News

By RYAN LANCASTER Staff Reporter Airway Heights Police detective Kelly Justice moves swiftly along a school hallway, his shotgun at the ready. Rounding a corner he sees an obviously disturbed man standing over the bodies of two kids, a gun to his own head. Justice rapidly orders him to drop the weapon but the man doesn't budge, yelling “I can't take it anymore,” as the veteran officer fires two rounds into his chest. Setting his shotgun down onto a nearby table, Justice explains. “The reason he's going to go, we've got two k...

A 43-year-old Spokane man narrowly escaped serious injury or death Sunday morning after mistaking the BNSF Railway tracks in Marshall for a roadway. Miles D. Matthews turned his 2002 Mercury Mountaineer off of Cheney-Spokane Road onto southbound Scribner Road about 2 a.m. but upon encountering the railroad tracks at the first curve he turned and tried to drive toward Spokane with one tire on a rail and the other in the rock roadbed. The Mountaineer quickly became stuck in the loose rock. Matthews tried rocking it out of the...

By BECKY THOMAS Staff Reporter Dow Excavating owner Wayne Dow has expanded his business into landscape materials. Dow Landscape Materials opened across from Sears on First Street in Cheney last week, offering topsoil, bark, rock, compost and more. “Nobody has this in Cheney. They've sprung up all over the West Plains, but we're just trying to provide a service where there is a need here for Cheney,” Dow said. Dow has run the excavating business since 1992, but it was known as Wally's Excavating since the late 1960s, when Dow...

By BECKY THOMAS Staff Reporter A March 13 collision that killed a pedestrian in Four Lakes yielded no charges against the 16-year-old driver. Documents from a Washington State Patrol investigation stated that 16-year-old Chase Walter didn't have time to react before his truck hit Petrick Rogers, 62, in the eastbound lane of SR 904 in Four Lakes near its intersection with First Avenue. According to the documents, it was raining hard at the time of the 8 p.m. collision and Walter said he did not see Rogers crossing the road...

By PAUL DELANEY Staff Reporter Even though Sue Quinn never got her official time and had to go to extra lengths to get the coveted event T-shirt when she and friend Linda Chasse crossed the finish line of the 35th annual Bloomsday road race a few weeks ago, there was a sense of victory. Covering the 7.46 miles was a relatively short distance when compared to the journey Quinn's been on the last 12 years since she was told she would likely never walk again. Quinn's spent much of the past decade enduring over a dozen surgeries...

By RYAN LANCASTER Staff Reporter Aside from some invasive weeds, erosion and an unfortunate abundance of goose poop, the three miles of Medical Lake shoreline are in pretty good shape. But in order to further improve these areas, and to comply with Washington state law, the city of Medical Lake is developing a restoration plan for all lakeshores within its boundaries, including its namesake and portions of West Medical and Silver lakes. The Shoreline Management Act of 1971 required cities and counties to create a Shoreline...

By BECKY THOMAS Staff Reporter The Cheney Police Department saw an increase in crime last month as it continues to deal with staffing and budget issues. According to the department's Monthly Accountability Review for April, crime rose nearly 60 percent, from 43 incidents in March to 72 in April. Cmdr. Rick Campbell said the increase didn't concern him, because the first three months of 2011 were unusually quiet. “This is getting back to a normal realm,” he said, adding that crime was down 15 percent overall over this tim...

Airway Heights, Kalispel Tribe come together on infrastructure plan that could assist in development of area south of Northern Quest By RYAN LANCASTER Staff Reporter A public hearing was held at the May 16 Airway Heights City Council meeting regarding the relocation and vacation of Sprague Avenue, a project that is being jointly planned by the city and the Kalispel Tribe of Indians. The city granted the Kalispel Tribe permission to vacate and relocate a portion of the road in order to benefit future development of the...

Spring's record cold, precipitation have made area snowpack massive By PAUL DELANEY Staff Reporter Did you like that little taste of shorts and sunglasses weather last week? While it seems like a fleeting memory after some recent gully-washing rains, rest assured that warmth will return. Honest. Old Man Winter's grip, which has held on well into spring, is finally loosening. With spring nearly eight weeks late, it may finally be time to get those gardens ready, the bikes out and begin thinking of comfy temperatures that have...

CHENEY May 9 Vincent J. Ash, 51, was arrested on the zero block of B Street on a trespassing warrant from Spokane Municipal Court. A red bicycle was found on the 200 block of South Cheney-Spangle Road. May 10 Edward J. Steetle, 21, was arrested on the 2300 block of University Lane on a Spokane warrant for driving while license suspended. Domestic violence—verbal only—was reported on the 2300 block of University Lane. Tavish J. Jones, 24, was arrested on the zero block of North Sixth Street for domestic violence–related assau...

By BECKY THOMAS Staff Reporter Josh and Matt Horsley grew up on a fruit farm in the Yakima Valley, surrounded by the best Mother Nature had to offer. From their early days, they helped their father harvest hundreds of thousands of pounds of fruit every year. While they were raised among delicious fresh fruit, the twin brothers soon learned not everyone knew what fresh, tree-ripened fruit tasted like. They moved to Cheney to attend Eastern Washington University, and a couple years later Josh's new wife Marisa did the...

First ‘Appleseed shoot' held in Medical Lake draws families intent on learning from U.S. forefathers By RYAN LANCASTER Staff Reporter For the typical American, being able to accurately shoot a rifle probably ranks low on a list of essential skills these days, as does having a working knowledge of the Revolutionary War. But for the thousands of people across the country who take part in Project Appleseed each year, learning these things is a way to preserve a critical piece of our nation's past while imparting a stronger s...

After several years in storage, historical artifacts and pictures will be on display at local branch By RYAN LANCASTER Staff Reporter For years much of Medical Lake's history has been shuffled around in cardboard boxes, most recently from a closet at City Hall into the garages of local historians Judy Abbott and Joyce Calloway. The two longtime city residents have for some time sought a place to exhibit this one-of-a-kind collection of artifacts, photographs and other items chronicling the town's colorful past. There are stac...

Photo by Paul Delaney April snow showers brought lots of grumbles to Cheney April 29....

Eastern Washington University Friends of the Library invites the Cheney community to combine culinary talents with literary tastes by participating in the Books2Eat event on Wednesday, May 25, at the JFK Library. Every spring, the FOL puts on this free event as a means to bring people from the community together with the university community at the library and just have a good time together. Those who wish to create a confection based upon a favorite book—“Winnie the Pooh,” “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” the “Twilight...

West Plains chicken keepers offer advice on how to raise feathered fowl for food, profit and pleasure By RYAN LANCASTER Staff Reporter Jennifer Oxrieder calls chickens “gateway livestock,” birds so simple to care for that their owners are tempted to bring other critters into the mix. For the past three years, she and her husband Jacob have been raising chickens in the backyard of their suburban Cheney home. So far the couple has managed to contain their habit to chickens, bees and rabbits, but she said it's only a matter of t...

By BECKY THOMAS Staff Reporter For Scott and Marissa Myers, there's nothing better than a delicious dessert. Unless it's a delicious dessert at a discount, that is. That's the idea behind Dessert Pals, a business the couple opened in Cheney this month. “It's a dessert club,” Scott Myers said. “Our customers go to our website, print out the membership card and then they come on down and get discounts on gourmet desserts.” Dessert Pals is located inside the Picture Perfect framing and art gallery at 1831 First St. The Myers'...

Practice put in place after change to council-manager form of government seen by some as time consuming and financially costly By RYAN LANCASTER Staff Reporter Airway Heights City Council meetings could soon start a half hour earlier if the council passes an ordinance to do away with their scheduled pre-session agenda workshops. At their April 18 meeting the council heard a first reading of an ordinance amending the city's municipal code to eliminate the agenda workshop and change the meeting time from 6 to 5:30 p.m. The...