Woman skirts gate, is killed by train

Woman skirts gate, is killed by train

MERIDIAN, Miss.

An official says a woman drove her SUV around an active crossing gate and collided with an Amtrak train in Mississippi, dying within seconds.

Lauderdale County Coroner Clayton Cobler said the collision happened about 3 p.m. Wednesday on Norfolk Southern Railway tracks near downtown Meridian. Cobler said he was withholding the 57-year-old woman’s name until all family members had been notified.

The coroner said the woman drove around functioning gates and flashers and collided with the southbound Amtrak Crescent. He said her SUV was pushed nearly a quarter-mile. No one else was in the vehicle.

Ohio jail changes underwear policy

COLUMBUS

A central Ohio jail is implementing new rules requiring inmates to either buy underwear from the commissary or go commando after jail officials routinely found contraband hidden in undergarments sent from relatives and friends.

Franklin County commissioners approved Tuesday a $95,000, one-year outside contract to provide T-shirts, socks, bras, men’s boxers and briefs and women’s briefs to the county jail.

Corrections Division Chief Deputy Geoff Stobart tells The Columbus Dispatch that jail officials regularly find drugs in T-shirts or underwear delivered to inmates. He says it’s common for marijuana or treatments for heroin addicts to be sewn into undergarments’ seams.

Inmates now will have to buy undergarments from the jail’s commissary or go without. An administrative director with the sheriff’s office says underwear isn’t a minimum jail standard in Ohio.

Lawsuit: Deputies fatally beat inmate

LOS ANGELES

The mother of a Los Angeles County jail inmate has filed a $25 million lawsuit alleging guards fatally beat her son and then tried to cover up the attack.

The federal civil-rights suit, filed last week, alleges that sheriff’s deputies at the Men’s Central Jail beat Earl Lee Johnson unconscious last September, then hung him from a bedsheet in his cell. The 24-year-old died three weeks later.

James Orland, an attorney for Johnson’s mother, said Wednesday that the coroner’s office concluded Johnson killed himself by hanging.

But he says the family commissioned its own autopsy, which concluded Johnson died from a fractured skull caused by blunt-force trauma.

Fire burns block in north Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS

Dozens of firefighters were called out to battle a huge fire that devastated a commercial block and injured some people in north Minneapolis.

The Minneapolis Fire Department says four people were taken to Hennepin County Medical Center. Their conditions are unknown. No firefighters were hurt.

The fire broke out shortly before 9 a.m. Wednesday in a building that houses several side-by-side businesses. Officials say the fire apparently started in an Unbank check-cashing and loan business.

Fisheries regulators halt sardine season

GRANTS PASS, Ore.

Federal regulators have approved an early closure of commercial sardine fishing off Oregon, Washington and California to prevent overfishing.

They’re hoping to save the West Coast sardine fishery from the kind of collapse that led to the demise of Cannery Row, made famous by John Steinbeck’s novel of the same name set in Monterey, California.

The action was taken based on revised estimates of sardine populations, which found the fish were declining in numbers faster than earlier believed.

Associated Press