In brief: Avalanche claims snowboarder, 24

Salt Lake City – A 24-year-old male snowboarder died Saturday after becoming trapped in an avalanche in a steep Utah backcountry area that the public was warned to avoid after potent snowstorms.

The death marks the ninth avalanche fatality in the West this season, and experts say the risk of additional slides could remain high all winter.

Unified police Lt. Justin Hoyal said the victim was with two other men when the avalanche occurred Saturday morning in the Wasatch Range’s Big Cottonwood Canyon near Salt Lake City.

Two other two – a snowboarder and skier – watched as the victim descended Kessler Peak and triggered an avalanche, Hoyal said. They found his body less than an hour later using avalanche beacons. The victim’s name and hometown were not immediately released.

Experts say a weak base layer of snow, packed with large grains of ice, is plaguing parts of Utah, Colorado, Montana and California.

Candidate fighting language ruling

Yuma, Ariz. – Alejandrina Cabrera, a city council candidate in Arizona, is appealing a lower-court decision that barred her from seeking office because a judge determined that her English was too poor, one of her lawyers said Saturday.

Cabrera’s lawyers filed a notice to appeal late Friday and will likely file an appellate brief Monday, her attorney Ryan Hengl said.

Cabrera hopes to run for council in San Luis, a small city of about 25,000 residents about 20 miles southwest of Yuma.

Her case, believed to be the first of its kind in Arizona, has sparked much debate over how English-proficient a candidate for public office must be, particularly in border towns where much of the population primarily speaks Spanish.

In San Luis, the population is almost 99 percent Latino and is predominantly of Mexican heritage, according to U.S. census data. “Alejandrina definitely reflects the town,” Hengl said.

The challenge to Cabrera’s candidacy was filed in December by San Luis Mayor Juan Carlos Escamilla, who has said that his own English is far from perfect.

Some have speculated that the lawsuit was politically motivated because Cabrera has filed two recall petitions against Escamilla in the past, Hengl said.

Science phenom’s family has home

Bay Shore, N.Y. – A New York teen who was living at a homeless shelter when she was picked as a semifinalist in a prestigious national science competition has moved into her new home.

Samantha Garvey and her family were handed the keys to their house in Bay Shore, Long Island, on Saturday.

Garvey says she was “overwhelmed” by the support and generosity she’s received since being named a semifinalist in the Intel Science contest last month. She wasn’t among the 40 finalists.

The Brentwood High School senior and her family had been living in a homeless shelter when her two years of research on a mussel population garnered her accolades.

Suffolk County officials helped find a three-bedroom home where the family could live.

Pulled from mud, man faces arrest

Albuquerque, N.M. – A homeless man who was stuck in thick mud near the Rio Grande river in Albuquerque for three days was rescued Saturday after some high school students on a field trip heard him yelling for help, authorities said.

However, the man’s newfound freedom wasn’t going to last. Police said he was wanted on a felony warrant, and they planned to arrest him after he was treated at a local hospital.

A group of La Cueva High School students and their biology teacher heard the man yelling Saturday morning from a marshy wetlands area in the Oxbow Open Space Preserve, the Albuquerque Fire Department and police officials said.

The students were in the area – about two miles north of Interstate 40 in Albuquerque – doing a school project. They called authorities and told them that the man said he’d been stuck in the river for three days and could not move, according to a police report.

Fire crews and preserve officers responded and found a “male subject stuck on a reed island about a hundred yards from the west bank of the river,” the report said.

Crews deployed an air boat and used a pulley system to lift the man from the mud and water, and up a hill.

Police later identified the man as Clayton Senn, a transient who’d been living near the river.

Authorities said they discovered a warrant for Senn’s arrest on suspicion of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a felony. Senn was taken to an Albuquerque hospital for treatment.