In brief: Woman found sleep swimming
BURLEY, Idaho – A south-central Idaho woman with a history of sleepwalking was treated for hypothermia after apparently sleep swimming in the Snake River.
Cassia County officials said the disappearance was the third time in five weeks the 31-year-old wife and mother from Burley had left her house at night. Another time, deputies located her disoriented and wet after another apparent sleep swim.
The woman’s husband called the sheriff’s office at 2:25 a.m. Tuesday to report his wife was missing. The woman was located, wet and hypothermic, on the riverbank about a quarter mile downstream from the house.
After her latest disappearance, a judge ordered a mental health evaluation. The sheriff’s report says she was not found to be a danger to herself or others.
Day care worker gets life sentence
BOISE – A former Boise day care operator has been sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for the December 2009 death of a 2-year-old boy.
Katherine Stanfield maintained her innocence in the death of Wyatt Fesler even as she was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 10 years.
Prosecutors alleged Stanfield violently slammed the boy’s head into a hard object three times, apparently over his unwillingness to take off his coat. Wyatt was comatose when paramedics arrived and he died two days later. Paramedics noted there were handprints on the boy’s shoulders. He suffered injuries to his spinal cord and brain along with massive internal bleeding.
Stanfield’s defense was that the boy had medical issues, including equilibrium problems that caused him to fall and injure himself.
Idaho trust funds to rise to $49 million
BOISE – Idaho’s endowment trusts are due a total of nearly $49 million in fiscal year 2014, about 2.8 percent more than this year, as increased revenue from timber sales helps bolster cash.
The Idaho Land Board Tuesday unanimously approved the distribution, from money generated by the Idaho Department of Lands’ management of 2.5 million acres of endowment lands.
Public schools will get $31.3 million, the same amount they received this fiscal year.
Managers of Idaho’s endowment fund recommended waiting to increase K-12 schools’ share until their reserves are restored to levels covering at least five years’ worth of distributions.
130 inmates sent to Colorado prison
BOISE – The Idaho Department of Correction has flown 130 inmates to a prison in Colorado because Idaho’s prison don’t have enough room to hold the state’s growing inmate population.
The inmates were flown Tuesday morning on a chartered jet to Denver, and from there they took a bus to the Kit Carson Correctional Center in Burlington, Colo. The prison is owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America.
Idaho’s inmate population reached more than 8,000 for the first time in April. The Department of Correction has been renting beds in county jails to ease the pressure, but that wasn’t enough to accommodate the demand.
Department Director Brent Reinke said the move is hard on families, but the state is simply out of room.