The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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Tuesday, February 24, 2015 — 5

JEFF ROBERSON/AP

FILE - In this Aug. 18, 2014, file photo, Brown family attorney Benjamin Crump speaks during a news conference in St. Louis County, Mo. Crump, the high-profile attorney for 
the family of a black teenager killed by an officer in Ferguson, Missouri, says he’s representing the parents of an unarmed Mexican man who was shot to death by police this 
month in Washington state. Crump told The Associated Press he’s meeting with Antonio Zambrano-Montes’ parents Monday, Feb. 23, 2015, in Pasco, Wash.
Ferguson lawyer to represent 
family of slain Mexican man 

Alaskans pass 
legalization 
of marijuana

Slump in Dow Jones 
stock affects market

CHRIS TILLEY/AP

Morris Bounds Sr. pauses while talking Monday, Feb. 23, 2015, in Ansted, W.Va., about a train derailment that destroyed his 
home near Mount Carbon, W.Va. Bounds said he is thankful to be alive after fleeing his home seconds before it was destroyed. 
In Ansted, derailed train 
crashes into man’s home 

Video of shooting 
sparks controversy 
similar to Ferguson 

PASCO, Wash. (AP) — The 

high-profile attorney who repre-
sented the family of a black teen-
ager killed by a police officer in 
Ferguson, Missouri, says he’ll rep-
resent the parents of an unarmed 
Mexican man who was shot to 
death by officers this month in 
Washington state.

The Feb. 10 killing of Antonio 

Zambrano-Montes — captured on 
video by a witness — has sparked 
protests and calls for a federal 
investigation.

On Monday, Benjamin Crump 

told The Associated Press that the 
family is worried about the fair-
ness of an investigation.

Authorities 
say 
Zambrano-

Montes, a 35-year-old Mexican 
immigrant and former orchard 
worker, was throwing rocks at 
officers. They say a stun gun 
failed to subdue him.

“At the heart of the matter is 

what’s going on with what we see 
on that video — is it appropriate 
or not?” said the Florida-based 
Crump, who has represented the 
families of Trayvon Martin and 
Michael Brown.

Zambrano-Montes’ family is 

worried about whether the case 
will be investigated fairly because 
of “what happened in Ferguson,” 
Crump said.

“The No. 1 thing they said is, 

‘We don’t want them to say that 
the police acted appropriately,’” 
he told the AP.

In a video recording by Dario 

Infante, 21, of Pasco, five “pops” 
are audible, and Zambrano-Mon-
tes can be seen running away, 

pursued by three officers. As the 
officers draw closer, he stops, 
turns around and faces them. 
Multiple “pops” are heard, and 
the man falls to the ground.

The Franklin County coroner 

has ordered an inquest into the 
death, which is being reviewed 
by a regional task force and being 
monitored by federal authorities.

Felix Vargas, head of the Pasco 

Hispanic rights group Consejo 
Latino, said a Seattle-based Jus-
tice Department official met with 
his group Sunday. The official 
said meetings are planned this 
week with local authorities, Var-
gas said.

Pasco is a fast-growing agri-

cultural city of 68,000, where 
more than half the residents are 
Hispanic but few are members 
of the police force or the power 
structure

The killing was the fourth by 

Pasco police in less than a year 
and has led to protests. Officers 
were exonerated after similar 
investigations in the first three 
cases. Critics in the latest case say 
the officers should have used less 
than lethal force to subdue Zam-
brano-Montes.

Police said officers felt threat-

ened by Zambrano-Montes. He 
was arrested last year for assault 
after throwing objects at Pasco 
officers and trying to grab an offi-
cer’s pistol, court records show.

Authorities have said Zambra-

no-Montes was not armed with a 
gun or knife when he was killed. 
Whether he had a rock in his hand 
when he was shot is still under 
investigation.

Two of the officers involved 

were white, and the other His-
panic. All three opened fire, 
though the number of shots has 
not been disclosed. 

Residents recount 

surviving the 

dangerous encounter 

ANSTED, W.Va. (AP) — Mor-

ris Bounds Sr. wanted to make 
sure his home was tidy when 
his wife was let out of the hos-
pital, so he cleaned the kitchen 
and vacuumed their bedroom.

While doing the mindless 

chores, he noticed his cell-
phone on the bed and thought 
to himself: “I might need this.” 
After all, friends and fam-
ily had been coming and going 
from the house since his wife’s 
heart surgery, and he expected 
her home any day.

Bounds grabbed his cell-

phone off the bed and walked 
into the kitchen. As soon as he 
did, he heard the harrowing 
squeal of colliding metal and 
looked outside into the snow-
storm. Just 50 feet away, he 
could see a train crashing.

He bolted out the front door 

as fast as his bad knees could 
take him. He didn’t have time 
to grab his shoes and trudged 
through the snow in his socks. 

Temperatures were in the teens.

Turns out, having the cell-

phone helped save his life.

“I just had a second to look 

and a second to run,” Bounds 
told The Associated Press on 
Monday, exactly one week 
after 27 cars of a CSX train 
went off the tracks next to his 
home.

As he ran, the wreckage 

burst into spectacular fireballs 
that shot into the sky. The yard 
was on fire and “it blew that 
hot oil on both sides of me, all 
over the house, my trucks.”

“If I had been there anoth-

er second, it’d probably have 
killed me,” Bounds said. “Glass 
was flying everywhere behind 
me. The walls were caving in. I 
hadn’t run like that in years.”

Bounds is still having trou-

ble grasping what happened. 
His home of 25 years is ruined. 
His trucks were destroyed. 
Decades of photos and keep-
sakes are gone.

Bounds, 
a 
68-year-old 

retired 
machinist, 
suffered 

only inhalation injuries. No 
one else in the area was hurt.

But it could have been much 

worse.

His daughter, Sarah Ander-

son, and two grandchildren 
had been staying at the home 
while Bounds’ wife, Patty, was 
in the hospital.

Patty Bounds had convinced 

her daughter to go home to 
Ohio over the weekend to get a 
few things before coming back 
for another stay. Patty Bounds 
had had heart bypass surgery, 
came home and then went back 
to the hospital with the flu on 
the Friday before the crash. 
Had she been there, Bounds Sr. 
believes she never would have 
gotten out.

Bounds had also been wait-

ing on his son to come by and 
clear snow. The storm had just 
dumped more than 7 inches on 
his narrow strip of land sand-
wiched between the Kanawha 
River and railroad tracks in 
southern West Virginia.

His son, who lives 400 yards 

away, was on the way to his 
parents’ house when he had 
to turn around to get a snow 
shovel. When Morris Bounds 
Jr. got to his own house, he 
decided to rest rather than 
head back out into the snow-
storm. 

After 40 years, voter 
initiative passes with 
52 to 48 percent vote

 Alaska (AP) — Smoking, grow-
ing and possessing marijuana 
becomes legal in America’s 
wildest state Tuesday, thanks 
to a voter initiative aimed at 
clearing away 40 years of con-
flicting laws and court rulings.

Making Alaska the third 

state to legalize recreational 
marijuana was the goal of a 
coalition including libertar-
ians, rugged individualists and 
small-government Republicans 
who prize the privacy rights 
enshrined in the state’s consti-
tution.

But when they voted 52-48 

percent last November to legal-
ize marijuana use by adults in 
private places, they left many 
of the details to lawmakers and 
regulators to sort out.

Meanwhile, Alaska Native 

leaders worry that legalization 
will bring new temptations to 
communities already confront-
ing high rates of drug and alco-
hol abuse, domestic violence 
and suicide.

“When they start depending 

on smoking marijuana, I don’t 
know how far they’d go to get 
the funds they need to support 
it, to support themselves,” said 
Edward Nick, council member 
in Manokotak, a remote village 
of 400 that is predominantly 
Yup’ik Eskimo.

Both alcohol and drug use 

are prohibited in Nick’s village 
350 miles southwest of Anchor-
age, even inside the privacy of 
villagers’ homes.

But Nick fears that the ini-

tiative, in combination with a 
1975 state Supreme Court deci-
sion that legalized marijuana 
use inside homes — could open 
doors to drug abuse.

Initiative backers promised 

Native leaders that communi-
ties could still have local con-
trol under certain conditions. 
Alaska law gives every com-
munity the option to regulate 
alcohol locally. From northern 
Barrow to Klawock, 1,291 miles 
away in southeast Alaska, 108 
communities impose local lim-
its on alcohol, and 33 of them 
ban it altogether.

But the initiative did not 

provide clear opt-out language 
for tribal councils and other 
smaller communities, forcing 
each one to figure out how to 
proceed Tuesday.

November’s initiative also 

bans smoking in public, but 
didn’t define what that means, 
and lawmakers left the ques-
tion to the alcohol regulatory 
board, which planned to meet 
early Tuesday to discuss an 
emergency response.

In Anchorage, Alaska’s larg-

est city, officials tried and 
failed in December to ban a 
new 
commercial 
marijuana 

industry. 
But 
Police 
Chief 

Mark Mew said his officers 
will be strictly enforcing the 
public smoking ban. He even 
warned people against smok-
ing on their porches if they live 
next to a park.

Other officials are still dis-

cussing a proposed cultivation 
ban for the wild Kenai Penin-
sula. But far to the north, in 
North Pole, smoking outdoors 
on private property will be OK 
as long as it doesn’t create a 
nuisance, officials there said.

Stocks and crude 

oils prices fluctuated 
throughout last week 

WASHINGTON (AP) —The 

slump in crude oil prices and 
disappointing U.S. home sales 
data helped nudge stocks 
mostly lower on Monday, 
pulling the market back from 
an all-time high reached last 
week.

The Dow Jones industrial 

average and Standard & Poor’s 
500 index spent much of the 
day hovering slightly below 
their most-recent highs. But 
the Nasdaq composite mount-
ed a late-afternoon comeback 
that extended its recent win 
streak for the ninth day in a 
row.

Oil drilling companies and 

homebuilders notched broad 
declines, while traders bid up 
shares in utilities stocks.

Investors 
were 
look-

ing ahead to the start of a 
two-day round of Congres-
sional testimony by Federal 
Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. 
The remarks could provide 
insight into when the central 
bank will begin raising its key 
interest rate from near zero.

“The markets are in a hold-

ing pattern,” said Erik David-
son, chief investment officer 
of Wells Fargo Private Bank. 
“We’ll have some very inter-
esting information coming up 
from Janet Yellen tomorrow 
and Wednesday, so the mar-
kets are looking at that very 
closely.”

The 
Dow 
ended 
down 

23.60 points, or 0.1 percent, 
to 18,116.84. The S&P 500 
fell 0.64 points, or 0.03 per-
cent, to 2,109.66. The Nasdaq 
gained 5.01 points, or 0.1 per-
cent, to 4,960.97. The index, 
which has yet to reclaim its 
record high from the dot-com 
era, in now within 87 points of 
that March 2000 peak.

The three stock indexes are 

up for the year.

Stocks started off the day 

basically flat as investors 
weighed 
developments 
in 

Greece and falling oil prices.

Greece’s new government 

and its creditors reached an 
agreement over the weekend 
that staved off the threat of a 
Greek bankruptcy and an exit 
from the euro. Athens was 
expected to send creditors 
a list of reforms tied to the 
four-month bailout pact early 
Tuesday.

The price of oil fell for the 

fourth day in a row as the 
return of a Libyan oil field 
raised expectations for more 
oil supply. Benchmark U.S. 
crude fell $1.36 to close at 
$49.45 a barrel in New York.

That helped drag down 

shares in several offshore oil 
drilling and oilfield services 
companies.

Transocean fell 75 cents, or 

4.4 percent, to $16.26, while 
Ensco shed $1.11, or 3.7 per-
cent, to $28.65. Nabors Indus-
tries fell the most among 
stocks in the S&P 500, los-
ing 67 cents, or 5 percent, to 
$12.85.

Investors bought up shares 

in Valeant Pharmaceuticals, 
which announced on Sun-
day a deal to buy rival drug-
maker Salix Pharmaceuticals 
for about $10 billion in cash. 
Valeant rose $25.49, or 15 per-
cent, to $198.75.

A 
midmorning 
report 

showing that sales of previ-
ously occupied homes tum-
bled 4.9 percent last month 
sent most homebuilder shares 
lower. UCP declined the most, 
shedding 45 cents, or 4.8 per-
cent, to $8.97.

“The home numbers were a 

little disappointing,” said Bob 
Doll, chief equity strategist at 
Nuveen Asset Management.

All told, six of the 10 sectors 

in the S&P 500 fell. Telecom-
munications stocks declined 

the most. Utilities stocks led 
the gainers.

Tuesday will provide inves-

tors with some fresh insight 
on the U.S. consumer.

The Conference Board will 

report its latest consumer 
confidence index. January’s 
reading surged to the highest 
level since August 2007, and 
economists anticipate a pull-
back in this month’s reading.

But the biggest market-

moving news could come from 
the Fed.

Yellen 
is 
scheduled 
to 

deliver her semiannual report 
to Congress on the economy 
and interest rates. Investors 
will be listening for any hints 
of when the central bank will 
move to raise its key interest 
rate. Higher Fed rates would 
affect rates on many con-
sumer and business loans and 
could depress stock and bond 
prices.

The 
Fed’s 
most 
recent 

policy statement expressed 
the intention to be “patient” 
about raising rates. Many 
economists have predicted 
the central bank will raise 
rates in June.

In 
other 
futures 
trad-

ing Monday, Brent crude, a 
benchmark for international 
oils used by many U.S. refin-
eries, fell $1.32 to close at 
$58.90 in London. Wholesale 
gasoline rose 0.5 cents to 
close at $1.646 a gallon. Heat-
ing oil rose 10.6 cents to close 
at $2.218 a gallon, and natural 
gas fell 7.2 cents to close at 
$2.879 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Precious 
and 
industrial 

metals futures closed slight-
ly lower. Gold fell $4.10 to 
$1,200.80 an ounce, silver fell 
two cents to $16.25 an ounce 
and copper edged down less 
than a penny to $2.59 a pound.

U.S. 
government 
bond 

prices rose. The yield on the 
10-year Treasury note fell to 
2.06 percent from 2.11 percent 
late Friday.

