In brief: Teens accused of attack
Two 17-year-old hitchhikers are accused of attacking a 66-year-old North Idaho woman who stopped to help them last weekend in Bonner County, authorities say.
Suspects Joseph J. Martin, of Denver, and Marshall O. Dittrich, of Danville, Calif., had run away from a youth explorations program in Trout Creek, Mont., and were hitchhiking near Clark Fork on Sunday when Vera Gadman, of Hope, picked them up and drove them to the Hope Peninsula area to look for a place to camp, according to the Bonner County Sheriff’s Office.
The teens asked her to stop at an undeveloped cul-de-sac and pretended to look at a map, authorities said, then attacked Gadman.
Gadman escaped in her car and went to a nearby home, where emergency crews responded and took her to Bonner General Hospital.
Dittrich and Martin were booked into the Bonner County Jail on Monday on charges of aggravated battery with intent to commit robbery.
No protection for snowflies
Two Idaho snowflies will not be protected under the Endangered Species Act, U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials said Monday.
Officials said a petition seeking protections for the straight snowfly and the Idaho snowfly lacks scientific information indicating that the flies are imperiled.
The petition was filed last year by the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and the Friends of the Clearwater.
Straight and Idaho snowflies, which are stoneflies in the order Plecoptera, are known to occur in Idaho’s Latah County within the Potlatch and Palouse River watersheds. Adults are often found crawling on snow and ice, which is how they came to be called “snowflies.” The Idaho snowfly was once considered to be the same species as the straight snowfly, but is now recognized as a separate species. Both snowflies are primarily associated with clean, cool running waters.
Two accused of robbery
Two brothers are accused of robbing a man at gunpoint after arranging a drug deal in a grocery store parking lot.
Jason D. Pegram, 30, and Kyle E. Pegram, 29, are in jail on robbery charges. They were arrested Sunday after a man told police he’d been robbed in the Fred Meyer parking lot at 400 S. Thor St. about 8:25 p.m. Jason Pegram told police he gave the victim a bag of white flour instead of drugs and received $180, but police believe he also threatened the victim with a gun.
Police searched an apartment at 803 E. Hartson Ave., where Jason Pegram lives with his mother. Police recovered a black BB gun from the home, which they say resembles a semi-automatic handgun.
Kyle Pegram denied involvement, but police say they developed information that connected him to the crime.
The brothers remain in jail on first-degree robbery charges.
Crash leads to outage, jail
A suspected drunken driver caused a brief power outage in Spokane Valley on Tuesday after he struck a power pole and three parked cars, authorities say.
Nathaniel Lewis, 26, was speeding westbound on East Eighth Avenue when he lost control in the 12900 block about 3:12 a.m. and hit the power pole, then hit a parked Chevy Tahoe before striking two cars parked in a driveway at 12924 E. Eighth Ave., according to the Spokane Valley Police Department
Neighbors reported seeing Lewis trying to escape into a backyard, but a resident told him to return to the car. He did so, police say, but only to wake his passenger, Lucas Remington, 32, who was initially knocked unconscious. Lewis and Remington fled, but police located them a short while later.
Lewis had a felony warrant out of Ellensburg for third-degree assault, and Remington was wanted for possession of drugs with intent to deliver. Both men were treated for minor injuries at a Valley hospital. Lewis was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving; a blood sample is expected to take six weeks to process. Both men were booked into jail.