This day in history: Officials warned that more sewage would be dumped in Spokane River. East Central bank robber convicted
From 1975: More raw sewage would “almost certainly” be dumped into the Spokane River over the winter.
That was unwelcome news, coming on the heels of an earlier incident, in which a “bypass” of the city’s treatment plant dumped 110 million gallons in the river.
That earlier bypass was unavoidable, said city officials, because of construction during an upgrade to the facility.
Now, the Washington Department of Ecology said further discharges were inevitable because of overflows from sewer-storm drain systems. Also, officials said the plant “may have to be bypassed again” in the coming year, while final connections were being made on the facility upgrade.
Court actions already were pending from downstream residents, who said the initial bypass caused fecal contamination to skyrocket in the river.
From 1925: When a jury pronounced William D. Percival, alias George Boyd, guilty of robbing the Union Park Bank, his sister “gasped and fainted, falling in the arms of a witness who had testified for the defense.”
This was the final act of a drama that began in 1920, when a robber, identified as Percival, forced two bank employees into the vault, locked them in, and escaped with money swept up from a teller’s window.
He was considered a suspect right away, but was not immediately apprehended. This was possibly because he was apprehended in another bank robbery in Colorado, under the alias of Maurice A. Ramsey.
He was found guilty and sentenced to the Colorado State Penitentiary. But then he escaped, and was eventually apprehended in Dayton, Washington, for yet another bank robbery there. When he was acquitted on the Dayton charge, he was arrested for the Union Park Bank heist.
A Spokane jury deliberated for only a “scant half-hour” before finding him guilty. A deputy was waiting in the courtroom with an arrest warrant from Colorado, which would have been served if Percival had been found innocent.