Articles labeled: Washington

Finally some good news to report around here. Two sisters who were separated from their father while hiking in the Yacolt Burn State Forest outside of Portland, Oregon, have been found after spending more than 15 hours out in the wild.

Rescuers used heat-seeking technology to search for the Vancouver, Wash., family late Sunday. They found the father and his son overnight, but the daughters — ages 7 and 10 — were missing until 10:30 a.m. Monday.

The girls were found by ground searchers with Fire District 13, also known as the Volcano Rescue Team.

The search began Sunday night when the father called 911 to report his daughters were missing. Officials said the father and son sat down to rest during their hike, but the girls carried on and disappeared.

A 21-month-old has drowned and two men are missing in Lewis County, Washington, where the Green and Cedar rivers are swelling.

Nine other people were rescued Saturday after river accidents in King County — and police say some are lucky to be alive.

Sheriff’s Sgt. John Urquhart said a 45-year-old Seattle man was with three others Saturday when he went underwater in his kayak and failed to reappear on the surface downstream from Kanasket Palmer State Park.

Because of the steep cliffs on both sides of the river, the group could not reach a place where they could get out and call authorities for more than an hour. The search was suspended Sunday evening until the Green River water level decreased.

We don’t care if it was the most expensive makeup from Paris, toddlers routinely break stuff and it’s no reason to put the smackdown on them.

A Pasco woman who hit her 2-year-old son for getting into her makeup has been jailed for investigation of assault.

The 19-year-old appeared in court Monday and bail was set at $25,000 while prosecutors decide whether to charge her.

Police who were called Friday by the boy’s grandmother found scrapes and bruises on his face and bumps on his head.

We’ve grown rather resentful of the whole “teaching towards the test” mentality ourselves in recent years, so we certainly understand a Seattle teacher’s frustration when he refused to administer the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) to his students, and he made an admirable stand. But unfortunately, rules are rules and now he’s suffering the consequences.

[Science teacher Carl Chew] said he spent some of the first few days of WASL testing working at district’s Science Materials Center, preparing student science kits.

He then was suspended without pay from today through May 2.

“He failed to follow his duties as teacher,” said Seattle Public Schools Spokeswoman Patti Spencer.

The district, she said, expects its teachers to fulfill all their responsibilities, which include giving state-mandated exams such as the WASL.

The district, she added, understands that there are debates over standardized tests such as the WASL, but sees value in the WASL as one way to reflect on what students are learning, and how instruction might need to change for an individual, a school or the district as a whole.

And here we thought butter knives weren’t dangerous. Apparently they are, if you throw them hard enough.

Tyler Hemmert said he and a friend were sitting on a park bench when another boy became angry with them and threw a knife at them.

The butter knife became lodged in Tyler’s head between his scalp and skull. “It, like, stung like a bee for a while,” Tyler said.

Tyler said he could still feel the knife. “I could see the handle of the butter knife, sticking out,” he said. “That’s when I freaked out.”

Not to add to the parents grief and suffering — I can’t even imagine what it’s like to lose a child, but there is a lesson to learned from this tragic ending. A toddler drowned during a family gathering. Although an accident, the sheriff states that there is nothing anybody could have done. He claims it all happened within a couple of minutes.

But, when a baby or toddler is near water, you can’t even allow yourself to turn your back for even 30 seconds. That is the lesson to be taught to all parents of young children. Small children and distractions do not mix. You can never be too safe. If a family does bring little ones around water, please have them in a life vest or some sort of floating device.

BEAVER — A 22-month-old boy drowned Friday during a family gathering at a home near Lake Pleasant.

Steven Neel, the son of Jennifer Daman and James Neel of Forks, vanished only minutes after several family members had seen him, and was found in Lake Creek about 50 minutes later.

“It was literally within just a couple of minutes — they realized he was missing, and launched a search,” Clallam County Undersheriff Ron Peregrine said on Saturday.

“I can’t see a single thing that anyone could have done differently.”

Finn McConnell, a 15-month-old baby in Puyallup, Washington, has a very rare form of cancer, Opsoclonus Myoclonus Syndrome, which causes antibodies to mistake the brain for a cancerous tumor creating a situation where one’s “own body [attacks the] brain.”

Last December, Finn’s mother took him to the hospital after he began to act funny.

“We had noticed that he had stopped talking. He was having more difficulty crawling. His balance was off and he would wake up absolutely just screaming, probably five to six times a night,” said mother Theresa McConnell.

She thought he had an ear infection. But the doctor’s diagnosis was much more grim than she ever imagined.

“He says ‘I think he has a tumor in the brain,’” she said. “Of course our hearts just drop. You don’t want to get that kind of news.”

Finn was admitted to the hospital for a series of tests.

An MRI revealed that Finn’s tumor was not in his brain, but in his chest.

Ex-stripper Mechele Linehan, who was on trial for the murder-for-hire of her fiance in 1996, was found guilty and sentenced to 99 years in prison Wednesday. Since the murder, Linehan married another man and became a mother.

Linehan sat expressionless as Superior Court Judge Philip Volland gave her the maximum sentence allowed.

Judge Volland called her a cold-hearted killer who committed a “heinous crime.”

“In my mind I can find no principled distinction between the puppet who pulls the trigger and the puppeteer who pulls the strings,” Volland said of Linehan’s role in the murder. “And in my judgment, Ms. Linehan was the puppeteer who pulled the strings.”

A little know-it-all from Allegan, Michigan went to the Smithsonian Museum for vacation and noticed a mistake in an exhibit that had been there for 27 years. Bet those curators are a bit embarrassed at the moment.

On a winter break trip with his family to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, the 11-year-old southwestern Michigan boy noticed that a notation, in bold lettering, mistakenly identified the Precambrian as an era.

Since it opened in 1981, millions of people have paraded past the museum’s Tower of Time, a display involving prehistoric time. Kenton was the first to point out the error.

Kenton Stufflebeam, who lives in Allegan but attends Alamo Elementary School near Kalamazoo, said his fifth-grade teacher, John Chapman, had nearly made the same mistake about the Precambrian in a classroom earth-science lesson before catching himself.

Uh, anyone else remember learning this kind of stuff in 5th grade? We had barely learned the 50 state capitals by then.

An 11-year-old boy in Centralia, Washington, was found dead in his home from a gun shot wound. Police believe the gun accidentally discharged while the boy was handling it. We just have to shake our heads at how some parents can be so careless with such deadly items.

Detective Sgt. Stacy Brown said this morning that the handgun involved in the incident had been kept in the house northeast of Centralia, at 724 Teitzel Road, where two brothers were eating dinner in separate rooms.

Although no names have been released as of press time today, Brown said the parents of the children were both working at the time of the shooting and the incident is under investigation. The gun belonged to the father, according to a sheriff’s office press release.

“The kids obviously knew where the guns were kept,” Brown said.

According to Internet address listings, Aaron and Tanya Rothmeyer live at the residence. Based on Lewis County tax lot information, the couple bought the 1920s-era home in April 2001. Brown said multiple firearms were kept there, although she declined to elaborate, citing the active investigation.

Cody Porter, a fifth grader in Everett, Washington, suffered a tragic accident while playing with his friends in a backyard sandbox. They were burying Porter in the sand when they realized he was not breathing so they dug him out and ran for help.

Cody’s half-brother, 30-year-old Joshua Quantrille, said the boy was playing with Quantrille’s three sons and other children on Saturday in the back yard of a home belonging to a family friend, according to an Associated Press report.

Quantrille said his children told him Cody came up with the idea that they should bury him, head first, in the sand.

Quantrille said the children came up with the idea from a cartoon they watch on television, the Associated Press reported.

Quantrille also said Cody was buried about from his head to his chest. At some point, he began thrashing around, but the children apparently thought he was playing. They then dug him out and called for help.

We can’t even imagine what this dad must be going through emotionally.

A Northwest Washington man accidentally ran over and killed his 16-month-old son yesterday while pulling out of a space inside their apartment building’s garage, police said.

The boy, his mother and a family friend were preparing to get into other cars in the garage when the accident occurred at 11 a.m., police said. The mother and friend were loading items into the trunk of the mother’s car as the boy began to wander, police said.

A 22-year-old female solider at Fort Lewis, Washington, has been arrested for fatally shooting two fellow soldiers, Randi Miller and Timothy Miller — the two were husband and wife — and kidnapping their 7-month-old daughter. Prosecution is claiming jealousy as the motive.

The 22-year-old woman and the female victim, identified today as Randi Miller, 25, had been dating the same man at the base, according to probable cause documents. When the man spurned the 22-year-old woman in favor of Miller, she became angry, prosecutors allege. The suspect went to the couple’s Parkland house last weekend and shot Miller and her husband, Timothy Miller, 27, who were also both soldiers at the base, according to the court documents.

The suspect then tried to destroy the bodies by placing them in a bathtub and pouring acid on them, probable cause documents allege. The suspect took the Millers’ seven-month-old baby.

The suspect is scheduled to be arraigned on Wednesday. In the meantime, Pierce County sheriff’s detectives and the Army will determine who has jurisdiction over the case.

The identity of the arrested soldier has been stated in other sources as Ivette Gonzalez Davila.

Stephen Hook, a father from Spokane, Washington, came up with a new “Creative Behavioral Exercise” to deal with his stepson, Jerry, who has been a constant behavioral problem. Jerry’s latest infraction was stealing his stepfather’s lighter, so to teach the boy a lesson Hook had him stand on a busy street corner near his school holding a cardboard sign that said, “I STOLE FROM MY PARENTS.” Whether or not this is abusive is probably a subject for debate, but we have a feeling little Jerry might think twice before stealing from his dad again.

“Jerry has had several problems with lying, stealing and fighting at school. He sees a private counselor, the school counselor, and has been in an intensive behavior modification program through Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane. Today we received yet another call from his school principle (whom we are now on a first name basis with) stating that Jerry had a ‘Zippo’ type lighter that he had “found on the way to school.” When his principle described the lighter, I instantly knew that Jerry not only steals from family and friends away from home, but is now stealing from our home and that the property was mine”, stated Hook a former resident of Tucson, AZ who returned to Washington seeking a better quality of life and believes he has found it with his family.

When asked by AZR the reaction of passing drivers and that of Jerry himself. Mr. Hook further stated, “There were people honking their horns in support and others who made sure I watched them dial 911. Although a few police officers and detectives drove by we didn’t have any trouble from anybody; and Jerry, other than being a little cold and crying a bit, I think he’s getting the message”.

A Bellingham Washington boy, around the age of 7 years old, went missing in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, while he and his family were on vacation. He disappeared on a beach where he was last seen on a concrete slab near the ocean waves. His parents desperately tried to find him in the ocean but saw nothing. The boy has ADHD and hope continues as rescuers continue to search.

The not knowing must be maddening for the parents.

TOFINO, B.C. — Searchers were out again this morning in a desperate attempt to find a seven-year-old boy who disappeared from a beach in Tofino, B.C., a day earlier.

William Pilkenton was last seen by his parents along the shore in the small coastal Vancouver Island community, where the family was on holiday.

The search area was expanded today, with police and search and rescue workers assisted by members of the public.