This day in history: Spokane judge proposed banning divorce. 2 men arrested after shots fired from downtown hotel

From 1975: A two-block area of downtown was cordoned off after at least four shots were fired in the vicinity of the Globe Annex Hotel, 225 N. Division.

Two men said somebody had shot at them from the hotel. A SWAT team was activated and stormed the hotel.

“But once inside, they found one of the suspects asleep,” said the Spokane Chronicle.

He was arrested and a second suspect also was arrested on a charge of resisting arrest. Police found two .22-caliber rifles in the two hotel rooms, along with “dozens of spent casings.”

One of the suspects was wanted on multiple warrants from California, including kidnapping a minor for the purpose of sexual assault.

From 1925: Judge J.B. Lindsley of Spokane proposed a shocking idea: abolishing divorce altogether.

In its place, he wanted to substitute a “separate maintenance law which will bar remarriage.”

Lindsley said he had grown disgusted with Washington’s divorce laws after handling thousands of cases. He said divorce laws should be abolished because “there is no such thing as reforming the so-called divorce evil.”

“The thing to do is put it on such a basis that persons will not contract marriage with the idea that if they do not like it they can go to the court and get free to marry another,” he said.

He claimed that people were coming to Spokane from all over the region, even from Canada, to take advantage of the state’s divorce laws. He said that would change in a hurry if remarriage was banned.