In brief: Idaho GOP says Paul won poll

BOISE – The Idaho Republican Party says congressman Ron Paul of Texas has won its inaugural presidential straw poll.

The party says nearly 400 people from across the state cast votes in the poll, which took place Friday night at the Riverside Hotel in Boise.

Paul came in first with 173 votes. He was followed by Mitt Romney, with 135 votes. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was a distant third, with 47 votes.

The cost to cast a vote in the nonbinding poll was $30, which has raised questions about the poll’s true representative nature.

However, Idaho Republican Party Executive Director Jonathan Parker has said the goal of the event is to get the candidates to come to Idaho and court voters before the GOP caucuses March 6.

The state Republican Party also has moved up its presidential primary from late May to early March in hopes of making Idaho’s 32 delegates more valuable in the nominating process.

Bullet penetrates several walls, door

SALEM – Police say a man accidentally fired a shot from his AK-47 rifle inside his home Thursday night at Salem.

The bullet went through several walls and into his neighbor’s house. Police say the bullet continued through several more walls and a door, narrowly missing two adults and a child inside.

The 26-year-old gun owner was arrested and jailed on charges of reckless endangerment.

Thieves leave trail of loot

CORBETT, Ore. – Thieves who broke into an Oregon man’s shed, taking safes filled with jewels, silver bricks and valuable coins, quickly started making mistakes.

Multnomah County sheriff’s officers believe the trio made off with silver coins and bricks worth more than $20,000, jewelry worth $25,000 and about $7,000 in rare coins and other currency. Now some of that loot is being recovered.

The thieves thought much of the jewelry was fake – and tossed it, the Oregonian reported. Other items were pawned, leaving a trail.

Detective Ken Yohe said they took more than 50 pounds of coins to a grocery coin-counting machine, which gave them a voucher for $450. The machine spit out the silver coins, which the suspects traded for bills at a Bank of America branch. But a bank employee noted the coins were silver, and old, and set them aside, making it easy for officers to later recover them.

Now property owner Dan Johnson Sr. is sorting through the coin-counting machine’s contents to recover his valuable coins.

Former Ranger going to prison

OLYMPIA – Pleas for leniency from a former Army Ranger’s friends and family fell on deaf ears Thursday as a judge sentenced him to 10 years in prison for stabbing a young man in the back during a brawl outside a downtown Olympia bar.

Alfred Joseph Sanchez, 22, a former member of the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, had been found guilty at trial of first-degree assault with a deadly weapon for the March 28, 2009, stabbing of Brad Merten. Sanchez had waived his right to a jury trial and was convicted in December by Thurston County Superior Court Judge Christine Pomeroy at the conclusion of a bench trial.

In handing down her sentence Thursday, Pomeroy said “age and alcohol” were factors in why the crime occurred. “I’ve been a judge way too long to know that people who take alcohol do many very stupid things on a Saturday night,” Pomeroy told Sanchez. “But this was more than stupid; it was reckless.”

Sanchez had served two tours of duty in Afghanistan and recently had completed a tour of duty in Iraq when he returned to Joint Base Lewis-McChord. He was out with fellow Rangers on the night of Merten’s stabbing.