Neon Trees singer slams Mormons; burning puppies; goldfish dump
- Updated
Odd and interesting news from the West
- The Associated Press
- Updated
SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. — Cochise County sheriff's officials say a skunk that attacked a hiker is being tested for rabies.
Sheriff's spokeswoman Carol Capas says the incident happened Saturday afternoon in Brown Canyon in Southern Arizona.
According to Capas, two women were hiking when the skunk started to follow them.
The skunk then jumped onto one of them.
The woman being attacked was armed and fired several shots at the animal.
A third person then shot the skunk, causing it to let go of the woman.
Capas says the woman went to a Sierra Vista hospital for evaluation and possible treatment.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture agent is taking the injured skunk to Phoenix for testing.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
ROOSEVELT, Utah — The city manager of Roosevelt is under fire after a pair of stop signs was removed from an intersection where he was cited.
Residents are up in arms that two stop signs were taken down last month, a few days after City Manager Ryan Snow received a ticket in mid-March for failing to stop.
The city attorney also ordered Snow's March 17 citation to be dismissed.
In a letter sent to residents Wednesday, the mayor and city council stated that Snow had only asked public works officials to review the intersection.
The city says nobody ever ordered the signs' removal.
In a post on the city's Facebook page, Snow says the Utah Highway Patrol officer was right to ticket him and he never asked the city attorney for special treatment.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
ALBUQUERQUE — Federal wildlife officials say they have, for the first time, successfully integrated wolf pups raised in captivity with a wild litter in New Mexico.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said two 9-day-old endangered Mexican wolf pups raised at a conservation center in Missouri have been adopted by a wild wolf and her litter of five in Catron County, The Albuquerque Journal reported.
"The intent is for these newly released pups to be raised in the wild by experienced wolves and ultimately contribute to the gene diversity of the wild population by becoming successful, breeding adults," Fish and Wildlife said in a statement.
If the cross-fostering is successful, the surrogate mother will adopt and raise the pups as her own.
The Mexican gray wolf was added to the federal endangered species list in 1976. The first captive-bred wolves were released into the wild in 1998, with a goal of having 350 for a sustainable population, wildlife officials said.
Endangered Wolf Center Director of Animal Care and Conservation Regina Mossotti said getting new diversity into the small wolf population is important. "With less than 100 animals in the wild, genetics is a really important thing," said Mossotti, whose center is based in the St. Louis area.
The most recent annual survey shows at least 97 wolves live in forested lands in southwestern New Mexico and southeast Arizona, down from 110 wolves the year before.
The Fish and Wildlife Service this week agreed in a court settlement to develop a recovery plan for the endangered species by 2017. New Mexico has been fighting the wolf-release plan, saying it threatens ranchers. Recently, the state told Fish and Wildlife that it would sue unless the agency stops its wolf release plan.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
SALT LAKE CITY — Two years after coming out as gay and praising the Mormon church for offering support, Tyler Glenn of Neon Trees is denouncing his faith in his latest music video.
The lead singer of the Provo-based band released the video Friday for a single titled "Trash," in which he appears to be trashing the church.
Glenn told Rolling Stone magazine that his belief in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints changed about six months ago.
In November, the church announced that children of same-sex couples could not be baptized until they are 18.
One of few publicly out Mormons, Glenn told The Associated Press in 2014 that he was looking forward to speaking about gay acceptance in his religious culture.
A representative of the church declined to comment.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
ALOHA, Ore. — An Aloha woman is recovering after her son couldn't wait for a scheduled C-section to be born.
KOIN-TV reports that 24-year-old Cashly Herman gave birth in the back of her brother's car on Thursday. She had planned to have a C-section next week, but her baby Ryan had other plans.
Herman went to the hospital Thursday when she started having contractions but was sent home because they weren't close enough together. A few hours later her water broke.
During the 15 minute drive to the hospital, Herman says she couldn't wait. Paramedics arrived shortly after her healthy son was born.
Because the birth was unexpected, Herman says her husband doesn't know the baby has been born as he is hunting in eastern Oregon with no cell signal.
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Information from: KOIN-TV, http://www.koin.com/
- The Associated Press
- Updated
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A judge has sentenced a Northern California man to three years and eight months in state prison for burning his weeks-old Chihuahua dog alive.
The Sacramento Bee reports a judge Friday sentenced 21-year-old Willie Bee Turner, of Oakland, for animal cruelty causing death, animal cruelty and arson for setting ablaze the puppy he named Angel Star.
Prosecutors say Turner set fire to the Chihuahua-mix puppy in January 2015 after getting angry when the dog defecated in his friend's Sacramento apartment.
They say Turner poured beach cleaner on the 8-week-old puppy, put it into a crate and lit the animal on fire.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lawrence Brown called the crime "an unspeakable affront to societal norms."
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Information from: The Sacramento Bee, http://www.sacbee.com
- The Associated Press
- Updated
HARDIN, Mont. — A private prison in Hardin has suspended operations due to a lack of inmates.
The Billings Gazette reports that the Two Rivers Regional Detention Center stopped holding prisoners on April 13. Warden Ken Keller says employees were sent home and only Keller and his program manager are still in the building.
The 464-bed facility has been struggling for years. Last fall, the Bureau of Indian Affairs cut its contract with the prison. Many employees were furloughed in January but a few inmates remained in the center from small contracts with individual tribes and with Williams County, North Dakota.
The prison is paid on a per-inmate, per-day basis through contracts. With empty beds, the facility acquired debt that reached as much as $40 million in December.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
VERLOT, Wash. — The Big Four Ice Caves reopened Friday, nearly a year after a deadly collapse. Three people have died in cave collapses over the past five years.
KING-TV reports the trail was closed last July when a collapse killed 34-year-old Annalisa Santana of California and injured five other hikers.
The Forest Service has installed additional safety signage to help warn hikers of the dangers when they're most at risk. The signs also remind visitors to stay on the designated trail.
The Forest Service warns the Big Four Mountain and its ice caves are part of an ever-changing environment, where avalanches, rock, and ice falls are a potential hazard year round.
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Information from: KING-TV, http://www.king5.com/
- The Associated Press
- Updated
LONG BEACH, Calif. — A judge says Long Beach police improperly targeted gay men with sting operations in public bathrooms.
The Long Beach Press-Telegram says a Superior Court judge on Friday dismissed charges of lewd conduct and indecent exposure against a man who was arrested in 2014.
Police say an undercover officer saw Rory Moroney exposing himself in a restroom. Moroney said the detective — a decoy in the vice unit — made eye contact and gestures indicating he wanted to have sex.
In his ruling, the judge said police targeted only gay men in lewd conduct operations that resulted in 55 arrests in two years.
In a statement, Police Chief Robert Luna said the department is committed to civil rights and equality.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
CALDWELL, Idaho — A former speech therapist at a Caldwell elementary school has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor injury to a child.
The Idaho Press-Tribune reports that Lisa Carriere said in court Friday that she slapped a 6-year-old autistic student after the child raised his hand at her during a lesson.
Carriere told the judge that she hit the boy during speech therapy class. She could tell the boy was tired, but she continued with the lesson. She says the child acted aggressively and she feared for her life, Carriere said.
Carriere resigned from the school soon after the incident occurred in January.
"I overreacted, your honor," she said. "It is the worst mistake of my life."
Judge Thomas Sullivan sentenced Carriere to 180 days in jail with 175 days suspended. He also ordered her to serve 50 hours of community service, and $500 in fines and court costs. She was also ordered to serve two years of unsupervised probation.
"There's something about that mark on the boy's face that seems to be more than impulsively acting out in fear," Sullivan said after seeing a photo of the boy's face shortly after it was slapped. "There's a little anger in that mark."
However, the judge added that he had received 21 letters in support of Carriere's professionalism and character. Sullivan gave Carriere a withheld judgment, meaning her case will be dismissed once the probation period is finished.
The boy's parents, Joyce Rodriguez and Victor Rodriguez, gave a statement to the judge.
"Tears still fall and they will always fall thinking of the hand print left on his face," Joyce Rodriguez said, crying as she spoke to Sullivan.
Her son was found pressing his face against the school bathroom floor to ease the sting of the slap, Rodriguez said.
- The Associated Press
- Updated
JUNEAU, Alaska — A suspected drunken driver has been arrested after he drove crashed into the Governor's Mansion, damaging the historic house.
The Juneau Empire reports (http://bit.ly/24rX5jY ) that officers on Thursday found the 49-year-old suspect sitting with is dog in his Ford F-150, which was lodged in a construction fence outside the Capitol. The suspect told officers that he also struck the Governor's mansion.
Police say Gov. Bill Walker was home during the incident, but was not disturbed. The crash damaged the mansion's garage door, which was found caved in.
Division of General Services facilities workers began repairs on the garage door on Friday.
The suspect and his dog were not injured during the incident. The investigation is ongoing and police say charges are pending.
- By S. DERRICKSON MOORE Las Cruces Sun-News
- Updated
MESILLA, N.M. — C.W. "Buddy" Ritter recently discovered a fleet of ships, a flock of birds, a dog, and several sheep he didn't know he had. And before Damon LaGarry is finished, there will likely be several more surprises turning up in the halls and dining rooms of Ritter's Double Eagle and Peppers restaurants on the Mesilla Plaza.
Within the historic adobe compound that houses the famed restaurant, artist and arts restoration professional LaGarry has been working to clean and restore old paintings and to reconstruct the vintage frames that showcase them. In the process, he's made discoveries that are surprising those who have admired the paintings for years, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported.
Some of the well-traveled works have probably been accumulating grimy "patina" and high desert country dust for centuries.
"The most recent painting he has cleaned is more than 100 years old," Ritter said, as LaGarry carefully dabbed a brush with a cleaning solution and continued work on a large painting of a reclining nude.
"There is a huge difference in the skin tone. Yesterday, when he got to the tops of her legs, it looked like she was wearing dark stockings. You cannot believe the 'before and after.' The paintings just come to life. We've discovered so much we didn't know was in some of the paintings. The beautiful blue has popped out from a gray sky. Beautiful pink skin tone has replaced a brownish gray. We have even found birds, flowers, and baby calves that we had never seen before," said Ritter, pointing out seabirds and outlines of ships in a newly cleaned seascape.
LaGarry, a native New Yorker who has lived in Las Cruces since 1993, has focused on painting wildlife subjects and worked as a designer and consultant with Charles Inc., a former Mesilla interior design studio and gallery. He said the project is giving him new perspectives on his own artistry.
"So far, each thing I've done presents a different set of challenges. Sometimes, you unearth treasures and sometimes you find flaws. I never had a chance to get this intimate with so many different styles of works. As a painter, I have my own routine, but because each thing I'm working on here is so radically different, I think it's broadened my perspective. I think it may make my paintings different and better," LaGarry said.
"Our customers are fascinated, watching him work," Ritter said.
There was some controversy about disturbing the ghosts who allegedly inhabit the Double Eagle's Carlotta Salon.
"The employees and management had a fit when he repaired a bullet hole in a picture in the Carlotta room. They said all the customers liked the bullet hole," said Ritter, who confided the damage may actually have resulted from an errant champagne cork.
"So far, I haven't encountered any ghosts. Too bad. I'd like to," LaGarry said.
But he has felt a kinship with the artists, as he labors to give their works a new lease on life.
"It's great to be in touch with painters who worked 150 to 200 years ago. If some of these guys were around today, I think they would be happy with what we're doing," LaGarry said.
Ritter said he maintains a private inventory list, but he is hard-pressed to estimate the number of paintings, some dating to the early 1800s, along with prints, tapestries, sculptures and other works of art in the building, which was constructed in the late 1840s and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
"The building has witnessed many colorful and historical events, including the Mexican-American War of 1846, the confirmation of the Gadsden Purchase on the Plaza in 1853 and the Secessionist Convention declaration of Mesilla as capital of the Arizona Territory in 1861. (It was destined to be the only territory of the Confederacy.) Notorious Billy the Kid was jailed by Sheriff Pat Garrett and tried here in 1881," according to double-eagle-mesilla.com
Oil magnate, rancher and developer Robert O. Anderson acquired the property in 1972 and worked with renowned designer John Meigs to find furnishings, antiques and art for the adobe compound.
"Then John and I continued to collect and work together when I bought the Double Eagle," Ritter said, and collaborated on major restorations of the compound in 1984.
Ritter's family has roots that stretch back five generations in Mesilla, he said, and a physician ancestor, his great-great-grandfather, Dr. Edwin Burt, once practiced medicine in the area where he now has his office.
LaGarry has been at work since March and could continue for some time.
"We're trying to do some research as we go along. He is also repairing the frames that have been damaged over the past 100-plus years, with a fascinating type of putty dough that molds a good corner and he's able to cast a new piece to repair or replace another damaged or missing corner. A lot of the art probably dates to the mid-1800s and we think most of the art in the 150-year-old range possibly had not ever been cleaned or restored," Ritter said.
LaGarry has sometimes devised and mixed his own cleaning formulas, but is currently relying mostly on commercial products, working carefully with brushes, soft cloth and paper towels.
"You can't use water on some of these older pieces. They would simply dissolve and the paint would come off," LaGarry said.
"Some things, I have to guess about. I take pictures before I clean a badly damaged painting to help in matching colors later. Sometimes, the damage is so bad that a repair turns into a revision. But then it becomes a choice: should you put it in the closet or repair and repaint it so you have something nice on the wall?" LaGarry said.
- By MICHELLE THERIAULT BOOTS Alaska Dispatch News
- Updated
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Nobody knows just how long the baby lay there that September night in 1986.
Someone had wrapped the newborn in a tan towel before placing him in a cardboard box and leaving it outside a thrift shop on Muldoon Road, the Alaska Dispatch News reported (http://bit.ly/1WRC8g0).
Around 9 p.m., an anonymous caller told 911 dispatchers there was a baby near a clothes donation bin outside the Salvation Army, the one just off the Glenn Highway.
Before police and ambulances could get there, two teenage boys out riding bikes in the fall twilight heard his cries. They looked inside the cardboard box, scooped the squalling baby up and cycled home with him.
The baby was still coated with afterbirth. His umbilical cord was clamped with the kind of plastic twist-tie used to secure a garbage bag.
"It was real young," one of the teenagers later told a newspaper reporter. "Not old at all."
At the hospital, nurses put a plastic identification band on the infant's wrist.
"DOE, Baby Boy" it read. "9-4-86."
For a few days, news of the baby in the box captivated Anchorage: It was in the newspaper, on TV and on the radio. There was so much interest, the baby's foster mother later told him nurses at the hospital had to keep eager well-wishers away.
Now that baby is almost 30 years old. His name is Benjamin Tveidt. He lives in Boise, Idaho.
It is time, he thinks, to solve the mystery of his birth.
'A special kind of loneliness'
Tveidt, a soldier in the Idaho Army National Guard, understands the chances he will find his biological parents are slim. But every time he fills out a medical history form that asks about his family with an "N/A," he wonders.
Knowing nothing about your birth parents "is a special kind of loneliness," he said. "It's hard to explain."
So for the last few years, Tveidt has been using a very modern method to seek his biological parents: DNA testing combined with the vast hive-mind of the internet's genealogists.
When Tveidt was deployed to Iraq in 2010, he heard about consumer DNA-testing kits. When the price hit an affordable $99, he bought one.
From a simple saliva swab he learned the basics about his own DNA: He was of European ancestry, mostly British.
"In one minute it was more information than I'd ever had about myself my whole life," he said. He also learned he could post his DNA profile on a website and possibly be matched to people who were genetically related to him.
He quickly found two distant relatives: Janice Johnson, a retired geneticist and amateur genealogist who lives in Newbury Park, California, and Juanita Genness, another retired hobby genealogist from Maine.
They are both fourth or fifth cousins of Tveidt, meaning they have a common ancestor several generations back. Together, they've constructed family trees using partial DNA matches as well as traditional genealogy.
They have even found what appears to be a genetic relative with links to Alaska just two generations back, though Tveidt isn't sure enough about that link to contact the man's descendants just yet.
"It's like trying to put a puzzle together but all the pieces are facing down," Tveidt said.
The life he was dealt
But DNA is one strand of his quest to find his parents. Putting his face and his story in the newspaper is another.
Tveidt is quick to say he's content with the life he was dealt.
A week after the teenagers discovered him, 'Baby Boy Doe' was sent to live with Verneta Wallace, an Anchorage foster mother who has taken in more than 100 children over the past three decades.
Wallace was the one who named him Benjamin.
It was a lovely name, she thought, but it was also kind of a play on his unique circumstances: "It sounds bad, but Benjamin sort of sounded like 'bin,'" she said in a recent interview. "He was found by a clothes donation bin."
Baby Benjamin ate well, slept well, and charmed his foster family and their church congregation.
"You are without a doubt the very best baby we have ever had," Wallace wrote in a letter she sent with Tveidt when he was adopted and moved on to his permanent family.
Wallace kept detailed records. She knew her foster child would be moving on, but she didn't want his first six months of life to be a blank spot in his history.
She noted he had become something of a celebrity in Anchorage. Everybody wanted to know what had become of him.
The family of one of the boys who discovered him, Christian Chain, even kept in touch. They brought him baby booties and a rattle at Christmas.
Members of the Chain family couldn't be reached for this story.
"You will never know the impact you made on this town," Wallace wrote to baby Benjamin in the letter.
Wallace remembers the nurses at the hospital telling her a woman had called in tears asking about the baby.
Was it the mother?
"I really do think your birth mother loved you very much and just didn't feel capable to care for you," she wrote.
She believes that today.
"She wrapped him up in a towel. She cut off his little umbilical cord," Wallace said. "She didn't throw him away."
A childhood in Idaho
At six months old, the baby was adopted by an Army couple stationed at Fort Richardson.
He became Benjamin Tveidt.
The Tveidts lived in Alaska for three years, until moving on to another duty station and eventually to rural Idaho.
Tveidt spent his formative years in the communities of Mountain Home, a far-flung exurb of Boise, and Bruneau, a town in the arid, sparsely-populated southwest corner of Idaho. Ranching country.
He grew up playing in the hills, "doing country stuff" and spending time with his family, which by then included two sisters who are the biological children of his adoptive parents.
Until he was 11 years old, he had no idea he was adopted.
He learned the truth about his origins on a drive to Boise with his father. They were going to see "Mortal Kombat" at the movie theater for his birthday.
The story his father told him knocked the wind out of him. He was adopted? Abandoned? In Alaska?
He remembers his mom telling him not to tell the kids in school about it. She was trying to protect him, he knows. But it made him feel like there was something wrong with him.
He was a restless and rebellious teenager, leaving high school in the 10th grade. At 18, he joined the Idaho Army National Guard as a way to support himself and pay for college. He became a gunner for Bradley fighting vehicles, deploying twice to Iraq. He went on a disaster relief mission to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.
Right now he's single, focusing on work and college. He's earning an associate degree in political science. He thinks law school or study in international relations might be in his future.
"I've had a pretty decent life. Not always the best," he said. "But I may have had a very different life if they had chosen to keep me."
'I just want to know my place in the world'
Tveidt says he isn't angry with his biological parents. He knows they may be dead, or burdened by shame and guilt from the abandonment. His father may not know of his existence.
He understands nobody gives birth and leaves a baby without a major crisis.
Today, Alaska law allows mothers to safely surrender infants they feel they cannot care for at fire stations or hospitals. Back then, nothing of the sort existed in Anchorage.
Tveidt is prepared to fling the most intimate details of his life history into the universe and get nothing in response.
But he is a curious person, always has been.
"I just want to know my place in the world," he said.
And the questions only swell as he gets older: How a baby found in a cardboard box got there, and why.
More like this...
- The Associated Press
SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. — Cochise County sheriff's officials say a skunk that attacked a hiker is being tested for rabies.
Sheriff's spokeswoman Carol Capas says the incident happened Saturday afternoon in Brown Canyon in Southern Arizona.
According to Capas, two women were hiking when the skunk started to follow them.
The skunk then jumped onto one of them.
The woman being attacked was armed and fired several shots at the animal.
A third person then shot the skunk, causing it to let go of the woman.
Capas says the woman went to a Sierra Vista hospital for evaluation and possible treatment.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture agent is taking the injured skunk to Phoenix for testing.
- The Associated Press
ROOSEVELT, Utah — The city manager of Roosevelt is under fire after a pair of stop signs was removed from an intersection where he was cited.
Residents are up in arms that two stop signs were taken down last month, a few days after City Manager Ryan Snow received a ticket in mid-March for failing to stop.
The city attorney also ordered Snow's March 17 citation to be dismissed.
In a letter sent to residents Wednesday, the mayor and city council stated that Snow had only asked public works officials to review the intersection.
The city says nobody ever ordered the signs' removal.
In a post on the city's Facebook page, Snow says the Utah Highway Patrol officer was right to ticket him and he never asked the city attorney for special treatment.
- The Associated Press
ALBUQUERQUE — Federal wildlife officials say they have, for the first time, successfully integrated wolf pups raised in captivity with a wild litter in New Mexico.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said two 9-day-old endangered Mexican wolf pups raised at a conservation center in Missouri have been adopted by a wild wolf and her litter of five in Catron County, The Albuquerque Journal reported.
"The intent is for these newly released pups to be raised in the wild by experienced wolves and ultimately contribute to the gene diversity of the wild population by becoming successful, breeding adults," Fish and Wildlife said in a statement.
If the cross-fostering is successful, the surrogate mother will adopt and raise the pups as her own.
The Mexican gray wolf was added to the federal endangered species list in 1976. The first captive-bred wolves were released into the wild in 1998, with a goal of having 350 for a sustainable population, wildlife officials said.
Endangered Wolf Center Director of Animal Care and Conservation Regina Mossotti said getting new diversity into the small wolf population is important. "With less than 100 animals in the wild, genetics is a really important thing," said Mossotti, whose center is based in the St. Louis area.
The most recent annual survey shows at least 97 wolves live in forested lands in southwestern New Mexico and southeast Arizona, down from 110 wolves the year before.
The Fish and Wildlife Service this week agreed in a court settlement to develop a recovery plan for the endangered species by 2017. New Mexico has been fighting the wolf-release plan, saying it threatens ranchers. Recently, the state told Fish and Wildlife that it would sue unless the agency stops its wolf release plan.
- The Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY — Two years after coming out as gay and praising the Mormon church for offering support, Tyler Glenn of Neon Trees is denouncing his faith in his latest music video.
The lead singer of the Provo-based band released the video Friday for a single titled "Trash," in which he appears to be trashing the church.
Glenn told Rolling Stone magazine that his belief in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints changed about six months ago.
In November, the church announced that children of same-sex couples could not be baptized until they are 18.
One of few publicly out Mormons, Glenn told The Associated Press in 2014 that he was looking forward to speaking about gay acceptance in his religious culture.
A representative of the church declined to comment.
- The Associated Press
ALOHA, Ore. — An Aloha woman is recovering after her son couldn't wait for a scheduled C-section to be born.
KOIN-TV reports that 24-year-old Cashly Herman gave birth in the back of her brother's car on Thursday. She had planned to have a C-section next week, but her baby Ryan had other plans.
Herman went to the hospital Thursday when she started having contractions but was sent home because they weren't close enough together. A few hours later her water broke.
During the 15 minute drive to the hospital, Herman says she couldn't wait. Paramedics arrived shortly after her healthy son was born.
Because the birth was unexpected, Herman says her husband doesn't know the baby has been born as he is hunting in eastern Oregon with no cell signal.
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Information from: KOIN-TV, http://www.koin.com/
- The Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A judge has sentenced a Northern California man to three years and eight months in state prison for burning his weeks-old Chihuahua dog alive.
The Sacramento Bee reports a judge Friday sentenced 21-year-old Willie Bee Turner, of Oakland, for animal cruelty causing death, animal cruelty and arson for setting ablaze the puppy he named Angel Star.
Prosecutors say Turner set fire to the Chihuahua-mix puppy in January 2015 after getting angry when the dog defecated in his friend's Sacramento apartment.
They say Turner poured beach cleaner on the 8-week-old puppy, put it into a crate and lit the animal on fire.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lawrence Brown called the crime "an unspeakable affront to societal norms."
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Information from: The Sacramento Bee, http://www.sacbee.com
- The Associated Press
HARDIN, Mont. — A private prison in Hardin has suspended operations due to a lack of inmates.
The Billings Gazette reports that the Two Rivers Regional Detention Center stopped holding prisoners on April 13. Warden Ken Keller says employees were sent home and only Keller and his program manager are still in the building.
The 464-bed facility has been struggling for years. Last fall, the Bureau of Indian Affairs cut its contract with the prison. Many employees were furloughed in January but a few inmates remained in the center from small contracts with individual tribes and with Williams County, North Dakota.
The prison is paid on a per-inmate, per-day basis through contracts. With empty beds, the facility acquired debt that reached as much as $40 million in December.
- The Associated Press
VERLOT, Wash. — The Big Four Ice Caves reopened Friday, nearly a year after a deadly collapse. Three people have died in cave collapses over the past five years.
KING-TV reports the trail was closed last July when a collapse killed 34-year-old Annalisa Santana of California and injured five other hikers.
The Forest Service has installed additional safety signage to help warn hikers of the dangers when they're most at risk. The signs also remind visitors to stay on the designated trail.
The Forest Service warns the Big Four Mountain and its ice caves are part of an ever-changing environment, where avalanches, rock, and ice falls are a potential hazard year round.
___
Information from: KING-TV, http://www.king5.com/
- The Associated Press
LONG BEACH, Calif. — A judge says Long Beach police improperly targeted gay men with sting operations in public bathrooms.
The Long Beach Press-Telegram says a Superior Court judge on Friday dismissed charges of lewd conduct and indecent exposure against a man who was arrested in 2014.
Police say an undercover officer saw Rory Moroney exposing himself in a restroom. Moroney said the detective — a decoy in the vice unit — made eye contact and gestures indicating he wanted to have sex.
In his ruling, the judge said police targeted only gay men in lewd conduct operations that resulted in 55 arrests in two years.
In a statement, Police Chief Robert Luna said the department is committed to civil rights and equality.
- The Associated Press
CALDWELL, Idaho — A former speech therapist at a Caldwell elementary school has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor injury to a child.
The Idaho Press-Tribune reports that Lisa Carriere said in court Friday that she slapped a 6-year-old autistic student after the child raised his hand at her during a lesson.
Carriere told the judge that she hit the boy during speech therapy class. She could tell the boy was tired, but she continued with the lesson. She says the child acted aggressively and she feared for her life, Carriere said.
Carriere resigned from the school soon after the incident occurred in January.
"I overreacted, your honor," she said. "It is the worst mistake of my life."
Judge Thomas Sullivan sentenced Carriere to 180 days in jail with 175 days suspended. He also ordered her to serve 50 hours of community service, and $500 in fines and court costs. She was also ordered to serve two years of unsupervised probation.
"There's something about that mark on the boy's face that seems to be more than impulsively acting out in fear," Sullivan said after seeing a photo of the boy's face shortly after it was slapped. "There's a little anger in that mark."
However, the judge added that he had received 21 letters in support of Carriere's professionalism and character. Sullivan gave Carriere a withheld judgment, meaning her case will be dismissed once the probation period is finished.
The boy's parents, Joyce Rodriguez and Victor Rodriguez, gave a statement to the judge.
"Tears still fall and they will always fall thinking of the hand print left on his face," Joyce Rodriguez said, crying as she spoke to Sullivan.
Her son was found pressing his face against the school bathroom floor to ease the sting of the slap, Rodriguez said.
- The Associated Press
JUNEAU, Alaska — A suspected drunken driver has been arrested after he drove crashed into the Governor's Mansion, damaging the historic house.
The Juneau Empire reports (http://bit.ly/24rX5jY ) that officers on Thursday found the 49-year-old suspect sitting with is dog in his Ford F-150, which was lodged in a construction fence outside the Capitol. The suspect told officers that he also struck the Governor's mansion.
Police say Gov. Bill Walker was home during the incident, but was not disturbed. The crash damaged the mansion's garage door, which was found caved in.
Division of General Services facilities workers began repairs on the garage door on Friday.
The suspect and his dog were not injured during the incident. The investigation is ongoing and police say charges are pending.
- By S. DERRICKSON MOORE Las Cruces Sun-News
MESILLA, N.M. — C.W. "Buddy" Ritter recently discovered a fleet of ships, a flock of birds, a dog, and several sheep he didn't know he had. And before Damon LaGarry is finished, there will likely be several more surprises turning up in the halls and dining rooms of Ritter's Double Eagle and Peppers restaurants on the Mesilla Plaza.
Within the historic adobe compound that houses the famed restaurant, artist and arts restoration professional LaGarry has been working to clean and restore old paintings and to reconstruct the vintage frames that showcase them. In the process, he's made discoveries that are surprising those who have admired the paintings for years, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported.
Some of the well-traveled works have probably been accumulating grimy "patina" and high desert country dust for centuries.
"The most recent painting he has cleaned is more than 100 years old," Ritter said, as LaGarry carefully dabbed a brush with a cleaning solution and continued work on a large painting of a reclining nude.
"There is a huge difference in the skin tone. Yesterday, when he got to the tops of her legs, it looked like she was wearing dark stockings. You cannot believe the 'before and after.' The paintings just come to life. We've discovered so much we didn't know was in some of the paintings. The beautiful blue has popped out from a gray sky. Beautiful pink skin tone has replaced a brownish gray. We have even found birds, flowers, and baby calves that we had never seen before," said Ritter, pointing out seabirds and outlines of ships in a newly cleaned seascape.
LaGarry, a native New Yorker who has lived in Las Cruces since 1993, has focused on painting wildlife subjects and worked as a designer and consultant with Charles Inc., a former Mesilla interior design studio and gallery. He said the project is giving him new perspectives on his own artistry.
"So far, each thing I've done presents a different set of challenges. Sometimes, you unearth treasures and sometimes you find flaws. I never had a chance to get this intimate with so many different styles of works. As a painter, I have my own routine, but because each thing I'm working on here is so radically different, I think it's broadened my perspective. I think it may make my paintings different and better," LaGarry said.
"Our customers are fascinated, watching him work," Ritter said.
There was some controversy about disturbing the ghosts who allegedly inhabit the Double Eagle's Carlotta Salon.
"The employees and management had a fit when he repaired a bullet hole in a picture in the Carlotta room. They said all the customers liked the bullet hole," said Ritter, who confided the damage may actually have resulted from an errant champagne cork.
"So far, I haven't encountered any ghosts. Too bad. I'd like to," LaGarry said.
But he has felt a kinship with the artists, as he labors to give their works a new lease on life.
"It's great to be in touch with painters who worked 150 to 200 years ago. If some of these guys were around today, I think they would be happy with what we're doing," LaGarry said.
Ritter said he maintains a private inventory list, but he is hard-pressed to estimate the number of paintings, some dating to the early 1800s, along with prints, tapestries, sculptures and other works of art in the building, which was constructed in the late 1840s and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
"The building has witnessed many colorful and historical events, including the Mexican-American War of 1846, the confirmation of the Gadsden Purchase on the Plaza in 1853 and the Secessionist Convention declaration of Mesilla as capital of the Arizona Territory in 1861. (It was destined to be the only territory of the Confederacy.) Notorious Billy the Kid was jailed by Sheriff Pat Garrett and tried here in 1881," according to double-eagle-mesilla.com
Oil magnate, rancher and developer Robert O. Anderson acquired the property in 1972 and worked with renowned designer John Meigs to find furnishings, antiques and art for the adobe compound.
"Then John and I continued to collect and work together when I bought the Double Eagle," Ritter said, and collaborated on major restorations of the compound in 1984.
Ritter's family has roots that stretch back five generations in Mesilla, he said, and a physician ancestor, his great-great-grandfather, Dr. Edwin Burt, once practiced medicine in the area where he now has his office.
LaGarry has been at work since March and could continue for some time.
"We're trying to do some research as we go along. He is also repairing the frames that have been damaged over the past 100-plus years, with a fascinating type of putty dough that molds a good corner and he's able to cast a new piece to repair or replace another damaged or missing corner. A lot of the art probably dates to the mid-1800s and we think most of the art in the 150-year-old range possibly had not ever been cleaned or restored," Ritter said.
LaGarry has sometimes devised and mixed his own cleaning formulas, but is currently relying mostly on commercial products, working carefully with brushes, soft cloth and paper towels.
"You can't use water on some of these older pieces. They would simply dissolve and the paint would come off," LaGarry said.
"Some things, I have to guess about. I take pictures before I clean a badly damaged painting to help in matching colors later. Sometimes, the damage is so bad that a repair turns into a revision. But then it becomes a choice: should you put it in the closet or repair and repaint it so you have something nice on the wall?" LaGarry said.
- By MICHELLE THERIAULT BOOTS Alaska Dispatch News
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Nobody knows just how long the baby lay there that September night in 1986.
Someone had wrapped the newborn in a tan towel before placing him in a cardboard box and leaving it outside a thrift shop on Muldoon Road, the Alaska Dispatch News reported (http://bit.ly/1WRC8g0).
Around 9 p.m., an anonymous caller told 911 dispatchers there was a baby near a clothes donation bin outside the Salvation Army, the one just off the Glenn Highway.
Before police and ambulances could get there, two teenage boys out riding bikes in the fall twilight heard his cries. They looked inside the cardboard box, scooped the squalling baby up and cycled home with him.
The baby was still coated with afterbirth. His umbilical cord was clamped with the kind of plastic twist-tie used to secure a garbage bag.
"It was real young," one of the teenagers later told a newspaper reporter. "Not old at all."
At the hospital, nurses put a plastic identification band on the infant's wrist.
"DOE, Baby Boy" it read. "9-4-86."
For a few days, news of the baby in the box captivated Anchorage: It was in the newspaper, on TV and on the radio. There was so much interest, the baby's foster mother later told him nurses at the hospital had to keep eager well-wishers away.
Now that baby is almost 30 years old. His name is Benjamin Tveidt. He lives in Boise, Idaho.
It is time, he thinks, to solve the mystery of his birth.
'A special kind of loneliness'
Tveidt, a soldier in the Idaho Army National Guard, understands the chances he will find his biological parents are slim. But every time he fills out a medical history form that asks about his family with an "N/A," he wonders.
Knowing nothing about your birth parents "is a special kind of loneliness," he said. "It's hard to explain."
So for the last few years, Tveidt has been using a very modern method to seek his biological parents: DNA testing combined with the vast hive-mind of the internet's genealogists.
When Tveidt was deployed to Iraq in 2010, he heard about consumer DNA-testing kits. When the price hit an affordable $99, he bought one.
From a simple saliva swab he learned the basics about his own DNA: He was of European ancestry, mostly British.
"In one minute it was more information than I'd ever had about myself my whole life," he said. He also learned he could post his DNA profile on a website and possibly be matched to people who were genetically related to him.
He quickly found two distant relatives: Janice Johnson, a retired geneticist and amateur genealogist who lives in Newbury Park, California, and Juanita Genness, another retired hobby genealogist from Maine.
They are both fourth or fifth cousins of Tveidt, meaning they have a common ancestor several generations back. Together, they've constructed family trees using partial DNA matches as well as traditional genealogy.
They have even found what appears to be a genetic relative with links to Alaska just two generations back, though Tveidt isn't sure enough about that link to contact the man's descendants just yet.
"It's like trying to put a puzzle together but all the pieces are facing down," Tveidt said.
The life he was dealt
But DNA is one strand of his quest to find his parents. Putting his face and his story in the newspaper is another.
Tveidt is quick to say he's content with the life he was dealt.
A week after the teenagers discovered him, 'Baby Boy Doe' was sent to live with Verneta Wallace, an Anchorage foster mother who has taken in more than 100 children over the past three decades.
Wallace was the one who named him Benjamin.
It was a lovely name, she thought, but it was also kind of a play on his unique circumstances: "It sounds bad, but Benjamin sort of sounded like 'bin,'" she said in a recent interview. "He was found by a clothes donation bin."
Baby Benjamin ate well, slept well, and charmed his foster family and their church congregation.
"You are without a doubt the very best baby we have ever had," Wallace wrote in a letter she sent with Tveidt when he was adopted and moved on to his permanent family.
Wallace kept detailed records. She knew her foster child would be moving on, but she didn't want his first six months of life to be a blank spot in his history.
She noted he had become something of a celebrity in Anchorage. Everybody wanted to know what had become of him.
The family of one of the boys who discovered him, Christian Chain, even kept in touch. They brought him baby booties and a rattle at Christmas.
Members of the Chain family couldn't be reached for this story.
"You will never know the impact you made on this town," Wallace wrote to baby Benjamin in the letter.
Wallace remembers the nurses at the hospital telling her a woman had called in tears asking about the baby.
Was it the mother?
"I really do think your birth mother loved you very much and just didn't feel capable to care for you," she wrote.
She believes that today.
"She wrapped him up in a towel. She cut off his little umbilical cord," Wallace said. "She didn't throw him away."
A childhood in Idaho
At six months old, the baby was adopted by an Army couple stationed at Fort Richardson.
He became Benjamin Tveidt.
The Tveidts lived in Alaska for three years, until moving on to another duty station and eventually to rural Idaho.
Tveidt spent his formative years in the communities of Mountain Home, a far-flung exurb of Boise, and Bruneau, a town in the arid, sparsely-populated southwest corner of Idaho. Ranching country.
He grew up playing in the hills, "doing country stuff" and spending time with his family, which by then included two sisters who are the biological children of his adoptive parents.
Until he was 11 years old, he had no idea he was adopted.
He learned the truth about his origins on a drive to Boise with his father. They were going to see "Mortal Kombat" at the movie theater for his birthday.
The story his father told him knocked the wind out of him. He was adopted? Abandoned? In Alaska?
He remembers his mom telling him not to tell the kids in school about it. She was trying to protect him, he knows. But it made him feel like there was something wrong with him.
He was a restless and rebellious teenager, leaving high school in the 10th grade. At 18, he joined the Idaho Army National Guard as a way to support himself and pay for college. He became a gunner for Bradley fighting vehicles, deploying twice to Iraq. He went on a disaster relief mission to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.
Right now he's single, focusing on work and college. He's earning an associate degree in political science. He thinks law school or study in international relations might be in his future.
"I've had a pretty decent life. Not always the best," he said. "But I may have had a very different life if they had chosen to keep me."
'I just want to know my place in the world'
Tveidt says he isn't angry with his biological parents. He knows they may be dead, or burdened by shame and guilt from the abandonment. His father may not know of his existence.
He understands nobody gives birth and leaves a baby without a major crisis.
Today, Alaska law allows mothers to safely surrender infants they feel they cannot care for at fire stations or hospitals. Back then, nothing of the sort existed in Anchorage.
Tveidt is prepared to fling the most intimate details of his life history into the universe and get nothing in response.
But he is a curious person, always has been.
"I just want to know my place in the world," he said.
And the questions only swell as he gets older: How a baby found in a cardboard box got there, and why.
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