Herald news services
SEATTLE — When an armored car popped open and turned I-5 into Easy Street, few got away with anything to show for the 30-minute traffic jam that followed.
Drivers stopped for loose cash along 100 yards of northbound freeway after a Loomis truck spilled its contents Wednesday morning between NE 85th Street and the Northgate Mall, the State Patrol said.
But a trooper ordered motorists by loudspeaker to release the dough and get back in their cars, said patrol spokeswoman Monica Hunter.
Traffic was blocked to catch stray bills and put them back on the truck, Hunter said.
Some people probably managed to get away with some loot, she admitted. How much was not immediately known.
A manager at Loomis Armored Inc. declined comment.
Attorney pepper-sprayed after refusing security check: A 62-year-old man who said he was a Seattle attorney was pepper-sprayed and arrested during a fight with a King County sheriff’s deputy at Federal Way District Court. The incident started when a female deputy asked the man to put on his coat during a security check so he could be checked with a hand wand. The man refused, and when the deputy tried to escort him out of the courthouse Wednesday morning he began fighting with her. He was then pepper-sprayed and taken into custody. Neither the man nor the deputy were injured. The suspect, who was not identified, was booked into the Regional Justice Center for obstructing a public servant and resisting arrest. The deputy also was not identified, but was described as a 17-year veteran of the sheriff’s office.
Mayor helps save family from fire: The mayor of this Yakima County town helped wake up a local family and alert them that their house was on fire. None of the five members of the Rodriguez family was injured in the fire that destroyed their home early Tuesday. Mayor Bob Jones was en route to his restaurant at 4 a.m. when he spotted flames at a dark house. He used his cellular telephone to call 911, and then pounded on the door of the home and woke up the family. Dagoberto Rodriguez, who speaks only Spanish, did not understand Jones at first, but soon realized his house was ablaze and rescued his family. Rodriguez and his wife, Alicia, have three children between the ages of 5 and 11. The fire was controlled within 20 minutes. The cause of the blaze was determined to be a malfunction in attic wiring. The Rodriguezes were appreciative of the mayor’s quick actions. "If it hadn’t been for him, we would be dead, completely charred," Alicia Rodriguez said in Spanish.
