State & Regional Digest

June 2, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

OHIO

Bomblike device found, residents evacuated

COLUMBUS

Firefighters say residents whose apartment buildings were evacuated because of a device that looked like a bomb can return home because it was a harmless imitation.

Paramedics responding to a call about a woman’s possible suicide attempt at a Columbus apartment Tuesday found guns and what appeared to be a timer attached to sticks of dynamite. Four or five of the several buildings in the Saddlebrook apartments complex were evacuated for hours.

Fire Battalion Chief David Whiting says the device was a dummy and wasn’t created to scare anyone. He says a man in the apartment has permits for the guns and likes to tinker with such materials.

Whiting says the woman in the apartment wasn’t suicidal and didn’t need to be treated. He says the 911 call about her was a misunderstanding.

Jury deadlocked in tub-drowning retrial

LEBANON

A jury in the retrial of a man accused of drowning his wife in their bathtub has deadlocked and was dismissed without reaching a verdict.

Jurors in the Ryan Widmer murder case deliberated for the fourth day Tuesday before telling a judge in southwest Ohio’s Warren County that they could not reach the unanimous verdict required for conviction or acquittal.

The 29-year-old Widmer is accused in the 2008 death of wife Sarah Widmer at their home near Mason northeast of Cincinnati. His first trial found Widmer guilty in 2009, but a judge set aside the conviction after allegations of juror misconduct.

Lawyers are under a gag order, and it was not immediately known whether prosecutors would try Widmer a third time.

Convert’s lawyer pleads innocent

COLUMBUS

A lawyer has pleaded innocent to charges she illegally disclosed confidential case information regarding a teenage girl who converted to Christianity and ran away from her Ohio home.

Attorney Angela Lloyd entered the pleas Tuesday in Franklin County juvenile court after a magistrate approved bringing two misdemeanor charges.

Lloyd is accused of placing confidential child-welfare reports into the public file of her client, 17-year-old Rifqa Bary, where they were accessible to the media.

PENNSYLVANIA

Man guilty of stealing from dead roommate

PITTSBURGH

A suburban Pittsburgh man who buried the body of his housemate in his backyard has pleaded guilty to cashing the dead woman’s Social Security checks.

Kenneth Zang, 59, of Turtle Creek, pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of theft of government property. Authorities say Zang cashed checks totaling $34,000 from November 2004 to July 2008.Zang will be sentenced Oct. 1.