Video Game Customer Assaults Store Clerk

A clerk at the Premier Video store at 2820 E. 29th was attacked Monday afternoon by a man who stole a video game player.

The clerk wasn’t injured in the scuffle, but the suspect made off with a rental Sega Genesis CDX video game player. New players are valued at about $100.

The clerk told police the suspect entered the store about 4:30 p.m. and picked out three video games.

The clerk was showing the suspect how to use the video player when the suspect took the device and attempted to flee. The clerk grabbed the suspect. The two fell to the floor and scuffled briefly.

The suspect grabbed the video player, which also had fallen to the floor, and fled.

The suspect is described as about 20 years old, 6 feet tall and 180 pounds. The clerk told police the suspect was a light-complexioned black male with freckles, who wore a dark-blue stocking cap and a blue, waist-length jacket.

Student arrested on gun charge

Police arrested a 14-year-old Lewis and Clark High School student Friday for possession of a handgun.

“The boy told police he brought the gun to school to give to another student who promised to sell it for him,” said Dick Cottam, spokesman for the Spokane Police Department.

LC Principal Michael Howson said school officials received “an anonymous phone call from a community member who knew the boy had a gun.”

A security guard brought the boy from class to the principal’s office and the boy admitted to being in possession of the gun, Howson said.

“The student was immediately expelled from school for one year and the police were summoned,” Howson said. State law requires that any student who brings a gun to school be expelled, Howson said.

Police said the youth was a suspect in the theft of the gun several weeks ago from a house in the 1700 block of East Mission.

Authorities charged the juvenile with burglary, then released him into the custody of his parents.

Grange firewood stolen

A cold, or perhaps cold-blooded, burglar broke into the East Cheney Grange and stole its supply of Douglas fir firewood.

Also missing is a double-bladed axe, said sheriff’s deputy Dave Reagan.

The grange, a community meeting place, is heated by a wood stove.

A nearby neighbor, John W. Phillips, told police he noticed tire and shoe tracks near the building after a snowstorm last Thursday, Reagan said.

On Saturday, Phillips saw that the back door of the grange’s wood shed had been removed and the hasp and lock were missing, so he called sheriff’s deputies.

Spangle business burglarized

Burglars used an ice pick to break into B.J.K. Worldwide Inc., located in the 600 block of East Cameron in Spangle.

Sheriff’s deputies said someone had rifled through desks and drawers, but B.J.K. owner James C. Triplet reported that nothing had been taken from the business, which makes visual aides for church presentations.

Triplet told police the break-in occurred between 5 p.m. last Wednesday and 8 p.m. last Thursday.

Triplet told police he had left the ice pick outside the door after using it to clear ice from the sidewalk.

Two sets of boot prints were found in the snow, apparently those of the burglars, said sheriff’s deputy Dave Reagan.

Suspects used the ice-pick to shatter the lock and pry open the rear door of the business.

“They went through my desk and briefcase,” Triplet said. “I think they were looking for money.”

“Luckily, I had taken my computers out of the office because of the cold,” he said.

, DataTimes