Man found in car trunk dies; two arrested

SEATTLE – Two men were arrested Friday after police pulled a man with multiple gunshot wounds out of the trunk of their car.

The victim, whose identity was not immediately released, died about 3:30 p.m. at Harborview Medical Center.

Police received a call around 2:20 p.m. from someone who reported seeing two men put what appeared to be a body in the trunk of a car in south Seattle.

Soon after, officers stopped a car matching the description the caller had given. The car had blood on its trunk, and inside police found a man, about 40 years old, with gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen. Efforts to revive him failed.

Police said they did not immediately have a motive in the killing.

Jaundice lawsuit: The Franciscan Health System has been ordered to pay more than $10 million to a 4-year-old boy who has brain damage from a case of jaundice when he was 6 days old. A King County Superior Court jury this week also awarded $540,000 to Doug and Jodie Johns, parents of Nathaniel Johns, who have moved from Federal Way to Minneapolis. Franciscan Health System lawyers have not decided whether to appeal. After a 3 1/2-week trial and four days of deliberations, the jury found the parents 20 percent responsible and the hospital 80 percent.

Longview

His last beer for a while?: A man sought in a bank robbery apparently tried to play it cool by sipping a cold one. It didn’t work. Shortly after hearing that the bank, less than 100 yards from the Longview Police Station, had been robbed, Sgt. Ed Jones looked out his second story window Thursday. He saw a man matching the description of the suspect sitting on a bench and drinking a beer he had purchased at a nearby convenience store after the robbery. Jones walked across the street and arrested him. Edmond D. Alexander, 54, was booked into Cowlitz County Jail for investigation of first-degree robbery. He was being held on $20,000 bail.

Child rape sentence: A man convicted of child rape has been sentenced to 26 1/2years in prison.

Jessey Fern Reed, 24, was sentenced Thursday by Cowlitz County Superior Court Judge Stephen Warning. He received the maximum time under state sentencing guidelines for one count of rape and two counts of child molestation.

Warning said the evidence showed that Reed sexually assaulted a 9-year-old girl seven times in 1999.

Defense attorney Sam Wardle said Reed was abused as a boy and was a sex-crime victim himself, but he never got the treatment he needed.

Reed was convicted in 1997 of second-degree child molestation.

Alaska

Moose takes a swing: Wildlife biologists on the Kenai Peninsula are looking for a moose that dragged off an 18-foot swing set from a Nikiski yard. Parts of the swing have been found but biologists believe the animal is still entangled in ropes and chains. “This moose will be pretty easy to recognize,” said Larry Lewis, a state wildlife technician. In the past, wildlife workers have disentangled moose antlers from tires, garden hoses and Christmas lights. The moose walked into the yard about 1 a.m. Tuesday as Jennifer Wallis was watching television. She shook her husband awake when a ruckus erupted outside their home. The moose’s antlers, a rack of 30 to 40 inches, was tangled in the ropes from one swing seat. The moose ran in circles, missing the family’s camper, boat and house. Then it tore off through the woods, leaving the slide in the yard.

Santa letters will get through: Letters to Santa Claus mailed to the town of North Pole from all over the world will be opened this holiday season despite the anthrax scare, the U.S. Postal Service said Friday. Postal staffers in Alaska had worried they would have to ignore the expected heaps of letters, which are usually answered under Santa’s name by volunteers. The popular effort has brought joy to thousands of children for nearly 50 years. Agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., decided Thursday to let the tradition continue, said Scott Budny, Postal Service spokesman for the western regional office in Denver. Budny said the risk of anthrax exposure is considered virtually nil. The bacteria has contaminated several postal facilities in the Lower 48, killed four people and sickened more than a dozen others. As many as 60,000 Santa letters arrive in Alaska’s interior each year. Those with return addresses usually get personal replies and a North Pole postmark. Another 150,000 Christmas cards and packages pour in from outside the state each year from people who want their correspondence to bear the postmark. “The anthrax situation has not come this way and we don’t expect it to,” said Nancy Cain Schmitt, Alaska spokeswoman for the Postal Service. “We’re not going to it ruin our tradition of working with Santa and getting the letters opened and answered for children. We’re not going to let it spoil their Christmas.”

Montana

Bears killed after fatal mauling: A female grizzly bear and her two cubs were shot and killed by Montana wildlife authorities Friday for the fatal mauling of a hunter near Missoula. Bill Thomas, a spokesman for the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said authorities killed the sow and cubs when they returned to the area where Timothy Hilston was attacked on Tuesday. Authorities believe Hilston, 50, of Great Falls, was attacked while he was gutting an elk he had killed in the Blackfoot-Clearwater Wildlife Management Area about 38 miles northeast of Missoula. A search began when he didn’t return from a hunt as planned Tuesday. His body was found Wednesday morning near an elk carcass, which had been partially buried by bears.

Oregon

Guilty plea in child’s death: Robert David Walker has pleaded guilty to murdering 5-year-old Tucker Lee Sherman last March after repeatedly assaulting him over several months. Walker, 30, pleaded guilty In a court in The Dalles Thursday to intentional murder and faces a mandatory 25-year prison term with no chance of parole. Sentencing is set for Nov. 8. Tucker Sherman’s mother, 27-year-old Rebecca Michelle Sherman, still faces a charge of manslaughter and is accused of recklessly causing the boy’s death by neglect or maltreatment. In a hand-written statement, Walker said, “From December when we moved in together I punished Tucker wrongly on several occasions. I hurt him. I slapped him causing bruising. I broke his arm. I pushed him into the stove causing a cut that needed stitches. On one occasion … I punched him in the stomach. On the morning he died I punched him in the belly, which ultimately caused his death.”

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