Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/299079
Dunlap: Shawn Dunlap, 47, died Sunday, April 20, at his Cottonwood home. Ar- rangements are under the direction of Blair's Crema- tion and Burial. Published Tuesday, April 22, 2014 in the Daily News, Red Bluff, Calif. McCullough: Jim R. Mc - Cullough, 65, of Los Molinos died Saturday, April 19 at St. Elizabeth Community Hospital in Red Bluff. Ar - rangements are under the direction of Red Bluff Sim- ple Cremations & Burial Service. Published Tues- day, April 22, 2014 in the Daily News, Red Bluff, Calif. Randall: Curtis Randall, 59, died Friday, April 18 at his Cottonwood home. Ar - rangements are under the direction of Blair's Crema- tion and Burial. Published Tuesday, April 22, 2014 in the Daily News, Red Bluff, Calif. Sherman: Charles S. Sherman, 99, of Red Bluff died Saturday, April 19 at Red Bluff Healthcare Center. Arrangements are under the direction of Red Bluff Simple Cremations & Burial Service. Published Tuesday, April 22, 2014 in the Daily News, Red Bluff, Calif. Death notices must be pro - vided by mortuaries to the news department, are pub- lished at no charge, and fea- ture only specific basic infor- mation about the deceased. Paid obituaries are placed through the Classified ad- vertising department. Paid obituaries may be placed by mortuaries or by families of the deceased and include on - line publication linked to the newspaper's website. Paid obituaries may be of any length, may run multiple days and offer wide latitude of content, including photos. Death notices the nation's drinking water due to improper prescrip- tion drug disposal. Waste water treatment systems are not designed to remove such substances; therefore, prescr iption drugs flushed directly into the sewer system poten - tially impact human health through exposure in drink- ing water and soil contam- ination. It is important to dis- pose of prescription drugs responsibly. Participate in the free collection event to ensure pharmaceuticals are not polluting the water supply and to reduce sub - stance availability to unin- tended citizens. The Corning Police De- partment, Red Bluff Po- lice Department, Tehama County Sheriff's Depart- ment, Tehama County Health Service Agency and the Tehama County San- itary Landfill Agency are partnering in this effort. For further event infor- mation, contact Captain Kyle Sanders of the Red Bluff Police Department at (530) 527-8282 or Laura Calkins of the Corning Po - lice Department at (530) 824-7015. Drugs From Page 1 of transportation, four peo- ple who left court without a proper driver's license pro- ceeded to get behind the wheel and drive away from the court house. In all four cases they were stopped by an officer. Three people were de - termined not to have a valid driver's license and the other driver had a sus- pended license for previous driving under the influence arrests. Those arrested and cited Monday could face additional jail time, longer driver's li - cense suspensions and the cost of attorney fees, court costs and lost time at work. "When family, friends and co-workers find out, vi- olators can also face tremen- dous personal embarrass- ment and humiliation," the press release said. Red Bluff Police said the sting along with its regularly scheduled DUI enforcement serve as a deterrent with the goal of removing impaired drivers from the road and heightening awareness of the dangers of driving un - der the influence of drugs and alcohol. The sting was funded by a grant from the Califor - nia Office of Traffic Safety through the National High- way Traffic Safety Admin- istration. Sting From Page 1 Single mounted fancy weStern 1st Willow Werlhof 2nd Stony Creek Horse- men's Association mounted groupS junior Redding Junior Rodeo As- sociation Red Bluff Junior Round-Up mounted groupS Senior 1st Capay Mule Club 2nd Shasta-Trinity Unit of Backcountry Horsemen HorSe drawn Single HorSe 1st Reno Rodeo Chuck Wagon HorSe drawn two or more HorSeS 1st Maher Mountain Shires 2nd Heritage Film Festival individual veHicleS 1st California Ro-day-O Salinas 2nd Griffin Family group veHicleS 1st Motor Pool 2nd CalFire/TC Fire Dept. pooper ScooperS 1st Relay for Life Pooper Scoopers 2nd Paragon Janitorial and Housekeeping Special intereSt group 1st Tehama County Shriners 2nd Girl Scouts of Northern California group novelty 1st P.E.T.S. 2nd 613 Main Street Band Parade From Page 1 By Brett Barrouquere The Associated Press LoUisViLLe, Ky. » A prison doctor has been fired and two other staffers are in the midst of being dis - missed after an inmate at the Kentucky State Pen- itentiary starved himself to death, a case that has exposed lapses in medical treatment and in how hun - ger strikes are handled at the facility. Prison officials have asked prosecutors to investigate after The As - sociated Press began ask- ing questions about the in- mate's death. James Kenneth Embry, 57 and with just three years left on a nine-year sentence for drug offenses, began to spi - ral out of control in the spring of 2013 after he stopped tak- ing anti-anxiety medication. Seven months later, in De- cember, after weeks of er- ratic behavior — from telling prison staff he felt anxious and paranoid to banging his head on his cell door — Em - bry eventually refused most of his meals. By the time of his death in January of this year, he had shed more than 30 pounds on his 6-foot frame and died weighing just 138 pounds, according to docu - ments reviewed by the AP. An internal investigation determined that medical personnel failed to provide him anti-anxiety medication that may have kept his sui - cidal thoughts at bay and didn't take steps to check on him as his condition wors- ened. The internal review of Embry's death also exposed broader problems involving the treatment of inmates — including a failure to regu - larly check inmates on med- ical rounds and communica- tion lapses among medical staff. The AP, tipped off to Em- bry's death, obtained scores of documents under Ken- tucky's Open Records Act, including a report detail- ing the investigation into Embry's death, an autopsy report and personnel files. Along with interviews with corrections officials and cor - respondence with inmates, the documents describe Embry's increasingly para- noid behavior until his death and the numerous oppor- tunities for various prison staff to have intervened. "It's just very, very, very disturbing," said Greg Bel - zley, a Louisville, Ky.-based attorney who specializes in inmate rights litigation and reviewed some of the docu - ments obtained by the AP. "How do you just watch a man starve to death?" According to the report of the internal investigation, Embry stopped taking med - ications for anxiety in May 2013. Seven months later, he told the lead prison psycholo- gist, Jean Hinkebein, on Dec. 3 that he felt anxious and par- anoid and wanted to restart those medications. But the psychologist concluded Em- bry didn't have any signif- icant mental health issues even though Embry repeat- edly talked about wanting to hurt himself. Hinkebein and an associate considered his comments vague, and his re - quest for medication was de- nied. Seven days later, on Dec. 10, Embry began banging his head on his cell door and was moved to an observation cell where he refused meals and told the prison psychologist, "I don't have any hope." He soon began refusing most food, though he drank tea on occasion while continu - ing to make threats to hurt himself in the ensuing weeks. A nurse checked on Em- bry on Jan. 4, finding him weak and shaky, and ad- vised him to resume eat- ing. Embry responded that it had been too long for him to start taking food again. Nine days later, on the very day he died, an advanced practice registered nurse named Bob Wilkinson re - fused a request from other medical staffers to move him to the infirmary at 11:51 a.m. and said the inmate should be taken off a hunger strike watch, according to the in - ternal investigative report. Guards found Embry un- responsive in his cell hours later, his head slumped to the side. He was pronounced dead at 5:29 p.m. Lyon County Coroner Ronnie Patton classified Embry's death as a suicide and listed dehydration as the primary cause of death, with starvation and several other medical ailments as secondary causes. The documents obtained by the AP show a prison sys - tem with a dated protocol for handling hunger strikes, staff who weren't familiar with its provisions, and oth - ers who said they were told not to follow them. In Em- bry's case, those in charge of his well-being were sim- ply counting on him to cave in and start eating again on his own, the records show. In a revealing exchange, investigators asked Steve Hiland, the lead physician at the maximum-security prison, how he thought in - mates are supposed to be re- moved from a hunger strike. Hiland told them that prison staff "usually don't have to worry about it because they (the inmates) eventually give up." When Embry stopped eating regularly, the Correc - tions Department's existing guidelines recommended multiple checks of the in- mate's vital signs three times a week , repeated vis- its with a physician and on- going evaluations by a psy- chologist. Medical staff would later tell internal investigators they were either unfamil - iar with the protocols for handling a hunger strike or that Hiland and Wilkinson forbade those procedures from being used. Prisons Inmate was reportedly allowed to starve to death DANiEL R. PATMORE — THE ASSOCiATED PRESS The Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, Ky., where an inmate, James Kenneth Embry, died aer a hunger strike, is shown in 2007. By Jennifer agiesta The Associated Press Washington » While sci- entists believe the universe began with a Big Bang, most Americans put a big ques- tion mark on the concept, an Associated Press-Gf K poll found. Yet when it comes to smok - ing causing cancer or that a genetic code determines who we are, the doubts disappear. When considering con - cepts scientists consider truths, Americans have more skepticism than confi- dence in those that are far- ther away from our bodies in scope and time: global warming, the age of the Earth and evolution and es - pecially the Big Bang from 13.8 billion years ago. Rather than quizzing sci- entific knowledge, the sur- vey asked people to rate their confidence in several statements about science and medicine. On some, there's broad acceptance. Just 4 percent doubt that smoking causes cancer, 6 percent question whether mental illness is a medical condition that af - fects the brain and 8 percent are skeptical there's a genetic code inside our cells. More — 15 percent — have doubts about the safety and efficacy of childhood vaccines. About 4 in 10 say they are not too confident or outright disbelieve that the earth is warming, mostly a result of man-made heat-trapping gases, that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old or that life on Earth evolved through a process of natural selection, though most were at least somewhat confident in each of those concepts. But a narrow majority — 51 percent — ques - tions the Big Bang theory. Those results depress and upset some of America's top scientists, including several Nobel Prize winners, who vouched for the science in the statements tested, calling them settled scientific facts. "Science ignorance is pervasive in our society, and these attitudes are re - inforced when some of our leaders are openly antago- nistic to established facts," said 2013 Nobel Prize in medicine winner Randy Schekman of the University of California, Berkeley. The poll highlights "the iron tri - angle of science, religion and politics," said Anthony Leise- rowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. science Poll: Big Bang a big question for most Americans DAvE MARTiN — THE ASSOCiATED PRESS A woman smokes a cigarette in 2013 while sitting in her truck in Hayneville, Ala. "it's just very, very, very disturbing. how do you just watch a man starve to death?" — Greg Belzley, attorney specialized in inmate rights litigation. RONALD W. DREIFORT Ronald W. Dreifort, 66, beloved husband, father, brother and friend, went to be with the Lord on April 17, 2014, in Redding, California. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and moved to California in 1974, where he earned his Juris Doctorate in 1979 at West Los Angeles School of Law. He practiced law in the Los Angeles area before moving his practice to Tehama County in 1989. Ronald served in both the Ohio and California Army Na- tional Guard. He attended Community Baptist Church in Red Bluff with his wife of 35 years, Alison, and was active in his community serving in a number of capacities in the Rotary Club. He is survived by his son, Aaron and his daughter, Mela- nie. He was brother to Cathy and Jonathan (dec'd) and uncle to Kris, Jennifer and Justin. A memorial service will be held at Community Baptist Church, 598 Roundup Ave., Red Bluff, California on Thursday, April 24, 2014 at 11:00a.m. with fellowship to follow. Contributions are welcomed in support of Com- munity Baptist Church in lieu of flowers. 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