Snow, rain in California snarl travel
LOS ANGELES -- The second round of a fall storm dumped snow and rain Thursday that jammed traffic on Southern California highways and loosened hillsides in wildfire-burned areas.
At least one vehicle got stuck in a mudslide that shut down the Pacific Coast Highway and surrounding roads in and around Malibu neighborhoods charred by last month's destructive fire.
Nobody was hurt when a Southwest Airlines plane from Oakland skidded off a wet runway as it landed during downpours at Hollywood Burbank Airport north of Los Angeles. The plane came to a stop in a graded area designed to slow aircraft that overshoot the runway, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
Cars and trucks slid in lanes during heavy snow that forced the closure of Interstate 5 in the Grapevine area between Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley. The hourslong shutdown along the key north-south route caused backups for miles, transportation officials said.
The system was expected to linger for much of the day before dissipating early today.
No 3rd trial for agent in border killing
PHOENIX -- Federal prosecutors said Thursday that they will not seek a third trial for a Border Patrol agent who has been acquitted twice after fatally shooting a Mexican teenager across a border fence.
A filing in court shows prosecutors say they will no longer pursue the case against Lonnie Swartz, the agent who killed Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16, in October 2012.
In April, Swartz was acquitted of second-degree murder, but a jury deadlocked on manslaughter charges. Prosecutors retried Swartz on voluntary and involuntary manslaughter charges. They said Swartz lost his cool when he became frustrated at rock-throwers from the Mexican side of the border while on the job.
The second trial, which began in October, ended with an acquittal on the involuntary-manslaughter charge, but the jury again deadlocked on voluntary manslaughter.
Swartz's attorney said he was acting in self-defense and following Border Patrol policy when he fired at least 16 shots at Elena Rodriguez through the slats of a border fence dividing Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales in the Mexican state of Sonora.
The boy's family still denies that he was involved. They say his killing was not justified.
Tennessee executes killer after 36 years
A Tennessee inmate became the second person to die in the electric chair in just over a month Thursday, nearly two decades after the state adopted lethal injection as its preferred method of execution.
David Earl Miller, 61, was pronounced dead at 7:25 p.m. Thursday at a Nashville maximum-security prison, corrections officials said.
Miller spent 36 years on death row, the longest of any inmate in Tennessee.
Both Miller and Edmund Zagorski before him chose the electric chair over lethal injection.
The inmates argued in court that Tennessee's current midazolam-based method causes a prolonged and torturous death.
Their case was thrown out, largely because a judge said they failed to prove a more humane alternative was available. Zagorski was executed Nov. 1. Gov. Bill Haslam declined Thursday to intervene in Miller's execution.
Moments before the execution, Miller was asked if he wanted to say anything, but his reply was not understandable. He was asked again and his attorney clarified that he was saying, "Beats being on death row."
Miller was convicted of killing 23-year-old Lee Standifer in 1981 in Knoxville. Standifer was a mentally handicapped woman who had been on a date with Miller the night she was repeatedly beaten, stabbed and dragged into some woods.
Wrong-way trucker hits team bus; 2 die
DOWNS, Ill. -- A semitrailer heading the wrong way on an interstate crashed into a school bus carrying an Illinois high school girls basketball team, killing the truck driver and an adult on the bus, authorities said Thursday.
The Illinois State Police said eight girls were injured when the truck collided head-on with their bus Wednesday night along Interstate 74 near Downs, a village in central Illinois about 115 miles southwest of Chicago. Police said the bus driver and a coach also were injured.
Normal West High School Principal Dave Johnson said five girls had been treated and released from the hospital Thursday. Police said none of the girls' injuries was considered life-threatening.
Johnson said the coach, Steve Price, suffered "multiple broken bones that will require surgery," but that he was also expected to recover. Johnson said he didn't know the condition of the bus driver.
Police identified the bus passenger who died as 72-year-old Charles Crabtree, a volunteer with the high school. Preliminary reports indicate the truck driver, identified by the Peoria County coroner as Ryan Hute, 34, of Delmar, Iowa, was traveling eastbound in the westbound lanes, authorities said. The westbound lanes were closed after the crash.
A Section on 12/07/2018