Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/623881
ReddingRecord-Searchlight REDDING Officersshotand killed a man Tuesday eve- ning who police say was in- discriminately firing a gun in a Redding apartment complex while yelling about President Obama. Policesaidsomeonecalled 9-1-1before6p.m.toreporta man firing a gun indiscrimi- nately at an apartment com- plexinthe200blockofBoul- der Creek Drive just north of Lake Boulevard. Redding police Lt. Pete Brindley said several offi- cers arrived at the apart- ment and tried to negotiate withhim.Theman'sidentity had not been released by po- lice by deadline. Police heard from a wit- ness that the man had been making incoherent state- ments and yelling about President Obama, Brindley said. He said police weren't able to negotiate with the man. Shortly after 6 p.m. nu- merous gunshots could be heard throughout the neigh- borhood. "He came in and out of the apartment, we believe, 10 to 15 times. The last time the subject exited the apartment, there were shots fired," Brindley said. He did not know whether the man fired at the officers and couldn't say whether the man was brandishing a gun when he came out of the apartment the final time. None of the officers in- volved was injured, Brind- ley said. He did not know how many officers were in- volved or how many shots were fired. Officers earlier shot beanbag rounds at the man, he said. The officers were placed on administrative leave and the Shasta County Sheriff's Office is investigating the case because Redding police officers were involved in the shooting, Brindley said. Jason Crawford, who lived across from the man in the complex, said he video- taped the shooting from the window in the front room of his apartment. The video shows officers setting up around the man's apartment and attempting to communicate with him. At the end of Crawford's video the man exits through the front door of the apart- ment holding a gun in his outstretched hand and then numerous shots rang out. Kathleen Lunsford said that before police were called, she was confronted by the man outside the apartment where the shoot- ing occurred. Lunsford, who also lives in the apartment complex, said she was walking by the man's apartment when he came out, grabbed her and pulled her back inside. "As soon as he shut the door, he hugged me and he kissed me on the forehead," Lunsford said. She said she hadtalkedtothemanbefore, but they were not friends. Then he picked up some- thing that appeared to be a gun, and shot toward some- one with a rifle, she said. "I didn't know what to do. Heshotatamanstandingin the door," Lunsford said. "I was pleading with him, and I was crying and saying 'you can't be shooting at people.'" Lunsford said that at one point the man, who she said was acting erratically, left theapartmentandwentout- side and fired his gun sev- eral more times. During this time the man was wearing gray sweatpants and no shirt, she said. "He was aiming at a guy and then he just got sloppy and he started shooting ev- erywhere," Lunsford said. She said she was worried about being that close to a shooting with her children nearby. "I am pretty shaken up because the whole thing makes me pretty nervous," Lunsford said. David Rice, who lives up the street on Boulder Creek Drive, said when he heard the shots he came outside. "We heard the five shots. Everyone was screaming," Rice said. "He came out screaming 'Obama! Obama! Obama!' They (police) told him to come out with your hands up and he kept telling them 'No, no, no.'" "He did say he had a gun and he was going to shoot them," said Dianna Hamm, another resident of Boulder Creek Drive. NEGOTIATIONS FAIL Ma n ye ll in g ab ou t Ob am a, firing gun, killed by police By Sue Manning The Associated Press LOS ANGELES Wylee the border collie can search an avalanche the size of a football field in five or 10 minutes. It would take a probe line of 50 people us- ing poles a couple hours to cover the same ground. When 30 minutes can mean the difference be- tween life and death for a skier lost on a snowy moun- tain, most people would bank on the dog. "The fastest thing is a dog — faster than a bea- con or echo," said Craig Noble, ski patrol and dog supervisor at Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows resort in Olympic Valley, California. "We respond to a lot of av- alanches that don't involve any people. But we don't know that before we leave. We just get there and get the dogs working." Speed is crucial in ava- lanche rescues, with mini- mal chances of survival if victims are buried for 30 minutes or more. Noble skis 220 days a year by following the snow from California to Chile and Australia. He also takes yearly classes from the Canadian Avalanche Rescue Dog Association, with trainings at Whis- tler Mountain in British Columbia among other lo- cations. Noble relays what he learns to the ski patrol- lers at Squaw Valley Al- pine Meadows (the site of the 1960 winter Olympics) and Crested Butte Moun- tain Resort in Colorado. He's brought all of their dog programs up to the same CARDA standard. He also teaches classes for students in the moun- tain communities. "The kids love the dogs," he said. Every dog and handler must recertify as a team every year, he said, but be- fore handlers get a dog to work with, they train for a year without one. "It's easier to teach an- imals than people," Noble explained. Wylee is 8, but he's fit and a lean 42 pounds, with plenty of time left in his ca- reer, Noble says. Most pa- trollers use Labradors or golden retrievers, but No- ble opted for Wylee partly because he weighs about half what the other breeds weigh. Patrollers have to carry their dogs to search sites in addition to hauling 60-pound backpacks with shovels, probes, headlamps, water and other equipment. The dogs need the lift so they don't get tired before they start working. Dustin Brown, a ski pa- troller at Crested Butte, is going on his second year handling Moose, a Lab- rador retriever. Moose "comes to life in the snow. He feels free. It's playtime. There's a new adventure around every corner," said Brown. Other employees on the mountain help with train- ing. Some buy clothes at thrift stores and wear them repeatedly so the fabric ab- sorbs a human scent that's used to train the dogs. In the event of a search, there won't be time to get a lost skier's scent, so the dogs are trained generically. Dogs are not a require- ment for ski patrollers, though. In fact, for every dog team there are six pa- trollers who go it alone at Squaw Alpine. And one critical part of keeping slopes safe is something dogs don't participate in: early morning rounds to identify where snow needs to be blasted off the moun- tain so it doesn't fall. During the past five win- ters, avalanches have killed 145 people in the United States, according to the Colorado Avalanche Infor- mation Center, the central archive for U.S. avalanche data. The typical victim was a skilled male skier age 25 to 40. Many fatalities take place in the backcoun- try rather than on groomed slopes. Data was not avail- able on how often dogs take part in avalanche searches or how often they are able to help locate victims. Erica Mueller got to see how the Crested Butte dogs work when she volunteered to spend part of an hour in a roomy snow cave waiting to be found, armed with a radio and wearing several layers to stay warm. "I can't talk like a sur- vivor," said Mueller, who now works as Crested Butte's director of innova- tions and relations, "but it was definitely a cool way to see how well trained those dogs are." Online: www.skicb.com squawalpine.com PETS Wh en a n av al an ch e hi ts , le t th e do gs o ut MATTPALMER—SQUAWVALLEYALPINEMEADOWS Dog supervisor Craig Noble puts his border collie Wylee through some paces on the mountain in Olympic Valley. PLEASERECYCLETHISNEWSPAPER. Thankyou! The Associated Press SACRAMENTO A jury in Sacramento federal court has decided that a Placer County nonprofit did not discriminate against a deaf employee by failing to pro- vide an American Sign Lan- guage interpreter. The Sacramento Bee re- ports that last month the jury found that Homeyra Kazerounian's claims that Placer ARC discriminated her were unfounded. The lawsuit was filed in 2013 by the U.S. Equal Em- ployment Opportunity Com- mission. It accused Placer of refusing to provide interpre- tation at staff meetings and forcingKazerouniantocom- municate primarily in Eng- lish, though she was more fluent in American Sign Language, thus violating the federal Americans with Dis- abilities Act. Information from: The Sacramento Bee, www. sacbee.com AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT Sa cramento jury rejects deaf worker's discrimination lawsuit By Ramona Giwargis Bay Area News Group SANTACLARA In a blow to the youth sports commu- nity, a judge on Tuesday de- nied the Santa Clara Youth Soccer League's request to temporarily kick the NFL out of a soccer park next to Levi's Stadium — the latest salvo in what's become an all-outlegalwarpittingsoc- cer parents against the city andtheNFLjustonemonth beforetheSuperBowllands in the Bay Area. The soccer league last week sued Santa Clara to stop the city from hand- ing the 11-acre soccer park over to the NFL for a Su- per Bowl 50 media center, but Santa Clara County Su- perior Court Judge Joseph H. Huber declined then to block the move with a tem- porary restraining order. He denied it again Tues- day, after the soccer league expanded its lawsuit to in- clude the NFL. And while the judge will decide the fate of the soccer park in a hearing Monday to consider a long-term in- junction, the soccer league wanted a restraining order to stop the NFL from using the fields until then. "Obviously, we're dis- appointed," said Gautam Dutta, a managing partner at Business, Energy and Election Law, the firm rep- resenting the soccer league. "Butweremainconfidentin the merits of our case. The city broke the law, and the kids are suffering for it. We will have our day in court on Monday." Dutta and the city's at- torneys on Tuesday met be- hind closed doors with the judgeforthesecond timein a week to hash out accusa- tions that Santa Clara vio- lated the law in how it al- lowed the NFL to use the soccer park for Super Bowl 50. Soccer groups knew since 2013 that the park would be used for the Su- per Bowl and had no objec- tions, said Steve Robertson, vice president of the Santa Clara Youth Soccer League and the petitioner in the lawsuit. What they didn't know, according to Robertson, is that the complex would be used for a "media village," requiring the removal of fences and dugouts and the installation of wooden planks to house nearly 6,000 members of the me- dia. In Tuesday's meeting, at- torneys for the NFL, which was added to the soccer league'slawsuitonMonday, were there as well. And af- ter 30 minutes inside Hu- ber's chambers, the law- yers emerged without a res- olution. The NFL, whose agree- ment with the city allows usage of the park from Jan. 4 to March 2, began remov- ingsprinklerheadsMonday to prepare for construction of a media workroom to house international broad- casters and NFL Films. By mid-Tuesday, a plastic cov- ering was plastered across one of the two grass fields. The youth soccer league, which includes 1,500 local players, argues in its law- suit against that the city failed to follow a process — including holding a public hearing — for changing the soccer park's conditional- use permit. SUPER BOWL Judge denies soccer league's bid to kick out NFL | NEWS | REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM THURSDAY, JANUARY 7, 2016 8 A