8/8/2019 Officer shot, 'is very serious,' page 2

1/1

By GEORGE MERRITTThe Associated Press

DENVER A gunman who

illed four people in two shoot-ngs did not send hate mail to

a Christian missionary train-ng center where some of theictims were shot, authorities

said Friday, backing off fromtheir earlier statements.

Police now say Matthew

Murray sent e-mails to an af-filiated group in which hecriticized Christians but didnot threaten violence.

Police in Colorado Springs,where Murray opened fire atthe New Life Church, had saidin a court document this weekthat the 24-year-old had sentdeath threats to the YouthWith a Mission center in theDenver suburb of Arvada.

Arvada Police Cmdr. KathyFoos blamed the misstate-ment on miscommunication

between police in Arvada andColorado Springs.

The e-mails in question areseparate from Internet screedslinked to Murray that bitterlycondemned Christianity andthreatened to kill believers.

Police still have not saidwhether they are certain Mur-ray wrote those diatribes.

A6 The Huntsville Times, Saturday, December 15, 2007

*Metal Tear Out Or CappingCharges May Apply

499$5 PATIO DOOR

INSTALLED*

WeAre AmericasFastestGrowing Replacement WindowCompanyNowServingOver100 MarketsIn TheU.S.andCanada!

www.clearchoice-huntsville.com

HUNTSVILLES BEST WINDOW VALUE!

www.clearchoiceusa-huntsville.com256-534-1782

VINYL DOUBLE HUNG OR 2-LITE VINYL SLIDERINYLDOUBLEHUNG OR 2-L ITEVINYL SL IDER

*UP TO 120 U.I DOUBLE HUNG - 132 U.I 2-LITE SLIDER4 WINDOW MINIMUM WITH STANDARD REMOVAL

ADDITIONAL CHARGES FOR METAL REMOVAL

00620161

The Best Local Classifieds in Print and Online

The Lure of

the Outdoors

The Lure of

the Outdoors

Before you head out to catch the

Big One this weekend, make

sure you reel in a great deal on

some new and used equipment!

NASA is using the bulgingargo aircraft, which is capablef moving more than 50,000ounds of cargo, to collect apace station program trussegment that is fitted with aovement joint currently in

torage at Marshall Space Flight

enter, Marshall spokesmanSteve Roy said.The joint, called a Solar

lpha Rotary Joint, or SARJ, iseeded at Johnson Space Cen-

ter, near Houston, to help en-gineers and astronauts better

nderstand its malfunctioningtwin now on the InternationalSpace Station. The station uses

two of the joints to rotate itspower-generating solar arrays.

Spacewalking astronauts dis-covered metal shavings in thejoint, which is 15 feet wide andlocated on the starboard, orright side, of the space station.

The shavings have frozen one ofthe stations solar panels, cuttingthe amount of power it can drawfrom the suns rays. The joint isalso experiencing unexplainedelectrical power surges.

A truss section is joined withthe solar array joint, said Boe-ings Scott West. Both will beloaded Monday, and the Super

Guppy is slated to leave Red-stone Army Airfield on Tuesday,Boyd said.

The massive Super Guppylooks like a flying whale and has been used for more than adecade to move parts of the In-ternational Space Station. Sim-ilar NASA aircraft were usedduring the Saturn and earlyspace shuttle eras to move largerocket parts.

Its front section is hinged and

opens like a giant mouth tomove special cargo canisters inand out of the aircraft.

Even though the SuperGuppy lives up to its name oflooking like a fat fish with wings, Boyd said the aircraftgives a smooth ride. It flies pret-ty well through the sky. It doesa good job.

GuppyContinued from page A1

On The Nethttp://spaceflight.nasa.

gov/station/assembly/su-perguppy/index.html

peoples organization.Thats why volunteers like

the Speers, the Wellses, andSiegfried Wendland show upach year to help, as they did

the night I appeared. Theytote trees, saw stumps, lopower branches and load theinished results.

Tree-choosing is its own art

orm. Kids can hijack theprocess with their glowing lit-tle faces and puhleez, thisone that can cost you $100.Fights over which tree is yourtree both within the familyand with the family in thenext row can end in Christ-mas clashes.

There is a better way.Compromise, Mike Block-

er of Huntsville said Thursdaynight.

Theres a good word for aappy holiday season. Youay never get better advice

or the season of stress.Blocker and his wife,iane, had just compromised

n a tree for their southuntsville home. He thought

t was fine; she thought itight be a little thin here and

there.But they compromised.Lashing that tree to the top

f the family SUV, we shared

tales of Christmas trees past.The airborne trees that endedup in the middle of BaileyCove Road, the tree the catdecided was a personal gift,

the trees bought so late thechoices were positively Char-lie Brown.

The great tradition is thelive tree. With artificial treesnow sold with everythingfrom lights to natural scents,it takes commitment to spend$50 or more every year on alive tree.

We tried the artificialtrees, Mick Speer admitted.But each year, they look a lit-tle worse, and it takes somuch time to get each limb inposition.

Who needs it?Working on a Christmas

tree lot is pretty simple. Let

the people find their tree, usethe chainsaw to trim an inchor so from the bottom (tostimulate water absorption),trim any lower branches thatwould get in the way of astand, and tie that baby to thevehicle.

I noted a little reluctance tolet me wield a chainsaw. Wisemen are everywhere this timeof year.

We should give a $5 dis-count for people with a pick-up, Speer said as we tossed atree in the back cab of a truck.

One thing blessedly miss-ing was a camera, video orstill, except for the one in thehands of a Times photogra-pher. Youd think, youd sus-pect, this would be one ofthose events parents couldnthelp documenting.

No, no, no. Live it. Dontworry about filming it. Thatsthe way, and the people ofHuntsville, at least this night,seemed to get that.

Sure, everyone wants keep-er footage of Grammy in thatridiculous Rudolph sweater.But some family traditionsare best when they live asfamily memories, when wecan argue about them andhave no Michael Moore docu-mentary to show it wasnt justthe way we remember.

What are some of thosememories of a Christmas treelot? The smell of fir and sap,

the whoops of children andyelps of dogs chasing eachother through the tree rows,that beautiful feeling of look-ing beside you and seeingthose you love best.

Thats a lot for less than 10bucks a foot.

RoopContinued from page A1

Light a treeThe Young Life Christmas

tree lot will be open for itslast day today. No reason-able offer will be refused,sellers say. The lot is on theeast side of WhitesburgDrive between Airport Roadand Drake Avenue.

Now, he said, senior driversget the best buses.

The point system is de-signed to reduce driver ab-sences and protect the schoolsystems $14 million investmentin buses, Evans said.

When a driver is absent, an-other bus must run that route,sometimes doubling the num-ber of students on board. Get-ting those kids to school ontime also becomes more chal-lenging and the absence irksparents, Evans said.

It puts everybody at a losswhen drivers dont show, he

said.Nearly all of the 247 county

bus drivers are diligent, Evanssaid, but just a few absences cancreate chaos during pick-upsand drop-offs.

We expect students to cometo school every day, he said.We should expect the samething of drivers.

The point system also givesdrivers incentive to keep thebuses clean and correct bad be-havior. They can lose twopoints for excessive disciplinary

referrals and dirty buses.Senior drivers do get a head

start, however. They automat-ically earn two points for everyfive years served.

In addition to air-condi-tioning, new buses generallyride more smoothly, have nicerseats and are equipped with in-tercoms so drivers dont haveto yell at kids to communicatewhile driving, Evans said.

Buses built before 2000

dont have air-conditioning.Those buses will be replaced orused for minor purposes after10 years on the road, Evanssaid.

Evans said the point system was developed with suggestions from the Alabama Edu-cation Association, a schoolemployee support organiza-tion. Attempts to reach AEAwere unsuccessful.

DriversContinued from page

A1

Dave Dieter/Huntsville Times

NASA's Super Guppy arrives at Ellington Field in this February 2006 photo.

Eric Schultz/Huntsville Times

A student boards a Madison County School bus after school atRiverton Elementary School Friday.

Gunman didnt send hate mail

comparison with those thecompany follows in Alabama.

The collision of the LaidlawTransit bus and a car driven bya Lee High School student oc-curred near the on-ramp of In-terstate 565 on Nov. 20, 2006,at the Church Street overpass.

Forty students from LeeHigh School were on the buswhen it plunged over a retain-

ing wall. The bus fell 30 feet tothe ground and crashed nosefirst.

Attorneys for the victims

started filing lawsuits againstLaidlaw in January. The busdriver, Scott, and the cars driv-er, a minor whose name is being withheld, also are de-fendants.

The suits say Laidlaw failedto ensure the bus had proper-ly functioning and fitting seatbelts and to enforce the use ofseat belts by the bus driver, whowas not wearing his seat belt.

He was ejected from the vehi-cle before it left the elevatedroadway.

The suits seek punitive and

compensatory damages.The lawyers are scheduled to

take recorded statements fromLaidlaw officials on Dec. 27 andfrom Scott on Jan. 4. The driv-er of the car will be 19 years oldin March. He will no longer beentitled to a court-appointedguardian to protect his legalrights, so the lawyers will takehis statement sometime nextyear.

CrashContinued from page A1

Bryan Bacon/Huntsville Times

Police officers surround a police car with a suspect inside near the intersection of WeatherlyRoad and Bailey Cove Road.

Lowest since 04;2 U.S. soldierskilled ThursdayBy TINA SUSMANLos Angeles Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq The

U.S. military said Friday thattwo American soldiers haddied in separate incidents, butdespite the latest deaths, De-cember was shaping up to bethe safest month for U.S.forces in Iraq since 2004.

The military gave few de-tails of the most recent casu-alties. Both occurred Thurs-day.

One soldier died of woundssuffered when a bomb ex-ploded during a foot patrol;

another was killed by gunfirein the capital, the U.S. mili-tary said.

In the first two weeks ofNovember, 23 Americanforces had been killed, com-pared with 10 in December,according to the Department

of Defense and www.icasual-ties.org.If the current pace of less

than one death per day ismaintained, December could be the least deadly monthsince February 2004, when20 U.S. troops died, accord-ing to www.icasualties.org.

A total of 3,891 Americantroops have died since the warbegan in March 2003.

U.S. officials attribute thedownward trend in deaths to

security gains resulting from

Iraqis rejection of insurgents

and to increased troop

strength resulting from the

addition of 28,500 American

forces sent to Iraq earlier in

2007.

These factors also have led

to a drop in bombings and

other attacks on civilians, say

Iraqi and American officials.

Nevertheless, the country

remains far from calm.

Shiite Muslim clergymen

used Friday prayers to con-

demn bombings in the south-

ern city of Amarah that killed

28 people.

Deaths in Iraq down for December

whether there were any othersuspects.

The police department willrelease details about the sus-

pect, the officers conditionand possible charges earlytoday. Witnesses at the scenesaid the suspect was a middle-aged white male who was ap-

prehended by officers at theTexaco station at Bailey Coveand Weatherly.

The department is still reel-ing from the shooting of offi-

cer Daniel Golden, who was

killed in the line of duty on Aug.

29, 2005, in front of a Mexican

restaurant on Jordan Lane.

Eight Huntsville police offi-cers have died in the line of duty

since the department was

founded.

OfficerContinued from page A1

By KEN THOMASThe Associated Press

WASHINGTON ToyotaMotor Corp. said Friday it isrecalling 15,600 four-by-fourversions of the 2007 Tundrapickup truck in the UnitedStates because of problems with a propeller shaft con-nected to the rear axle.

The automaker said a jointin the rear propeller shaft may

have been improperly heat-treated, leading to an inade-quate amount of hardness. Asection of the rear propellershaft could separate at the joint and immobilize thetruck and force it to coast toa stop, the company said.

Toyota spokesman BillKwong said in an e-mail thatthere were no accidents or in-juries linked to the recall. The

rear propeller shaft helpsdrive the rear axle, whichturns the rear wheels.

Toyota has learned of onecase that could be linked tothe problem. It involved anabnormal amount of noisecoming from the trucks un-dercarriage.

Customers with addition-al questions can contact Toy-ota at 800-331-4331.

Toyota recalls 15,600 Tundras