State briefs
Slide covers road ALIQUIPPA, Pa. (AP) – A mile-long stretch of Route 51 near the Ambridge-Aliquippa Bridge will be closed for at least two weeks because of a rock slide Sunday night.
Nobody was hurt, but one vehicle was damaged.
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials said Monday that the source of the slide extends a mile into a wooded area above the road and that extensive work must be done to access the area and prevent future slides.
PennDOT spokesman Dick Skrinjar said officials also don’t know what the condition of the road is under the debris.
Rock slides have plagued the stretch of road between Kiel Street in Aliquippa and the bridge – Sunday’s slide was the fifth since March. Authorities said the latest slide was likely caused by wet, snowy weather.
“They need to take care of that … and they need to do it right,” said Aliquippa Mayor James Mansueti. “Somebody’s going to get killed over there.”
Farmer faces prison
SLIGO, Pa. (AP) – A Clarion County dairy farmer will spend 21 months in federal prison and must repay $229,000 for trying to hide his assets – including 200 head of cattle – after declaring bankruptcy in 1994, authorities said.
FBI agents said Vern E. Over, of Sligo, falsified his bankruptcy petition, fabricating debts to three people who agreed to pose as creditors, to keep the assets from his ex-wife.
Under the sentence handed down by U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster on Friday, Over, who is in his 60s, will report to prison sometime in the next several weeks.
When Over declared bankruptcy, a trustee visiting his 300-acre farm found it abandoned, with no cows or equipment, officials said. A trustee is a court-appointed attorney who oversees a bankrupt person’s assets, so they can be sold or otherwise used to pay off his debts.
Over initially told the trustee he had no memory of what happened to his property. When he was indicted last year, Over pleaded guilty and agreed to explain where the assets went.
But he initially said he sold the cows for $150,000, and used the money to pay off his creditors, authorities said. Over eventually acknowledged selling the cows to three other people and falsifying his bankruptcy petition.
81-year-old charged
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) – Police have charged an 81-year-old man with risking a catastrophe by setting off a 1960s-vintage military-style gas canister, sending 42 city residents to hospitals with burning eyes and throats.
But John Rzasa’s defense attorney, Arthur McQuillan, said Monday that Cambria County prosecutors realize the man meant no harm and likely will seek to have him placed in a probationary program.
Under the program, Rzasa’s arrest record would be expunged if he completes a short probation. Rzasa also faces charges of failure to prevent a catastrophe and reckless endangerment.
Rzasa threw the canister, containing a substance known as CS Gas, into a creek near Conemaugh Valley Medical Center and Bishop McCort High School on Nov. 19, police said. Rzasa told police he was simply trying to get rid of the canister before he and his wife moved into assisted-living quarters.
Rzasa at first denied setting off the canister, but later went with McQuillan and apologized to police, saying he didn’t anticipate the negative effects, according to police.
Bank robber sought
WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (AP) – Authorities are searching for a man who robbed a Centre County bank located just a block from a police station.
The man handed a note demanding money to a female teller at the WNB Bank branch office in Williamsport at about 10:30 a.m. Monday and fled with an undisclosed amount of cash, Old Lycoming Township police said.
No one was hurt and it appeared that no weapon was used, police said.
“I don’t believe he was in the bank for more than a minute, if that,” township police Chief R. Mark Lusk said.
Although the police station is less than a block away, officers did not arrive for several minutes because they were busy handling a disturbance at an apartment, Lusk said.
Expansion proposed
BLOOMSBURG, Pa. (AP) – The school board is proposing to expand summer school programs to include pre-kindergarten and elementary school students.
The proposed five-week program would be free for students, starting in June 2003, and would cost the district about $10,000, officials said at their meeting Monday night.
Bloomsburg has offered summer school for middle- and high-school students in the past, for a $70 fee, Superintendent Joe Kelly said. Usually middle and high school students sign up for the courses after failing a regular course, he said.
The proposed program hopes to help students at an earlier age, Kelly said.
“It’s becoming more and more apparent that kids are beginning to lose ground early,” he said.
Victim remembered
MIDDLETOWN, Pa. (AP) – Residents carried white candles in a vigil to remember the three women who were shot to death inside their home on Christmas Eve.
The vigil Monday went past the house where Jean Wholaver, 43, and her daughters, Victoria, 20, and Elizabeth, 15, were killed. It ended with services at Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church, where 250 residents attended a memorial service.
Authorities have said Ernest Wholaver – the husband and father of the victims, who was awaiting trial on charges he molested his daughters – is a suspect in the killings but he has not been charged. At the time of the killings, he was free on bail.
His brother Scott Lewis Wholaver, 28, is charged with homicide but authorities said they don’t believe he was the triggerman.
False reports alleged
SHIPPENSBURG, Pa. (AP) – A man has been accused of faking a burglary at his home and blaming it on his former girlfriend’s new beau.
Dwyne T. Shoemaker, 25, of Shippensburg, placed his camcorder in his ex-girlfriend’s apartment, then reported to police that it was stolen, police said Monday.
On Dec. 23, the same day Shoemaker reported the burglary, his ex-girlfriend called police to say that she had returned home from work to find a camcorder that wasn’t hers inside.
The door to the woman’s apartment was damaged, police said.
Shoemaker confessed to faking the crime during an interrogation at the state police barracks at Carlisle, telling police he became mad after seeing his ex-girlfriend with her new boyfriend.
Shoemaker was charged with criminal trespass, making false reports and criminal mischief. He was freed after posting $2,500 unsecured bail.
Homicides increase
YORK, Pa. (AP) – Homicides in Dauphin County rose in 2002 to a level not seen since 1995.
The county logged 17 murders last year, compared with 14 in 2001. Fourteen of the killings were in Harrisburg, up from 10 in 2001.
York County saw murders rise to the highest level in nine years, from six in 2001 to 14 in 2002.
The climbing homicide rates in Dauphin and York counties mirror a national trend. While overall violent crime is still decreasing in the United States, the most recent statistics show the homicide rate increasing in the first half of 2002 compared with the same period in 2001, according to the FBI.
“There is more violence and there just is a kind of ‘I don’t care what the consequences are’ attitude,” York County District Attorney H. Stanley Rebert said.
Fence considered
BETHLEHEM, Pa. (AP) – State officials are considering installing a high fence along several Route 22 bridge overpasses including one from which a large chunk of ice was thrown, killing a woman below.
Department of Transportation spokesman Ron Young said the discussions are in response to the death of Elaine C. Cowell, 33, of Mohrsville, Berks County, who was killed Friday when someone threw an 18-pound ice chunk off the Fifth Street bridge through the windshield of the van in which she was riding.
State police, who said they have no witnesses to the crime, are asking the public for help in locating the person responsible.
William Cowell, of Mohrsville, was driving the van and his wife was a passenger. Police said the couple’s three children, ages 5, 8 and 10, also were in the minivan and one of them suffered minor injuries.
DNA testing requested
ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) – A man serving time for the rape and murder of a teenage girl nearly two decades ago has filed a court request seeking DNA testing he hopes will clear his name.
Christopher Hanson was convicted long before DNA evidence was used in investigations and trials. He contends that tests will show that he didn’t rape 16-year-old Flora Reinbold on Sept. 1, 1983.
No hearing has been scheduled on Hanson’s petition, which was filed Dec. 20 in Lehigh County Court by his lawyer Ernie Preate Jr., the former state attorney general who lobbies for criminal justice reforms.
Lehigh County District Attorney James B. Martin said he has not yet decided whether he will oppose Hanson’s request.
Residents stay put
BIRDSBORO, Pa. (AP) – Some residents of a Berks County trailer park have not yet moved, despite an impending environmental cleanup.
The Eddie Smith Trailer Park is next to Pioneer Crossing Landfill and was purchased six months ago by landfill operator J.P. Mascaro & Sons Inc.
The company will start a cleanup within the month at the 31/2-acre park, where potentially harmful levels of methane were found. The explosive odorless gas is seeping from decaying garbage buried under the trailer park in the 1950s.
In June, Mascaro told the 30 families living at the park that they had to leave by Jan. 5 – but five families remain.
“We have no place to go once we’re out of here,” said Christine Mellinger, who lives in a trailer with her husband and two children. The family said they have spent months unsuccessfully searching for a place to move their trailer.
Woman sentenced
READING, Pa. (AP) – A woman has been sentenced to 5 to 10 years in prison for being an accomplice to a man charged with dealing drugs, even though charges against him were dismissed.
Lisa Ann Rivera, 26, of Reading, was convicted of possessing and intending to deliver $150,000 in cocaine and marijuana.
Police said they did not have a warrant when they entered an apartment Rivera rented. She told police Luis Velasquez, 30, of Reading, gave her money to rent the apartment for him but that she never used the apartment and the drugs were his.
An appeals court ruled that Velasquez, who used the apartment, had an expectation of privacy so a warrant was required – and charges against him should be dismissed. The court said that because Rivera did not use the apartment, she had no expectation of privacy and a warrant was not needed in her case.
Rivera’s attorney, Michael D. Dautrich, said he plans to appeal.
Certification issued
DUNMORE, Pa. (AP) – A Lackawanna County landfill has received an internationally recognized certification for good environmental planning.
Keystone Sanitary Landfill developed an environmental management program that earned the certification through the International Organization for Standardization. Its program provides a framework for businesses to develop, implement and improve their environmental practices.
“You can’t fudge or cut corners because the ISO auditors go through your entire operation,” state Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Mark Carmon said. “This is on top of Pennsylvania’s municipal waste regulations, which we consider the most stringent in the country.”
The certification doesn’t mean the landfill has met or exceeded environmental standards but shows that the landfill has given thought to its environmental impact.