Boy OK after clinical decapitation; nail gun suicide; ambulance stolen
- Updated
Odd and interesting news from the West.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
YUCAIP, Calif. — A multivehicle crash left a Southern California highway covered in onions.
The Riverside Press-Enterprise reported a truckload of onions spilled at midmorning Tuesday on the westbound side of Interstate 10 in Yucaipa, about 70 miles east of Los Angeles. Two other vehicles also were involved.
The California Highway Patrol says the truck driver was taken to a local hospital for treatment of minor injuries.
All lanes reopened shortly before 3 p.m.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
SAN LEANDRO, Calif. — Authorities say a San Francisco Bay Area woman was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a 12-year-old boy was stabbed in the back with scissors in a bank.
KNTV reported Tuesday that 32-year-old Iyona Dzshae Hammond of Oakland, California, was also booked on suspicion of second-degree robbery in connection with stealing money from a customer making a deposit at the bank. She remains in custody without bail.
A motive in the stabbing was not yet known.
The crimes were caught on video.
San Leandro police Lt. Robert McManus says she had blood on her hands and was armed with the scissors.
McManus says Hammond went into the bank Monday morning and stabbed the boy in the back three times while he was sitting in a lounge chair. He is expected to survive his injuries. It was not immediately known if she has an attorney.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
LAS VEGAS — The Las Vegas Strip's largest hotel-casino operator has officially started charging for parking.
MGM Resorts International's game-changing move to end the long-held entitlement in Sin City began rolling out on Monday.
The Aria, Vdara, New York-New York, Monte Carlo, Excalibur, Luxor and Circus Circus resorts now have fees to park on site.
MGM Grand and Bellagio will join the list on Wednesday, and the Mandalay Bay, Delano and The Mirage will be on board on Monday.
The per-day fees range from $8 to $10 for self-parking and $13 to $18 for valet parking.
Nevadans will get a break through Dec. 29 with free-self parking for up to 24 hours. To get the benefit, drivers will have to scan their driver's license at the gate.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
MEDFORD, Ore. — Douglas firs and other trees are dying in southern Oregon forests, where three years of drought have taken a toll.
Pines, oaks and madrone do better in drought conditions than Douglas firs, but even more drought-tolerant trees like Ponderosa pines have lost out in southern Oregon's competition for water, experts told The Mail Tribune. The recent winter brought wet weather, but it was too late for many of the trees after prolonged drought conditions and beetle attacks.
The die-off in Applegate Velley, up the west Cascades and into the Willamette Valley appears to be even worse than the tree deaths caused by drought in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. The scale of the die-off will be quantified during aerial mapping surveys next month.
"It's quite striking," said Ellen Goheen, a plant pathologist with the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. "I never remember seeing it quite this dramatic in the 22 years I've been here."
Oregon Department of Forestry spokesman Brian Ballou said officials had been expecting tree deaths, but they "just didn't know what it would look like."
South-facing slopes and areas with dry soil have more dead trees, as do densely wooded areas with more competition, Goheen said.
"They're struggling against each other for water, and some are better at getting water than others," she said. "Some of the smaller trees are flat-out dying for a lack of water."
For other trees, it's a slow struggle against pests like the flat-headed fir borer and pine bark beetles. The insects attack trees stressed by lack of water and eat away at them, cutting off their ability to funnel moisture up their trunks.
"The tree dies from the top down," said Matthew Krunglevich, a district protection planner with the forest department. Private landowners should stay on top of how their trees are doing, either by hiring a forest contractor or calling the forest department for consultation, he said.
Pitch oozing from pines is a sign that the tree is fighting an infestation, Krunglevich said. Dead pines, meanwhile, should be cut into pieces no larger than three inches in diameter to interrupt the bugs' reproduction cycle and keep the infestation from spreading to other trees.
"If not, you're just making a buffet for more bugs," Krunglevich said.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
PINE VALLEY MOUNTAIN, Utah — A U.S. Forest Service employee is no longer missing after he got lost during a hike in Utah's Pine Valley Mountain area.
KUTV-TV reports (http://bit.ly/1TTWtwv) the unidentified northern Arizona man wandered for about a day before finding the trail again.
He was spotted by a district ranger who returned him to his vehicle at a campsite.
About a dozen people and a helicopter were involved in the search.
___
Information from: KUTV-TV, http://www.kutv.com/
- The Associated Press
- Updated
BILLINGS, Mont. — A bus passenger was arrested in Billings after Jefferson Lines employees called police to report his luggage smelled like marijuana.
The Billings Gazette reports 19-year-old Kaine Hanson made an initial appearance in Yellowstone County Justice Court on Monday for felony criminal possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. He also is charged with misdemeanor obstruction for giving officers a false name. He did not enter a plea.
Justice of the Peace Pedro Hernandez released Hanson without bond, but he will be on GPS monitoring and cannot leave the state.
A police dog located Hanson's bags on the bus and officers found 31 vacuum-sealed bags of marijuana in his suitcase and backpack.
Hanson's arraignment is scheduled for June 13 in District Court.
___
Information from: The Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.com
- The Associated Press
- Updated
RIO RANCHO, N.M. — Officials in a New Mexico city are reconsidering a red light camera and speed van program after discovering thousands of people who never paid fines from those tickets.
KOAT-TV reports that Rio Rancho's automated traffic system has sent out 90,000 tickets and brought in more than $1.4 million between 2011 and 2015.
The city says 35,000 people have ignored red light or speed van tickets over the last five years, however, costing the city around $3.7 million.
Rio Rancho leaders say they will take those numbers into account when deciding whether to keep the program when the contract runs out at the end of the year.
___
Information from: KOAT-TV, http://www.thenewmexicochannel.com/index.html
- The Associated Press
- Updated
KALISPELL, Mont. (AP) — A 61-year-old man died after a tree fell on him at a commercial logging camp near Lake Mary Ronan, west of Flathead Lake.
Lake County Sheriff Don Bell says Randy Scott Drollinger of Kalispell died in the accident late Monday morning. Bell says Drollinger was a crane operator, but was not on the machinery when the accident happened.
Fellow workers began CPR and called 911, but air responders had to guide ground crews to the remote site on a mountainside. Bell said Drollinger dead at the scene.
___
Information from: Daily Inter Lake, http://www.dailyinterlake.com
- The Associated Press
- Updated
EUGENE, Ore. — An assault charge has been filed against an Oregon man accused of shooting a woman in the back of the head with a nail gun before doing it to himself.
Oregon State Police Capt. Bill Fugate said Tuesday that troopers responded to a call last week about a man and a woman who had nails sticking in their heads after attempting suicide.
Fugate says the 46-year-old Creswell man and the 31-year-old woman from Eugene rented a nail gun with air compressor and drove to a spot east of Lowell where a passer-by found them with serious injuries and called 911.
The man recovered and was arrested Monday. The woman remains in critical condition at a Springfield hospital.
Fugate says the man told the passer-by it was a suicide attempt, and detectives are trying to determine if that was the case.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
SAN FRANCISCO — Authorities say a San Francisco Fire Department ambulance was stolen during a medical emergency Tuesday morning and crashed on Treasure Island.
KNTV reported that San Francisco police spokeswoman Grace Gatpandan says officers got a call about 8 a.m. that the ambulance was stolen from Mason Street, and the suspect was speeding toward the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge. GPS was used to track the ambulance, which crashed into a guardrail or median on a freeway exit.
A small fire then broke out. No injuries were reported.
It was not immediately clear how the suspect, who was later arrested by the California Highway Patrol, was able to take over the ambulance. The suspect's name and age were not released. The case remains under investigation.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
KODIAK, Alaska — A pest control technician in Kodiak says this year's warm winter has caused a spike in the number of rats on the island.
BJ Johnson with American Pest Management said rat populations have surged throughout Kodiak Island this year following a third straight winter of warmer-than-normal temperatures.
"It is definitely a rat season," Johnson told KMXT-FM (http://bit.ly/1UDkSZD). "We haven't had a real cold winter in at least three years now, and hence that gives them plenty of comfortable climate to propagate, and that's what they're doing."
Johnson said the rat being seen around Kodiak is the Norway rat, which Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge biologist Steve Ebbert called the most successful of the invasive rats. The Norway rat in Alaska can be traced back to the first known introduction of rats to the state, Ebbert said, when a derelict Japanese vessel landed on Rat Island sometime before 1780.
"Since that time, there's been maybe a dozen large islands that have been successfully invaded by rats where the rats have become established," Ebbert said. "Kodiak got them sometime before 1920."
Large numbers of rats are a concern because they eat eggs and chicks, which can negatively impact seabird populations.
Johnson said the solution to the island's rat problem is not a quick fix, but people can help by clearing the base of their homes of excess debris and by not piling wood up against the sides of buildings.
___
Information from: KMXT-FM, http://www.kmxt.org
- The Associated Press
- Updated
FRESNO, Calif. — The city of Fresno has sold a vacant lot that was the site of a 2004 mass murder to the California High Speed Rail Authority.
The Fresno Bee reported that the 6,500-square-foot lot used to hold a home where Marcus Wesson orchestrated the murder of nine of his children. Police found nine women and children shot dead and piled on top of one another in a back bedroom.
The Fresno City Council voted last week to approve the $46,000 sale to the state Public Works Board on behalf of the California High-Speed Rail Authority. The city also sold an adjoining 1-acre lot once occupied by the Bel Aire Motel to the state for $534,000.
Fresno plans to use the money for the affordable housing efforts.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
ALBUQUERQUE — Four environmental groups want to intervene in a legal fight between the state of New Mexico and the federal government over releases of endangered Mexican gray wolves into the wild.
Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance filed their motion Monday, saying the state has no authority to block the release of the predators.
The state is seeking a temporary restraining order that would require the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to get state permission before releasing wildlife — including wolves — in New Mexico.
The wolves are found in parts of southern New Mexico and Arizona.
New Mexico is fighting the federal agency's insistence that it continue with the wolf recovery program despite opposition over releases and the lack of an updated recovery plan for the species.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
BILLINGS, Mont. — A 13-year-old boy is recovering after being burned by a hot pool in Yellowstone National Park.
The Billings Gazette reports that park spokeswoman Charissa Reid says the boy sustained burns around his ankle and foot after his father, who had been carrying him, slipped in the park's Upper Geyser Basin on Saturday.
Reid says the father was also burned by the water while pulling his son out of the hot springs but refused treatment.
Some hot springs in Yellowstone National Park can reach temperatures close to 200 degrees.
___
Information from: The Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.com
- The Associated Press
- Updated
SALT LAKE CITY — Police say an infant is in protective care after her mother left her with near-strangers because she said she couldn't care for the child anymore.
Salt Lake City Police Sgt. Robin Heiden said Monday the woman wanted the couple to care for the 3-month-old girl instead.
Police say officers have talked to the woman and aren't planning to arrest her. Heiden says the girl appeared to be clean and healthy, and the mother also left a diaper bag and supplies.
The couple had a passing acquaintance with the woman as a friend of a friend. They called police after getting the baby. The child is expected to go into state care until she can be adopted.
Utah has a safe-haven law that allows mothers to drop newborns at hospitals without consequences.
- The Associated Press
YUCAIP, Calif. — A multivehicle crash left a Southern California highway covered in onions.
The Riverside Press-Enterprise reported a truckload of onions spilled at midmorning Tuesday on the westbound side of Interstate 10 in Yucaipa, about 70 miles east of Los Angeles. Two other vehicles also were involved.
The California Highway Patrol says the truck driver was taken to a local hospital for treatment of minor injuries.
All lanes reopened shortly before 3 p.m.
- The Associated Press
SAN LEANDRO, Calif. — Authorities say a San Francisco Bay Area woman was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a 12-year-old boy was stabbed in the back with scissors in a bank.
KNTV reported Tuesday that 32-year-old Iyona Dzshae Hammond of Oakland, California, was also booked on suspicion of second-degree robbery in connection with stealing money from a customer making a deposit at the bank. She remains in custody without bail.
A motive in the stabbing was not yet known.
The crimes were caught on video.
San Leandro police Lt. Robert McManus says she had blood on her hands and was armed with the scissors.
McManus says Hammond went into the bank Monday morning and stabbed the boy in the back three times while he was sitting in a lounge chair. He is expected to survive his injuries. It was not immediately known if she has an attorney.
- The Associated Press
LAS VEGAS — The Las Vegas Strip's largest hotel-casino operator has officially started charging for parking.
MGM Resorts International's game-changing move to end the long-held entitlement in Sin City began rolling out on Monday.
The Aria, Vdara, New York-New York, Monte Carlo, Excalibur, Luxor and Circus Circus resorts now have fees to park on site.
MGM Grand and Bellagio will join the list on Wednesday, and the Mandalay Bay, Delano and The Mirage will be on board on Monday.
The per-day fees range from $8 to $10 for self-parking and $13 to $18 for valet parking.
Nevadans will get a break through Dec. 29 with free-self parking for up to 24 hours. To get the benefit, drivers will have to scan their driver's license at the gate.
- The Associated Press
MEDFORD, Ore. — Douglas firs and other trees are dying in southern Oregon forests, where three years of drought have taken a toll.
Pines, oaks and madrone do better in drought conditions than Douglas firs, but even more drought-tolerant trees like Ponderosa pines have lost out in southern Oregon's competition for water, experts told The Mail Tribune. The recent winter brought wet weather, but it was too late for many of the trees after prolonged drought conditions and beetle attacks.
The die-off in Applegate Velley, up the west Cascades and into the Willamette Valley appears to be even worse than the tree deaths caused by drought in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. The scale of the die-off will be quantified during aerial mapping surveys next month.
"It's quite striking," said Ellen Goheen, a plant pathologist with the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. "I never remember seeing it quite this dramatic in the 22 years I've been here."
Oregon Department of Forestry spokesman Brian Ballou said officials had been expecting tree deaths, but they "just didn't know what it would look like."
South-facing slopes and areas with dry soil have more dead trees, as do densely wooded areas with more competition, Goheen said.
"They're struggling against each other for water, and some are better at getting water than others," she said. "Some of the smaller trees are flat-out dying for a lack of water."
For other trees, it's a slow struggle against pests like the flat-headed fir borer and pine bark beetles. The insects attack trees stressed by lack of water and eat away at them, cutting off their ability to funnel moisture up their trunks.
"The tree dies from the top down," said Matthew Krunglevich, a district protection planner with the forest department. Private landowners should stay on top of how their trees are doing, either by hiring a forest contractor or calling the forest department for consultation, he said.
Pitch oozing from pines is a sign that the tree is fighting an infestation, Krunglevich said. Dead pines, meanwhile, should be cut into pieces no larger than three inches in diameter to interrupt the bugs' reproduction cycle and keep the infestation from spreading to other trees.
"If not, you're just making a buffet for more bugs," Krunglevich said.
- The Associated Press
PINE VALLEY MOUNTAIN, Utah — A U.S. Forest Service employee is no longer missing after he got lost during a hike in Utah's Pine Valley Mountain area.
KUTV-TV reports (http://bit.ly/1TTWtwv) the unidentified northern Arizona man wandered for about a day before finding the trail again.
He was spotted by a district ranger who returned him to his vehicle at a campsite.
About a dozen people and a helicopter were involved in the search.
___
Information from: KUTV-TV, http://www.kutv.com/
- The Associated Press
BILLINGS, Mont. — A bus passenger was arrested in Billings after Jefferson Lines employees called police to report his luggage smelled like marijuana.
The Billings Gazette reports 19-year-old Kaine Hanson made an initial appearance in Yellowstone County Justice Court on Monday for felony criminal possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. He also is charged with misdemeanor obstruction for giving officers a false name. He did not enter a plea.
Justice of the Peace Pedro Hernandez released Hanson without bond, but he will be on GPS monitoring and cannot leave the state.
A police dog located Hanson's bags on the bus and officers found 31 vacuum-sealed bags of marijuana in his suitcase and backpack.
Hanson's arraignment is scheduled for June 13 in District Court.
___
Information from: The Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.com
- The Associated Press
RIO RANCHO, N.M. — Officials in a New Mexico city are reconsidering a red light camera and speed van program after discovering thousands of people who never paid fines from those tickets.
KOAT-TV reports that Rio Rancho's automated traffic system has sent out 90,000 tickets and brought in more than $1.4 million between 2011 and 2015.
The city says 35,000 people have ignored red light or speed van tickets over the last five years, however, costing the city around $3.7 million.
Rio Rancho leaders say they will take those numbers into account when deciding whether to keep the program when the contract runs out at the end of the year.
___
Information from: KOAT-TV, http://www.thenewmexicochannel.com/index.html
- The Associated Press
KALISPELL, Mont. (AP) — A 61-year-old man died after a tree fell on him at a commercial logging camp near Lake Mary Ronan, west of Flathead Lake.
Lake County Sheriff Don Bell says Randy Scott Drollinger of Kalispell died in the accident late Monday morning. Bell says Drollinger was a crane operator, but was not on the machinery when the accident happened.
Fellow workers began CPR and called 911, but air responders had to guide ground crews to the remote site on a mountainside. Bell said Drollinger dead at the scene.
___
Information from: Daily Inter Lake, http://www.dailyinterlake.com
- The Associated Press
EUGENE, Ore. — An assault charge has been filed against an Oregon man accused of shooting a woman in the back of the head with a nail gun before doing it to himself.
Oregon State Police Capt. Bill Fugate said Tuesday that troopers responded to a call last week about a man and a woman who had nails sticking in their heads after attempting suicide.
Fugate says the 46-year-old Creswell man and the 31-year-old woman from Eugene rented a nail gun with air compressor and drove to a spot east of Lowell where a passer-by found them with serious injuries and called 911.
The man recovered and was arrested Monday. The woman remains in critical condition at a Springfield hospital.
Fugate says the man told the passer-by it was a suicide attempt, and detectives are trying to determine if that was the case.
- The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — Authorities say a San Francisco Fire Department ambulance was stolen during a medical emergency Tuesday morning and crashed on Treasure Island.
KNTV reported that San Francisco police spokeswoman Grace Gatpandan says officers got a call about 8 a.m. that the ambulance was stolen from Mason Street, and the suspect was speeding toward the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge. GPS was used to track the ambulance, which crashed into a guardrail or median on a freeway exit.
A small fire then broke out. No injuries were reported.
It was not immediately clear how the suspect, who was later arrested by the California Highway Patrol, was able to take over the ambulance. The suspect's name and age were not released. The case remains under investigation.
- The Associated Press
KODIAK, Alaska — A pest control technician in Kodiak says this year's warm winter has caused a spike in the number of rats on the island.
BJ Johnson with American Pest Management said rat populations have surged throughout Kodiak Island this year following a third straight winter of warmer-than-normal temperatures.
"It is definitely a rat season," Johnson told KMXT-FM (http://bit.ly/1UDkSZD). "We haven't had a real cold winter in at least three years now, and hence that gives them plenty of comfortable climate to propagate, and that's what they're doing."
Johnson said the rat being seen around Kodiak is the Norway rat, which Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge biologist Steve Ebbert called the most successful of the invasive rats. The Norway rat in Alaska can be traced back to the first known introduction of rats to the state, Ebbert said, when a derelict Japanese vessel landed on Rat Island sometime before 1780.
"Since that time, there's been maybe a dozen large islands that have been successfully invaded by rats where the rats have become established," Ebbert said. "Kodiak got them sometime before 1920."
Large numbers of rats are a concern because they eat eggs and chicks, which can negatively impact seabird populations.
Johnson said the solution to the island's rat problem is not a quick fix, but people can help by clearing the base of their homes of excess debris and by not piling wood up against the sides of buildings.
___
Information from: KMXT-FM, http://www.kmxt.org
- The Associated Press
FRESNO, Calif. — The city of Fresno has sold a vacant lot that was the site of a 2004 mass murder to the California High Speed Rail Authority.
The Fresno Bee reported that the 6,500-square-foot lot used to hold a home where Marcus Wesson orchestrated the murder of nine of his children. Police found nine women and children shot dead and piled on top of one another in a back bedroom.
The Fresno City Council voted last week to approve the $46,000 sale to the state Public Works Board on behalf of the California High-Speed Rail Authority. The city also sold an adjoining 1-acre lot once occupied by the Bel Aire Motel to the state for $534,000.
Fresno plans to use the money for the affordable housing efforts.
- The Associated Press
ALBUQUERQUE — Four environmental groups want to intervene in a legal fight between the state of New Mexico and the federal government over releases of endangered Mexican gray wolves into the wild.
Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance filed their motion Monday, saying the state has no authority to block the release of the predators.
The state is seeking a temporary restraining order that would require the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to get state permission before releasing wildlife — including wolves — in New Mexico.
The wolves are found in parts of southern New Mexico and Arizona.
New Mexico is fighting the federal agency's insistence that it continue with the wolf recovery program despite opposition over releases and the lack of an updated recovery plan for the species.
- The Associated Press
BILLINGS, Mont. — A 13-year-old boy is recovering after being burned by a hot pool in Yellowstone National Park.
The Billings Gazette reports that park spokeswoman Charissa Reid says the boy sustained burns around his ankle and foot after his father, who had been carrying him, slipped in the park's Upper Geyser Basin on Saturday.
Reid says the father was also burned by the water while pulling his son out of the hot springs but refused treatment.
Some hot springs in Yellowstone National Park can reach temperatures close to 200 degrees.
___
Information from: The Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.com
- The Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY — Police say an infant is in protective care after her mother left her with near-strangers because she said she couldn't care for the child anymore.
Salt Lake City Police Sgt. Robin Heiden said Monday the woman wanted the couple to care for the 3-month-old girl instead.
Police say officers have talked to the woman and aren't planning to arrest her. Heiden says the girl appeared to be clean and healthy, and the mother also left a diaper bag and supplies.
The couple had a passing acquaintance with the woman as a friend of a friend. They called police after getting the baby. The child is expected to go into state care until she can be adopted.
Utah has a safe-haven law that allows mothers to drop newborns at hospitals without consequences.
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