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A PRIL 4, 2012
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V OLUME XXXIV, N O . 13
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C HALLENGING P EOPLE TO S HAPE A B ETTER F UTURE N OW
Baby
Unemployment Nation Shoots
Self
In third such case,
parents hit with
criminal charges
See LAWYER on page 3
See BABY on page 3
PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED
Conway said prosecutors have
little obligation to turn over evi-
dence or help coordinate inter-
views.
“This is just going to be an
uphill battle,” he said.
Maj. Chris Ophardt, an Army
spokesman, said in a statement
that the prosecution will provide
Bales’ defense with evidence in
accordance with court martial
and military rules of evidence.
Within
these
guidelines,
Ophardt said, “the prosecution
is and has been communicating
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — Saying the
death of a 3-year-old boy who shot himself
in the head with a gun found under a car seat
was the result of “criminal negligence,” a
Washington state prosecutor has charged the
child’s mother and her boyfriend with
manslaughter.
Authorities say Jahnisha McIntosh, 23,
left her son unrestrained in a car after she
placed a pistol under the driver’s seat while
she went to get food during a stop for gas.
Her boyfriend, 22-year-old Eric Vita, who
has a concealed weapons permit, had
removed his gun from his waistband to
avoid alarming the clerk and placed it under
the passenger seat, Pierce County Prosecu-
tor Mark Lindquist said.
“Nothing is sadder than the death of a
child, and when the death is the result of
criminal negligence, there needs to be
accountability,” Lindquist said Wednesday.
“Guns are inherently dangerous, and the
law, as well as common sense, requires that
guns be handled responsibly, especially
around children.”
McIntosh and Vita made their initial
appearance
on
the
second-degree
manslaughter charges Wednesday afternoon
in Pierce County Superior Court. They both
pleaded not guilty.
Julio Segura-McIntosh’s death on March
14 was the third child shooting in Western
Washington within three weeks. On Feb. 22,
an 8-year-old girl was critically wounded by
a gun that went off in a classmate’s back-
pack in a Bremerton school. On March 10,
the 7-year-old daughter of a Marysville
police officer was killed when her brother
found a gun in the family car.
In Julio’s case, Vita and McIntosh had
stopped for gas in Tacoma.
Julio had unbuckled himself and climbed
into the front seat to ask his mother for
candy. Authorities say McIntosh moved the
gun from under the passenger seat to under
the driver’s seat so Julio could not reach it.
Then, she went inside the convenience store
for food, leaving Julio unrestrained,
Leon Garnett, the program director with the Central Area Motivational Program talks about the programs CAMP
offers to the unemployed, at the Unemployed Nation Hearings Saturday March 31 in the Bertha Knight Landes room
at City Hall. The event gave workers an opportunity to talk about how their lives have been affected by the
recession.
Afghan Suspect’s Attorney Investigates
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales’ defense says U.S. military is hiding evidence
By Chris Grygiel and Mike
Baker
The Associated Press
SEATTLE (AP) — The attor-
ney for the U.S. soldier accused
of killing 17 Afghan civilians
says the government is “hiding
evidence” and not giving his
defense team the cooperation
they were promised.
The Army says officials have
been following procedures and
communicating with Staff Sgt.
Robert Bales’ defense team.
The disagreement over access
to the evidence and help in get-
ting interviews with witnesses
in Afghanistan highlights the
differences between military
and civilian proceedings.
For one, military legal proce-
dures don’t require prosecutors
to turn over certain information
to the defense until several
weeks before a preliminary
hearing. And at this point,
Bales’ attorney, John Henry
Browne, said there is no judge
to complain to, as he would in a
civilian trial.
“It’s outrageous. What they
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are basically doing is hiding evi-
dence,” said Browne, adding
that he now questions the
strength of the military evidence
since prosecutors are not shar-
ing it.
“We’ll see if they can prove
their case,” he said.
Dan Conway, a military attor-
ney who represented one of four
Joint Base Lewis-McChord sol-
diers convicted in the deliberate
killings of three Afghan civil-
ians in 2010, said the govern-
ment doesn’t appear to be doing
anything wrong at this point.
NFL Concussion Lawsuits Growing
Washington football veterans also diagnosed with brain damage
By Howard Fendrich
AP Pro Football Writer
Mark Rypien is a Super Bowl MVP and
champion, a former quarterback for the
Washington Redskins and other teams who
reached football’s pinnacle and now won-
ders at what cost.
His memory failing him, the 49-year-old
Rypien tape-records significant conversa-
tions with his girlfriend, he explains, “So we
can go back ... when I vehemently say, `I did
not say that.’” He suffers from depression,
which Rypien finds particularly worrisome
when he thinks about his cousin Rick, an
NHL enforcer who faced that condition for
years before committing suicide at age 27 in
August. Rypien wants to know what hap-
pened to the “fairly mellow individual” he
once was, before he became more impulsive
and irritable.
Concerns such as those are why Rypien
put his name alongside those of several hun-
dred - and, lawyers involved say, soon per-
haps more than 1,000 - ex-players who are
suing the NFL in federal court in Philadel-
phia. They say the league didn’t do enough
to inform players about the dangers of head
See BRAIN on page 3