In brief: Hanging comment downplayed
One local tea party organizer is calling the media attention brought on Dianne Capps after she stated she would like to hang U.S. Sen. Patty Murray a way of discrediting the movement.
Clarkston’s Doug Schurman, who organized last Saturday’s tea party rally at the Asotin County Fairgrounds with Capps, was not present when she made the comment about Murray, but said, “I cannot even imagine this thing being in a vicious context.”
Capps had been stalling for time during Saturday’s rally, Schurman said, and was uneasy about speaking in front of a crowd of about 500 people. It was at that time she compared Jake Spoon from “Lonesome Dove” to Murray, D-Wash.
“What happened to Jake when he ran with the wrong crowd?” Capps asked. “He got hung. And that’s what I want to do with Patty Murray.”
“We were filling up space because we lost a speaker,” Schurman said. “She was trying to stall for time.”
Schurman said he wasn’t sure whether Capps’ remark would affect the tea party movement, but believes the issue will eventually “blow over.”
“This is not unexpected,” he said of the national media coverage. “We know the agenda and direction of the general media. We’re not radical, bomb-throwing crazies, unlike some people in our government.”
Driver guilty of manslaughter
LEWISTON – A North Idaho man who was the driver in a crash that killed two of his friends has pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter.
Twenty-three-year-old Derrick J. Dryden pleaded guilty Friday in 2nd District Court. He received a suspended 180-day jail sentence and two years probation, and had his driver’s license suspended for six months.
Police say Dryden was driving his 1991 Subaru Justy on U.S. Highway 95 when his vehicle drifted off the road and hit a tree near Culdesac.
Benjamin Holland and Nicholas Walker died in the crash. Both men were 23 and from Post Falls.
Prosecutors said Dryden fell asleep before his car went off the road. None of the men was wearing a seat belt.
Tribal police look into horse deaths
TOPPENISH, Wash. – Yakama Nation police are investigating the deaths of at least 11 horses near the southern boundary of the tribe’s reservation over the last few months.
Tribal Council Chairman Harry Smiskin told the Yakima Herald-Republic that few details were available, including whether the deaths are related.
Motorists reported seeing the carcasses from U.S. Highway 97 in the Satus Pass area, where thousands of horses roam in herds. Len Schulmeister, the owner of Pine Springs Resort on Highway 97, said he had seen eagles eating at the carcasses of three or four horses.
Speculation has focused on whether the horses were killed as bait by eagle hunters. Although eagle hunting is illegal, selling the feathers can be lucrative.
Federal law prohibits the sale and, for most people, even the possession of eagle feathers.
Hair salon boast leads to arrest
SALEM, Ore. – Salem police say one of the two men accused of setting a fire to an old training center bragged about the blaze to his hairdresser.
According to court documents, 20-year-old Robert Riggi told his hairdresser that he went into an old building on the former Fairview Training Center campus to smoke marijuana, then set the Jan. 27 blaze that destroyed the building. His hairdresser then tipped police, who arrested Riggi.
Police arrested a second man, Wesley Kirk, after questioning Riggi. Both face second-degree arson charges. They made their first court appearance in Marion County on Friday. Both remain in jail.