Woman dies in car accident

A 78-year-old Grangeville woman died Thursday afternoon after the vehicle she was driving went over an embankment on state Highway 14, the Idaho State Police said.

Betty J. Cavoretto was heading west about 12:30 p.m. when she failed to negotiate a corner near mile post 9 east of Grangeville, according to a press release.

The 2002 Chevy TrailBlazer she was driving tumbled down an embankment about 20 feet and came to rest on the passenger side.

Elk, Wash.

Store owner fires warning shot

The owner of the Backwood general store in the northern Spokane County community of Elk tracked down a man suspected of stealing beer and fired a warning shot, but the suspect got away.

Sheriff’s Lt. Earl Howerton said the store owner knew a man who allegedly shoplifted beer Thursday and drove by the man’s Elk-area house later in the day. The owner confronted the man outside the house and fired a warning shot from a 9-mm pistol when the man ran into the house, Howerton said.

The father of the suspect came out and was arguing with the store owner when deputies arrived shortly after 5 p.m., but the suspect had vanished.

Howerton identified the suspect as Robert S. McDonnell, 32. In addition to the alleged beer theft, Howerton said, McDonnell had been driving a stolen car that later was recovered.

The incident remained under review, but there was no immediate plan to charge the store owner, Howerton said. Shooting is permitted in the rural area, and the shot was not fired recklessly, he said.

Ephrata, Wash.

Jury deliberating in teen’s death

Prosecutors urged a jury Thursday to convict a teenager of first-degree murder in the brutal slaying of a playmate three years ago, scoffing at the defendant’s claims that he left the victim injured after a fall from a tree but didn’t kill him.

Evan Savoie, now 15, is among the youngest murder defendants ever to be tried as an adult. He is accused in the Feb. 15, 2003, slaying of Craig Sorger, a 13-year-old developmentally disabled student who was found beaten and brutally stabbed in a recreational vehicle park.

Jurors began deliberating Savoie’s fate Thursday afternoon but recessed for the night without reaching a verdict. They were to resume deliberations today.

Savoie has repeatedly proclaimed his innocence, saying Sorger fell from a tree and that he left him lying on a trail, with no pulse, but did not attack him. Savoie said he left without getting aid after repeatedly trying to revive the other boy.

Common sense dictates otherwise, Deputy Prosecutor Ed Owens said in his closing statement. There was no evidence Sorger had ever fallen from a tree, and the defendant told another playmate that day that he wanted to go on a killing spree shortly before the slaying.

Vancouver, B.C.

Polygamist group land sale opposed

A Utah-controlled trust has asked the courts for legal intervention to prevent members of a Bountiful, B.C., polygamist community from cashing out its assets and moving.

“We’ve just heard rumors that they may be going to another province,” said Zachary Shields, a lawyer representing Bruce Wisan, the court-appointed accountant running the church trust in Utah. The Bountiful group has ties to the Hildale, Utah-based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a polygamist church whose United Effort Plan trust holds property in Utah, Arizona and Canada. The group’s leader, Warren Jeffs, is wanted on criminal charges in Utah and Arizona for allegedly arranging marriages between underage girls and older men. He has not been seen by authorities in nearly two years and is being sought by the FBI.

Last year, a Utah judge put the trust in the hands of an independent accountant after Jeffs followers began liquidating assets and establishing communities in other states.

The British Columbia lawsuit seeks to prevent the same thing from being attempted there. The focus of the lawsuit is the Bountiful Elementary-Secondary School Society, which owns six parcels of property including two schools, a meeting house, timberland and some homes.

Compiled from staff and wire reports