Paramedic who stole, used drugs fired

A Spokane Fire Department paramedic was fired Thursday, six months after she injected intravenous drugs taken from city-owned supplies and passed out at work.

Rebecca Singley has not been paid since shortly after the May 30 incident.

Singley has been in Spokane County Jail since Monday. She was transferred from a county work-release facility where she had been since Nov. 20, court documents state.

Singley had admitted stealing prescription drugs from Fire Department medic boxes and is enrolled in a yearlong rehabilitation program that could lead to the dismissal of two felonies and a misdemeanor – all drug-related. She is scheduled to appear in drug court for a review next week.

Superior Court Judge Linda Tompkins said she couldn’t elaborate on why she ordered Singley’s confinement.

Singley had been on unpaid leave while Fire Chief Bobby Williams considered disciplinary actions. Williams recommended she be fired, and Mayor Mary Verner signed the order.

– Jody Lawrence-Turner

July 4 protester enters Alford plea

Zack St. John, a protester arrested July 4 in Riverfront Park, entered a plea not contesting a misdemeanor charge and received a deferred sentence Thursday in Spokane County District Court.

St. John, 19, had been charged with assaulting a police officer, a felony, as part of the incident that led to his arrest and sparked further demonstrations and arrests in the park. In a plea bargain, he entered an Alford plea – essentially admitting no guilt but conceding he could be found guilty if the evidence went to a jury – to a misdemeanor charge of riot.

District Judge Debra Hayes gave St. John a deferred sentence – a suspended fine of $5,000, a one-year jail term and 12 months probation – that will allow him to change the plea to not guilty at the end of his probation if he stays out of trouble.

– Jim Camden

McMorris Rodgers aide replaces Curtis

A legislative aide to U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers has been appointed to a seat in the state House of Representatives vacated by a legislator who resigned from office amid a sex scandal.

Jaime Herrera, who served as a senior aide to McMorris Rodgers for three years, handling such issues as education, health care and veterans services, was appointed to the seat in southwest Washington’s 18th District that was vacated recently by Richard Curtis, R-LaCenter. McMorris Rodgers described the 29-year-old Herrera as someone who had worked to “find creative, bipartisan solutions to some of our most challenging problems.”

Curtis resigned on Oct. 31 after he admitted to having sex with a male porn model while staying in Spokane on legislative business earlier that month. He told police he was the victim of an extortion plot.

– Jim Camden