In brief: Briefs: Help point people to best holiday displays
Someone in your neighborhood have a light display that rivals Clark Griswold’s from “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”? Does your street go for elegance in crafting a tasteful and twinkling holiday show? Know of a place that goes all high-tech with lights synchronized to music?
We want to hear about it.
Visit our holiday light map online and enter the coordinates in our mapping program. If you have a specific address, great. If you only know cross streets, that’ll work, too.
We’ll publish a list of the homes in the paper Thursday. And as you head out to tour the best and brightest holiday displays, our map will help you find your way.
Visit www.spokesman.com/ holidaylights to enter an address or plot your route.
Woman in back seat interrupts SUV larceny
Police are looking for information about the identity of a man who allegedly stole a cellphone from an SUV while a woman slept in the back seat.
The SUV was parked at the plasma center at 2100 N. Monroe St. about 4 p.m. Sunday. A couple went inside while their adult daughter slept in the car.
The woman inside the car told police that a man on a bike opened the front door of the car, took a cellphone from the cup holder and attempted to take a purse off the front seat. When the woman tried to stop him, he reportedly grabbed her arm and pulled out a knife, according to a police news release.
The man fled with the phone. The incident was caught on video surveillance.
He is described as white man in his 30s about 6 feet tall with a thin build. He had sandy brown hair and a stubble beard. He was wearing a white-and-blue backpack and black jeans. He rode a light-colored mountain bike.
State trooper uses car to end high-speed chase
A high-speed chase through North Idaho and Spokane Valley ended in the arrest of the driver at gunpoint late Thursday night after he sped through multiple red lights.
A Washington State Patrol trooper took over the chase as it entered Washington from Idaho on I-90 about 10:30 p.m. Thursday. The car left the freeway in Liberty Lake and continued west on Appleway Boulevard and Sprague Avenue with six police cars in pursuit, according to court documents.
Spokane Valley Police officers blocked northbound and southbound traffic at all the main intersections as the chase continued west. The car, driven by 27-year-old Ryan W. Benson, went through red lights at Sullivan Road and Evergreen Road and managed to avoid three sets of spike strips, according to court documents.
Benson was stopped near Mullan Road and Sprague after his car was struck by a WSP trooper.
Man charged in hash oil manufacture, explosion
A man has been arrested after he tried to make hash oil from marijuana and instead caused a mobile home to explode Nov. 19.
Jesse L. Wenzel, 24, is accused of manufacturing drugs near a school and reckless burning.
Hash oil, also called honey oil, is concentrated THC that is extracted from marijuana using solvents and either propane or butane. Firefighters who arrived in the 17500 block of East Sprague Avenue just before midnight saw evidence of a hash oil lab and called police.
Wenzel was inside the mobile home at the time but suffered only minor injuries.
While possession of marijuana is now legal, the manufacture of honey oil is illegal.
CdA police seek help finding assault suspect
The Coeur d’Alene Police Department is searching for a man with the phrase “God hates cowards” tattooed on his neck in connection with a Dec. 6 assault at 216 E. Lakeside Ave.
Police were called to the location at the time, but the man who said he was punched declined to press charges and declined medical treatment, according to a police news release. However, the man’s wife recently contacted police and told them her husband is in the hospital with a traumatic brain injury.
The woman told police that her husband got in an argument with three men outside a bar at 2:10 a.m. One punched him and the man fell backward and hit his head on the sidewalk. He reportedly has been in the hospital since Monday.
The man who threw the punch is described as about 6 feet tall and in his 20s. His hair was long on top and shaved on the sides. He had several tattoos on his arms and neck. He was wearing jeans, a flannel shirt and a green snowboarding jacket.
Anyone with information about the identity of the suspect is asked to call police at (208) 769-2320 or send an email to policetips@cdaid.org.
Labrador measures pass without his support
Two bills sponsored by Idaho Republican Rep. Raul Labrador, one extending grazing leases and the other transferring a shooting range property from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to Idaho County, have passed the Senate and are headed for the president’s desk, Labrador announced Friday – though in the end, Labrador voted against them.
That’s because the bills were attached to the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, in the closing days of the 113th Congress, Labrador’s office said in a new release Friday.
“The NDAA was totally unrelated to the substance of Labrador’s bills, which had previously passed with bipartisan support,” wrote Labrador’s press secretary, Dan Popkey. “Labrador voted against the defense bill because he continues to object to the NDAA on both foreign policy and civil liberties grounds. He opposes the NDAA’s authorization of $1.6 billion to arm and train Syrian rebels and continues to have concerns about the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism.”