be split between the library and the buyer.