Recall skills trigger Spokane arrest

A Spokane Police officer’s memory of a suspect from a previous arrest helped identify a man Thursday night who was charged with first-degree robbery.

Two Diamond Parking employees told officers they had watched a man pulling money from pay boxes for three parking lots downtown.

The employees confronted the man, who then reached into his sweat shirt pocket and pulled out an open knife, police spokesman Dick Cottam said in a press release.

One of the Diamond employees sprayed the knife-wielding man with mace and he ran from the scene.

One of the responding officers remembered a recent arrest in which the suspect was stealing money from a parking box at a different lot. The officer pulled the photo of that previous suspect, 37-year-old Michael A. Heister, and placed it with five other photos. The Diamond employees identified their suspect as Heister.

Based on that information, officers went to Heister’s home at 2109 W. Fourth Ave. and arrested him when he answered the door, Cottam said.

The officers found $71 on Heister, some of which was torn and wrinkled, Cottam said.

Because of the knife, the officers arrested Heister on a charge of first-degree robbery, Cottam said.

Shots break store’s window, miss clerk

At least two shots were fired Thursday night into a 7-Eleven food store at 510 S. Thor Ave. No one was hit, but the slugs broke out the front window and missed the clerk by about 3feet, police said.

Several people were in the parking lot about 10:40 p.m. But the shots apparently came from a car driving south on Thor Street.

Officers recovered a shell casing from the roadway and two slugs from inside the convenience store, police spokesman Dick Cottam said.

Anyone with information is asked to call the TIPS line at 242-TIPS (8477).

Jailed man admits killing former CdA woman

Prompted by a jailhouse tip, police say a Kentucky man has confessed to the September killing of a 19-year-old Coeur d’Alene woman who moved from Idaho to Arizona last summer.

James Dewayne Mullins, 32, of Paducah, faces a charge of second-degree murder after police say he admitted to killing Georgia Thompson. Thompson’s body was found in a Tempe apartment complex parking lot Sept. 8. She had been shot in the head, officials said.

Bill Thompson, the woman’s father, on Friday urged law enforcement officials to show Mullins no mercy.

“He is a cockroach and he just needs to be stepped on,” said Thompson, 55, an insurance salesman. “I have a very hard heart.”

Mullins’ confession apparently was sparked by a tip last week from inside the McCracken County Regional Jail in Paducah, where he was being held on burglary charges. Police released no details about the source of the tip.

However, Tempe detectives said in a news release that they traveled to Kentucky to interview Mullins, who admitted the crime. Mullins is expected to be extradited from Kentucky to Arizona within a month, officials indicated. Mullins’ record includes charges for burglary, theft and drug possession, according to Paducah police records.

Mullins told police he met Thompson when he visited her workplace, a nightclub called “The Skin Cabaret” in Tempe, according to the news release.

Bill Thompson said police told him Mullins said he killed the woman after she attempted to rob him.

“He said he shot her, but it was her fault,” the father said.

Georgia Thompson moved from Coeur d’Alene to Tempe to “try to make it in the world,” Bill Thompson said. The young woman – the sixth of nine children – worked in a Hooters restaurant briefly before taking a job at what her father said was a strip club.

Gun joke earns student trip home

A Post Falls second-grader would have done well to heed the mantra of airport security officials: Don’t even joke about it.

The Prairie View Elementary student kidded with a couple of friends about having a gun as they walked back from the library to their classroom on Thursday.

Those friends told a teacher, and the student was sent to the principal’s office and ultimately sent home for the day.

When the principal asked the student why he said that, he replied: “Well, I was trying to think of a good joke, and that’s all I came up with,” according to Jerry Keane, superintendent of Post Falls School District.

“Even in jest, it’s going to be taken very seriously,” Keane said Friday.

Still, Keane acknowledges mitigating factors such as the child’s age and that he said what he did in a non-threatening manner.

The school is working with the parents to inform the child about the gravity of what he said. He was back in school Friday.

Woman’s body found under debris in home

Shelton, Wash.

A woman reported missing was later found under a pile of debris in her home, where she had suffocated to death, Shelton police said.

After 10 hours of searching Thursday, officers found the body of Marie Rose, 62, buried under clothes.

“This is without a doubt the most cluttered residence I’ve ever been to,” Shelton Police Chief Terry Davenport told KIRO-TV of Seattle. “Officers were having to climb over the top on their hands and knees, in some areas their heads were touching the ceiling while they were standing on top of piles of debris.”

The medical examiner’s office confirmed the woman died of suffocation.

Fire and city code inspectors released the home back to the family after inspecting it. The woman’s husband told KIRO that she had health problems and may have been looking for the phone when she died.