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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.