Designers unveil bridge replacement
A soaring yet simple concrete bridge set atop 70-foot, land-based piers will replace the collapsed Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi River.
The design was made public Monday by the Minnesota Department of Transportation and the companies it hired to build the replacement bridge, which is expected to open by the end of next year.
The state has pushed an aggressive timetable to replace the steel bridge, which was a major link to northern Minneapolis and its suburbs when it collapsed Aug. 1, killing 13 people and injuring about 100.
The new bridge combines twin, five-lane spans and will include highly durable concrete, built-in sensors for monitoring its structural integrity and multiple backup systems that were absent in the collapsed steel bridge.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.
Woman killed at balloon festival
One of hundreds of balloons in town for a festival tipped after snagging a utility line Monday, sending a woman plummeting at least 70 feet to her death.
Three other women in the gondola were hospitalized – two with broken legs – after the balloon broke free and crash-landed.
The balloon, named “Heavenly Ride,” snagged a utility line at 7:45 a.m. The pilot threw down a tether to a pickup truck on the ground in an apparent attempt to reel the balloon down and free it, a state police spokesman said.
But the tether broke and the balloon bounced back up, causing its gondola to tip. The woman fell more than 70 feet.
Rosemary Wooley Phillips, 60, of Oceanside, Calif., was pronounced dead at University of New Mexico Hospital.
“She was screaming and flailing her arms,” said witness Bill Birkley of Albuquerque. “It was the most helpless feeling in the world.”
Houston
Man stabbed in fight over feet
A drunken argument over smelly feet led a man to stab his roommate to death, police said Monday.
William Antonio Serrano, 22, and the other man were drinking Saturday night when the victim told Serrano his feet had a foul odor, Sgt. Macario Sosa said.
Serrano grabbed a knife stabbing his roommate several times, police said. The roommate was not identified by police.
Serrano was in jail on a murder charge, police said. It was not immediately known whether he had a lawyer.
BALL GROUND, Ga.
Penned deer gores its owner
A man who kept exotic animals on his property was killed when a red deer gored him with its antlers, authorities said.
The body of John Henry Frix, 66, was found Sunday night inside the deer’s pen on his property.
Frix had been gored several times in the upper body by a deer’s antlers, Cherokee County sheriff’s Sgt. Jay Baker said.
The deer was among the buffalo, llama, horses and other animals Frix raised on his property about 50 miles north of Atlanta where million-dollar mansions rub up against aging rural homesteads.
From wire reports