In brief: Boys & Girls Club opening new center
The Boys & Girls Club of Spokane County will host a grand opening on Wednesday to celebrate its teen center in east Spokane.
The club has taken over management of the youth center at 2900 E. 1st Ave., which has been known as the Libby Teen Center. The center, which provides after-school activities, opened in 1997 and has served 80,000 youths, age 12 to 18.
Ryan Davenport, executive director of the Boys & Girls Club, said the center will continue to offer leadership classes, sports programs and tutoring, among others activities.
“It’s a positive place for kids to hang out during those critical after-school hours,” Davenport said. “We’re keeping things as they have been for the last 10 years.”
Boys & Girls Club already operates a center at 544 E. Providence, where programs are provided for children ages 6 to 18.
Wednesday’s event will be open to the public from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. For more information, call (509) 489-0741 or visit www.bgcspokanecounty.org.
Hospital president to speak at forum
The North Country Democratic Action Committee will host a forum Monday to discuss the value of hospital care in the Deer Park area.
Providence Health Care has said it could close the 51-year-old Deer Park Hospital in the face of declining admissions and uncertain revenue. A decision on the hospital’s future is expected late next month.
According to the North Country Democratic Action Committee, Tom Corley, president of Holy Family Hospital and Deer Park Hospital, will speak to the group at the gathering Monday. It will take place at 7 p.m. in the Deer Park Library.
TWIN FALLS, idaho
Fire may be cause of film on vehicles
Dirty skies and a strange film left on vehicles in parts of Southern Idaho have left experts guessing as to its cause, with one suspecting ash from a massive wildfire last summer.
The dirty film appeared on cars throughout the Southern Idaho town of Twin Falls on Friday.
“It’s been too wet for dust, so we’re really not sure,” said Megan Thimmesch of the National Weather Service in Boise.
But Chris Anderson, coordinator for the Faulkner Planetarium at the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls, said the film might be ash left from last summer’s Murphy Complex of fires.
The Murphy Complex started in late July and burned an area on the Idaho-Nevada border larger than Rhode Island.
“Ash is a pretty fine particulate,” Anderson said. “It wouldn’t take a lot to get it airborne.”
MISSOULA
Guilt admitted in OxyContin death
A 44-year-old Missoula man has pleaded guilty to distributing narcotic painkillers in a case that was linked to an overdose death.
Bryan J. Brubaker was charged last year with felony distribution of the prescription drug OxyContin, leading to the March 2005 overdose death of Jessica Lawhorn, 19. She received the pills from her former boyfriend, who received them from Brubaker.
Earlier this month, federal prosecutors negotiated a plea agreement that dropped the allegations linking his prescription drug supply to Lawhorn’s death.
Brubaker pleaded guilty Friday. U.S. District Judge Don Molloy scheduled a sentencing hearing for Feb. 8.
In August, Eric Jacobson, Lawhorn’s ex-boyfriend, was sentenced to 11 years in a federal prison and another 10 years of supervision.
Prosecutors said Brubaker used his prescription for OxyContin to supply Jacobson with pills he either sold or kept for himself.
In the hours before Lawhorn’s death, Jacobson sold her two OxyContin pills for $100. Before giving the pills to Lawhorn and a friend, Jacobson put them in his mouth and sucked the coating off the controlled-release pills so they would work faster, court records state.