Man charged in fatal shooting
Anthony Tyrone Armstrong was charged with second-degree murder in King County Superior Court in the slaying of Mychael D. Alexander.
Police and prosecutors say Armstrong, who is still at large, had been harassing Alexander and his sister since she broke up with Armstrong last month.
Police said the three were at Rainier Playfield when Armstrong and Alexander began to fight.
Woman in fatal crash may have been drinking
MAPLE VALLEY — A 21-year-old Maple Valley woman who died in a crash Thursday night probably was drinking and driving, King County sheriff's detectives said yesterday.
Rachael Kathleen Butcher was driving on Southeast Summit Landsburg Road, in unincorporated King County east of Maple Valley, when she lost control and veered into the oncoming lane, colliding with a pickup, said sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart.
A 16-year-old girl was thrown from Butcher's car; she was transported to an area hospital with serious injuries.
The two people in the pickup, a husband and wife from Redmond in their late 30s, are in critical condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
School bus on I-5 ramp emptied after electrical fire
SEATTLE — An Edmonds School District bus, en route to Seattle Center for a field trip, was emptied on the Interstate 5 exit ramp at Mercer Street yesterday when the driver saw smoke coming from the vehicle's engine compartment, according to a letter sent home with students at Cedar Valley Community School.
None of the students was injured. An alternator on the 1979 bus malfunctioned and caused an electrical fire, the letter said.
Injunction seeks to stop man from filing false tax returns
SEATTLE — A civil injunction was filed in federal court Thursday against a Seattle man the government claims filed bad tax returns.
The injunction to stop Ronald M. Paul from filing "false and fraudulent tax returns" was filed by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The suit alleges that Paul — who runs a business called The Tax Clinic — falsely claimed to be a certified public accountant, and that he routinely filed bad tax returns for clients.
According to a news release from the Justice Department, Paul took fraudulent deductions for clients and sought to get refunds of all their past paid taxes through a bogus doctrine he called the "claim of right theory."
Jailed man is accused of holding family hostage
EVERETT — A 37-year-old man accused of breaking into a home and holding a Snohomish family hostage is being held in Snohomish County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bail on five counts of investigation of kidnapping and one count of investigation of robbery.
Snohomish police arrested the man Wednesday after 911 dispatchers received a cellphone call from one of his hostages.
The man had entered the family's home, in the 1300 block of Avenue A, through the open garage and held a father, son and daughter captive, police said.
The father managed to call 911, and police arrived a short time later.
Driver charged in crash that killed one, injured two
EVERETT — A 29-year-old Granite Falls man, accused of killing his passenger and injuring two other men in an accident while driving drunk in unincorporated Snohomish County, was charged yesterday with vehicular homicide and vehicular assault.
On Nov. 5, Joshua Stout drove his car west on Highway 92 into the scene of an earlier crash involving a station wagon and a tow truck. Andrew Wise, who was riding in the front seat of Stout's car, died at the scene. Norman Wood and Zachary Jacot, who were riding in the back of a car involved in the crash, suffered multiple injuries.
According to the State Patrol, Stout had a blood-alcohol content of 0.1 percent, above the legal limit of 0.08 percent, when a sample was taken three hours after the crash.
Three middle-school students arrested after threats made
SULTAN — Police arrested three Sultan Middle School students yesterday after threats were found scrawled on a boys' bathroom wall at the school.
Sultan Police Chief Fred Walser said school officials alerted police to the threats Thursday and sent a note home to parents. More than 270 of the school's 593 students stayed home yesterday because of the threats.
Walser said two of the boys told police the threat was a joke in order to get an extra day off from school.
Locke asks state high court to protect primary election
OLYMPIA — Gov. Gary Locke and the League of Women Voters asked the state Supreme Court yesterday to protect the state's new primary-election system, which creates separate party primaries, from a referendum campaign.
Forcing a public vote on a newly approved law requires opponents to gather nearly 100,000 valid signatures of registered voters. If opponents succeed in doing that, the law in question is suspended until the November vote. In this case, that could mean there would be no primary election in September, or one written by a federal judge.
The governor asked the court to rule that the new law is exempt under a constitutional provision that protects new laws that are "necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health or safety, or support of state government and its existing public institution."
Times staff and news services