In brief: Pasco officer placed on leave after fatal shooting resigns

PASCO – One of the three Pasco police officers who shot and killed an immigrant farmworker in a busy intersection earlier this year has resigned from the department.

The Tri-City Herald reported that nine-year veteran Ryan Flanagan submitted his resignation letter Thursday. Pasco City Manager Dave Zabell said it’s effective as of July 2.

Flanagan and officers Adam Wright and Adrian Alaniz have been on paid administrative leave since Antonio Zambrano-Montes died during the Feb. 10 confrontation. The shooting prompted months of protests in Pasco after cellphone video showed the officers chasing Zambrano-Montes across a street before shooting him as he turned around with his arms outstretched.

Kennewick attorney Scott Johnson, who represents Flanagan, said Friday that his client had a job opportunity arise in the local building industry. He said the resignation was voluntary, and no one is forcing his client out of the police department.

Man arrested in Idaho in child abuse case

WALLA WALLA – A 25-year-old Washington man wanted in a case of severe child abuse has been arrested in Idaho.

The Union-Bulletin newspaper reported that Tysen R. Beckner of Waitsburg, northeast of Walla Walla, was booked late last week into the Nez Perce County Adult Detention Center in Lewiston on a warrant charging him with first-degree assault of a child. Bail was set at $100,000 pending his extradition to Walla Walla County.

The Sheriff’s Office said Beckner and the boy’s mother live together. The couple went to a bar Wednesday evening, and the boy’s mother wound up being arrested on outstanding warrants, so the boy spent Wednesday night with Beckner.

The next morning, a family friend saw the boy with what investigators described as “horrific” bruises all over his body. They said the boy reported that Beckner threw him against a coffee table because he didn’t eat his dinner, and at one point put his head in the toilet.

The boy was first taken to a hospital in Walla Walla before being transported to another in Spokane.

Researcher studies huckleberries’ growth

WEST GLACIER, Mont. – A researcher is working to learn more about huckleberries, which constitute 15 percent of the diet of grizzlies and black bears in Glacier National Park.

Tabitha Graves, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, has set up sites around the park to monitor huckleberries.

“Some years, the crop will be good in one place and bad in others,” Graves told the Missoulian.

Her goal is to figure out why and provide valuable information for wildlife and public land managers.

There are many variables to track as the pilot program enters its second year.

Moisture is important, but not just how much. When it rains is a key, too.

“If you get a lot of rain when the plants are flowering, the pollinators don’t get as much done,” Graves said.

She’s still adding to the list of things that affect huckleberries – everything from canopy cover to growing degree days.

For a fruit popular not just with bears, but birds and humans, too, there has been remarkably little published research, Graves said.