• TEEN TIED TO SHOPPING CART DROWNS IN GEORGIA LAKE: CARTERSVILLE, Ga. (AP) — Georgia officials say an 18-year-old drowned just hours after graduating high school when he was tied to a shopping cart and pushed into a lake as part of a game with friends.
Georgia Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Melissa Cummings says Chance Werner of Cartersville died at Lake Allatoona about 35 miles northwest of Atlanta. His body was found early Sunday morning in about 30 feet of water and he was still tied to the cart.
She says in the game Saturday night, participants sat in a shopping cart that was tied to a pole.
Others pushed the cart to the end of the dock so that the person sitting in it would be flung into the water. Cummings says the cart was tied to Werner instead of a pole and it pulled him under.
• MAN HOLDING BREATH IN OREGON TUNNEL CAUSES CRASH: MANNING, Ore. (AP) — A 19-year-old man told investigators he caused a three-car crash when he fainted while holding his breath as he drove through a tunnel northwest of Portland, Oregon State Police said.
Daniel J. Calhon, of Snohomish, Washington, told investigators he fainted Sunday afternoon while holding his breath in the Highway 26 tunnel near the community of Manning, according to a news release. His car, a 1990 Toyota Camry, drifted across the centerline and crashed head-on with a Ford Explorer.
Both vehicles struck the tunnel walls before a pickup hit the Camry.
Calhon and his passenger, 19-year-old Bradley Meyring, of Edmonds, Washington, suffered non-life-threatening injuries, as did the two people in the Explorer: Thomas Hatch Jr., 67, and Candace Hatch, 61, from Astoria. All four were taken to hospitals.
The two people in the pickup were not hurt.
Calhon was cited for reckless driving, three counts of reckless endangerment and fourth-degree assault in Washington County Circuit Court. It was not clear if he had a lawyer.
State Police Lt. Gregg Hastings said Monday he’s not sure why Calhon was holding his breath, but some people hold their breaths in tunnels as part of a game or superstition.
The tunnel, called the Dennis L. Edwards Tunnel, was completed in 1940 and carries the highway through the Northern Oregon Coast Range mountains. It’s 772 feet long, meaning that a car traveling at the posted speed limit of 55 mph would get through it in about 10 seconds.
Hastings told The Oregonian newspaper investigators do not believe drugs or alcohol played a role in the crash.
• POLICE: DRIVER IN CHASE KILLS GIRL ON GA. SIDEWALK: KENNESAW, Ga. (AP) — A locksmith who police say was chasing a 23-year-old who drove away before paying for a lockout service lost control of his car and hit three teenage girls on a sidewalk in northern Georgia, killing one and injuring the other two.
Both men have been arrested.
Cobb County police spokesman Mike Bowman says the locksmith, 27-year-old Tansu Kanlica, of Atlanta, is facing several charges including vehicular homicide and reckless driving. Bowman says he was chasing 23-year-old Garrett Anderson in Kennesaw Sunday night.
Anderson, of Kennesaw, faces similar charges as Kanlica and is also charged with theft of services.
• MAN OWING $330K THREATENED IRS AGENT’S LIFE: PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A Rhode Island man has been convicted of threatening to kill an Internal Revenue Service agent and rape and kill the agent’s wife over a $330,000 tax bill.
A federal judge on Friday found Cranston resident Andrew A. Calcione guilty of threatening to assault and murder an IRS revenue agent and his family.
Prosecutors say Calcione left voice mail messages in the Warwick IRS office on July 15 threatening that if the agent called him again, he would torture the agent, rape and kill his wife and injure his daughter while the agent watched. He said he would then kill the agent.
The 49-year-old Calcione faces up to 20 years in prison when he’s sentenced Sept. 11.
• NO SIGN OF 3 MEN MISSING IN COLORADO SLIDE: COLLBRAN, Colo. (AP) — Rescue teams failed to find any sign Monday of three men missing after a ridge saturated with rain collapsed, sending mud sliding for 3 miles in a remote part of western Colorado.
Clancy Nichols, 51, a county road and bridge employee, his son Danny, 24, and Wes Hawkins, 46, have been missing since Sunday after the ridge collapsed. They went to check on damage from an initial slide near the edge of Grand Mesa, one of the world’s largest flat-topped mountains, after a rancher reported that his irrigation ditch had stopped flowing, Mesa County Sheriff Stan Hilkey said.
The search near the small town of Collbran has been hampered because only the lower third of the slide is stable. Even at the edges, the mud is 20 to 30 feet deep. It’s believed to be several hundred feet deep and about a half mile wide.
Deputies estimate that the entire ridge had been moving for most of Sunday before someone called to report the slide at 6:15 p.m., describing it as sounding like a freight train. Hilkey believes runoff from Grand Mesa from recent rain triggered the slide.
• ALASKA WILDFIRE KEEPS GROWING AFTER EVACUATIONS: ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Officials said that possible rain forecast this week in Alaska could help crews gain control over a massive wind-whipped wildfire that forced dozens of people to flee to shelters and move some of their animals to safety at rodeo grounds.
The Funny River Fire in the state’s Kenai Peninsula covered nearly 248 square miles as of Monday morning and was 30 percent contained, according to the Alaska Interagency Interagency Management Team.
Authorities on Sunday ordered the evacuation of 1,000 homes and other structures in the sparsely populated area 60 miles south of Anchorage.
