This day in history: Expo expedited plans for riverfront. Man accused of killing man in drunken driving crash, dies in crash

From 1975: Spokane’s plan to reclaim its riverbanks “is moving faster than its developers thought possible and now stands at about 70 per cent.”

At least that was the conclusion of city officials. The key, of course, was the “rapid transformation of the downtown riverbank” because of Expo ’74 and the resulting Riverfront Park.

Yet the plan also included “detailed and complex proposals for the downriver gorge, the upriver area and along Latah Creek.”

“While progress in these areas has not been as visually dramatic as the changed downtown, considerable headway has been made,” said The Spokesman-Review.

From 1925: The long-running legal drama over the fate of Bernard S. Newman, 22, accused of driving the car that killed pedestrian Joseph Kennedy on the Apple Way in the Spokane Valley, ended in an ironic twist.

Newman was killed in another auto accident, this time crashing into a telephone pole near a Yakima River bridge. Newman was free at the time, pending appeal of his 20-year sentence for manslaughter. Witnesses said Newman was driving at a high rate of speed and was unable to make the turn a the end of the bridge. A young woman passenger escaped injury when she jumped just before the crash.

Officers reported that the dead man’s clothes were “saturated” with liquor from an open liquor bottle in the car.

Liquor had been a key issue in his earlier conviction for manslaughter. His first trial had resulted in a hung jury, but in his second trial, witnesses testified that Newman had been drinking before the crash.