WA man killed in small plane crash near Camas

The Clark County sheriff's office says an 84-year-old pilot has died in the crash of a single-engine plane near the southwest Washington town of Camas. Sgt. Tony Barnes said Wilbert "Skeet" Mehrer of Camas was alone in the four-passenger 1960 Piper Cherokee when it crashed late Wednesday afternoon. Barnes says it appears Mehrer was on a flight from Pendleton, Ore., to Grove Field Airport near Camas when he crashed in a field about a half mile from that airport. The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration are investigating. A man found guilty of first-degree murder in the July 2010 shooting of a woman hit by a stray bullet while standing in front of her Tacoma house, has been sentenced to more than 61 years in prison. Olujimi Blakeney was sentenced Wednesday. He also had been convicted in mid-July of drive-by shooting, unlawful possession of a firearm and assault. Investigators say a fight involving several men escalated into a shooting, outside of the home of Lisa and Joe Melancon. The couple stepped outside to see what the commotion was about and the 40-year-old woman was hit. The bullet narrowly missed her husband. Blakeney did not make a statement at the sentencing, but family members of the victim spoke about her importance to her friends, family and community. A federal appeals court will once again consider whether the 22-year prison sentence imposed on would-be millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam was adequate. Last year, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the sentence imposed twice by a federal judge in Seattle was too lenient. The panel also removed U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour from the case, saying it doubted his impartiality. Seattle Federal Public Defender Tom Hillier asked the 9th Circuit to reconsider. The Seattle Times reports than an order issued late Tuesday by Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski vacates the earlier ruling. He has sent the case to be reheard by a larger panel of judges. Ressam was arrested in Washington state in December 1999 on his way to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. Coughenour has said 22 years was a fair sentence, given Ressam's post-conviction cooperation. Clark County sheriff's deputies are trying to locate a missing 22-year-old Vancouver woman they say is endangered by medical issues. She was last seen Wednesday morning with a young man. The sheriff's office says the circumstances of her disappearance are suspicious. The woman is 5-foot-4 and weighs 360 pounds. The sheriff's office says she is diabetic, clinically depressed and developmentally delayed with the cognitive skills of a 15-year-old. Longview, Wash., police say two people were hurt when someone hurled a rock through the window of a shuttle bus taking workers from Longview to a fish processing plant near Astoria, Ore. Detective Sgt. John Reeves says one passenger was hit by the rock and another got glass in an eye. Both were treated at a hospital. Police did not immediately identify a suspect. The Daily News says the incident happened early Wednesday morning. When an FBI agent pleaded several years ago for help finding notorious skyjacker D.B. Cooper, he off-handedly wondered if the suspect might be someone's "odd uncle." An Oklahoma City woman now says she's certain her uncle hijacked that plane in 1971 and parachuted away over the Pacific Northwest with $200,000 ransom. Marla Cooper tells The Associated Press she was only 8, but recalls her uncle saying their money troubles were over. He died in 1999. Cooper says her father mentioned the heist before his 1995 death, and her mother recalled it in 2009. Marla Cooper says she only recently reached out to the FBI. The FBI says it's following a "credible" lead on a new suspect who died 10 years ago but won't say if the tip came from Cooper. A federal judge has reluctantly ruled to uphold a congressional budget provision that removed federal protections for the Northern Rockies gray wolf outside of Wyoming. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy says that binding precedent by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals requires him to rule against a constitutional challenge of the rider passed by Congress earlier this year. Molloy wrote in his order Wednesday that without that precedent, he would have ruled unconstitutional the provision that strips wolves of their endangered status in Montana, Idaho and parts of Washington, Oregon and Utah. Molloy says he believes the way Congress passed the provision undermines and disrespects the fundamental idea of the rule of law. Before Congress' action in April, Molloy had twice blocked attempts to lift protections for the predators. Boeing painted the numbers "7-4-7" in the skies from Minnesota to California on the final test flight for its new jumbo jet. A map on the flight-tracking service FlightAware shows that the plane left the airport in Everett, Wash., and flew over Montana, south to California, and back north working its way across North Dakota and Minnesota, with trips as far south as New Mexico and Oklahoma, to spell out "747." The whole flight took 17 hours. The flight wrapped up the testing for the plane to be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. The new 747-8 freighter is expected to be delivered to its first customer next month. There's more money in the pipeline to buy new trains for Illinois and other states. U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Wednesday that Illinois, California, Iowa, Michigan and Missouri will get about $335 million to buy next-generation trains. That brings the amount of money awarded those five states and Washington state to buy trains to around $782 million. The transportation department says the funds will go toward purchasing 33 locomotives and 120 bi-level passenger cars. The states will use a joint procurement process to get favorable prices on the equipment. Transportation officials say President Barack Obama's administration has kicked in more than $10 billion to lay the groundwork for these and other states to develop higher speed rail networks. Zumiez Inc. posted a key monthly revenue figure Wednesday that fell short of expectations, and the teen retailer's shares fell in after-hours trading. The teen retailer said that revenue from stores open at least a year rose 4.9 percent in July. That is below the 9.4 percent increase it saw at this time last year. And it was short of the 7.5 percent increase that analysts polled by Thomson Reuters anticipated. The figure is considered a key measure of a retailer's financial performance because it strips away the impact of recently opened or closed stores.  Zumiez said shoppers bought more shoes and men's clothing during the period, but sales of accessories and boys clothing were soft. The retailer's total revenue rose 12.3 percent to $38.7 million. Shares of the company, based in Everett, Wash., fell $3.60, more than 13 percent, to $23.50 in after-hours trading. Clearwire Corp., which runs a wireless data network, on Wednesday reported an expanding loss as it curbed its ambitions and wrote down the value of some network expansion projects it is abandoning. Clearwire is scratching its expansion plans because it's finding it hard to raise money for the chronically unprofitable network. Sprint Nextel Corp., which owns just less than a majority of the company, and other investors like Google Inc. appear unwilling to invest further. The Kirkland, Wash., company also said Thursday that it will adopt the LTE, or Long Term Evolution, data technology for its network. The move was expected, since Clearwire has been testing LTE, and the rest of the industry is adopting it, led by Verizon Wireless. Clearwire posted a net loss for the April to June period of $169 million, or $1.01 per share, which compares with a loss of $126 million, or 61 cents per share, a year ago. Clearwire shares fell 5 cents, or 2 percent, to $2.42 in extended trading, after the release of the results. In regular trading, the shares spiked higher just before the close, ending up 10 percent. A new study finds that a healthy diet is expensive and could make it difficult for Americans to meet new U.S. nutritional guidelines. The study in the journal Health Affairs published Thursday says the government should do more to help consumers eat healthier. Researchers at the University of Washington found the healthy diet recommended by the U.S. government can be so expensive that many Americans may not be able to afford to follow those guidelines. The 2010 update of the so-called food pyramid recommended eating more potassium, dietary fiber, vitamin D and calcium. But the study says that could add hundreds of more dollars to a person's annual grocery bill. Lead researcher Pablo Monsivais says that for example, more potassium in a diet is likely to add $380 per year. Offers of help have poured in after a Spokane, Wash., newspaper profiled a struggling Tonasket couple and their children, including a 12-year-old girl battling leukemia. The Spokesman-Review reports the offers include one from a Spokane woman who has offered her fully furnished four-bedroom home while Alicia Ponce-Myers recovers. The girl's stepfather, Daniel Angell, says he was brought to tears by the outpouring. A story in Wednesday's Spokesman-Review outlined the girl's medical struggles and her family's attempts to deal with chronic homelessness and poverty. Alicia has spent the past month in a Spokane hospital undergoing treatment for a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. The newspaper says her cancer is in remission. State social workers have insisted the family find stable housing to receive Alicia when she is discharged this week. Otherwise, Angell says there's a possibility Alicia might be placed in foster care to help in her recovery. The family hopes to stay Police shot the driver of a stolen car after he fired at officers following a stolen car chase that ended in Yakima. Police say the man was hit multiple times Wednesday night, and he was taken to a hospital where he had surgery. No officers were hit. Yakima police say the vehicle stolen in the Toppenish area led police, sheriff's deputies and Washington State Patrol troopers into Yakima about 9:30 p.m. when the driver stopped. Police say he then fired multiple rounds at officers from the car with an AR-15 assault rifle. Officers returned fire until he stopped firing. A federal judge in Spokane has refused to accept a guilty plea from Hells Angels motorcycle gang leader because he has reservations about the proposed two-year sentence. The Spokesman-Review reports Ricky W. Jenks could face twice as much time in prison if convicted at a trial. Jenks pleaded guilty Wednesday to being a felon in possession of a firearm because he owned one of the guns found in a March drug raid on the Hells Angels club house. The 33-year-old club's sergeant-at-arms and has two previous felony convictions, including one for manslaughter. He is barred from possessing guns. Judge Justin Quackenbush ordered the defense lawyer and assistant U.S. attorney to submit written arguments within a week on the reasons for the plea agreement. A man accused of mistreating a 106-year-old Kettle Falls woman in his care now has been charged with theft for spending $800,000 in her accounts. KREM reports 78-year-old John Friedlund appeared in Stevens County Superior Court Wednesday and he's due back on Aug. 16 for arraignment. Prosecutors say he went on a spending spree with money belonging to Frances T. Swan and bought several cars, a horse trailer and a bulldozer. They also say $200,000 went to a person in Texas, and they speculate it was used to pay for a sex-change operation. Swan was found in squalid conditions and begging for food in May when a deputy stopped at her home. She's now doing well at a Colville nursing home. Friedlund has pleaded not guilty to criminal mistreatment. A 69-year-old Clarkston, Wash., man charged with robbing a Lewiston bank on Feb. 3 has waived his right to a preliminary hearing and was bound over to 2nd District Court for arraignment. The Lewiston-Tribune reports David Payton walked with the aid of a cane during Wednesday's hearing due to injuries suffered when he was shot by law enforcement officers shortly after the robbery. Payton, who spent about a month in the hospital, is charged with robbery and four counts of aggravated assault for allegedly pointing a gun at officers. Payton's arraignment is set for Aug. 17. Nez Perce County Prosecutor Dan Spickler says he has a tentative plea agreement, but declined to elaborate. The $3,000 taken from the bank has not been recovered.

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College Admissions Assistance (CAA) awarded Crista Greenwood $500 in the CAA Class of 2011 Scholarship contest as she makes final preparations to attend Northwest University next fall.

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