Flagstaff Today - News and Photos

A 25-year-old Flagstaff man has been arrested for attempted murder after police said they found him in a bathroom stabbing a woman in the neck.

Ricky Ray is being held on a $250,000 bond.

Two officers responding to the call early Saturday morning said they found several children coming down the steps of the apartment. Officers said they told them that a couple was fighting.

Police entered the apartment and said they could hear crying and screaming from the rear. The screams led them to a locked bathroom door.

Officers said they forcibly entered, saw a large amount of blood and deployed a stung gun to disable Ray. As he fell to the floor, the knife he was wielding fell to the floor as well, police said.

KPHO

The southbound lanes of Interstate 17 are closed about 30 miles south of Flagstaff after a fatal accident involving hazardous materials Monday morning.

The lanes were closed at about 3:45 a.m. and are expected to be closed much of the day.

Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman Bart Graves says a semi truck driver lost control of his rig and slammed into rocks and boulders in the median. Graves says the dead driver appeared to be crushed inside the cab. The semi carried numerous 55-gallon plastic drums of corrosive material, many of which were scattered throughout the highway and nearby land.

Hazardous materials teams are on site.

Travelers can use State Route 89A through Oak Creek Canyon as an alternative or Interstate 40 eastbound to State Route 87 through Payson.

azstarnet.com

Housing slump hit Flagstaff, too
The Flagstaff real estate market mirrored the national scene in 2007, with home prices falling, sales drying up and properties staying on the market twice as long, on average, as last year.New-home sales plunge to lowest level in more than 12 years
WASHINGTON — The housing market plunged deeper into despair last month, with sales of new homes plummeting to their lowest level in more than 12 years.

New president at CCC readies three-year plan
Students can expect increased access to distance learning during the next three years at Coconino Community College after last year ushered in a change in leadership.

Will Villaggio’s demise cripple affordability?
Without the interchanges, it might have worked.That’s the assessment of Ross Wilson after confirming his 3,600-unit Villaggio Montana was dead.

azdailysun.com

When car shopping, many drivers are looking for better fuel economy. But how about never needing to get gas…ever? That has more drivers going electric.Bill Schlanger doesn’t have fill up at the pump anymore. He just plugs in. He drives a 1987 Chevy Spirit that he converted to 100% electric. Schlanger owns Electric Blue Motors where he converts everything from Geo Metros to Land Rovers.

Once electric, you don’t need to start the engine. You just press down on the accelerator and go. The electric conversions are quiet and Schlanger says just as fast as gasoline powered cars. But the battery packs only last about 35 miles and take about 8 hours to recharge.

Schlanger says the very popular hybrid vehicles are a start. He says if you really want to make changes, you have to go electric. As gasoline prices are going up, there’s more interest in alternative fueled cars. Schlanger says it’s a good time to be green. There’s even a Flagstaff chapter of the Electric Vehicle Association.

Engineers are trying to extend the battery life to handle more than just running errands. The cost of converting a car to electric is about 10 thousand dollars.

KPNX

Shelter beds are in short supply in Flagstaff as temperatures hover near the freezing mark during the day and plunge toward zero at night.

Flagstaff Shelter Services is giving out bed tickets to 25 homeless people a night but has turned away others every night for the past several weeks.

The group has been trying to open a temporary 30-bed shelter in an old warehouse but won’t have the site ready until March, said Wendy White, who works with the nonprofit group.

A coordinator at the Sunshine Rescue Mission said occupancy rates have been high recently, likely related to recent snowfall, although no one has been turned away. But some homeless men avoid the mission because of its religious orientation and strict rules about alcohol use.

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The Coconino County Medical Examiner was conducting an autopsy Thursday morning on the body of a 44-year-old man that was found in a construction area in Flagstaff on Wednesday.

James Dye was found Wednesday in the construction area just off Interstate 40 on the east side of Flagstaff.

Police are calling the death “suspicious,” and weather might have been a factor, said Sgt. Tom Boughner of the Flagstaff police.

Dye went missing late Friday night, Dec. 22, and was found Wednesday morning. The temperatures over the weekend were between 10 and 20 degrees, Boughner said.

The autopsy will determine the time and cause of death, police said.

azcentral.com

Former CHEERS star TED DANSON’s festive seasons rarely match up to those he enjoyed as a child in Arizona - because he’d spend Christmas morning staring into the Grand Canyon.

The actor’s parents would pack bourbon and whiskey in flasks and spend much of Christmas Day (25Dec) walking around the rim of the natural wonder.

He recalls, “My mother would always pack what my parents called a medicine kit, which was a bottle of scotch and a bottle of bourbon for them to have their cocktails.

“We would drive around the rim of the Grand Canyon at a whim because they could get up there and have cocktails on the edge of the Grand Canyon.

“We would go up with our tomato soup with a little sherry in it. I sound like I come from a bunch of alcoholics, but they weren’t.” Even the Danson’s trip to get a Christmas tree would be a magical adventure.

He adds, “I grew up in this kind of wonderful Christmas place just outside Flagstaff and we always had the biggest snows right around there. We were 7,000 to 13,000 feet up, at the foot of an old volcano.

“We’d go out into the pine forest with our permit and cut down our Christmas tree, put it on our car and come back. We would go slogging through the snow in the middle of nowhere to find a Christmas tree.”

PR-Inside

FLAGSTAFF - Three men have been convicted of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old Flagstaff woman in the woods.

David Huskon, 40, Michael Reed Jr., 31, and Aaron Charley, 37, were found guilty Friday by a jury in Coconino County Superior Court.

The sexual assaults occurred on May 29, when authorities say the three men, all from Cameron in the Navajo Nation, were drinking with other people at Bushmaster Park in Flagstaff.

The alleged victim, who did not know the men, was distraught over a family incident and asked to join them, then accompanied them in a car to Doney Park.

It was there the woman said the men took turns raping her. She said she fought back, pulling their hair and scratching them.

A fourth man who stumbled on the assault walked a mile from the group’s location went to get help, and police arrived.

The woman was taken to the hospital, where examiners found injuries consistent with rape.

Deputy County Attorney Dennis Harrison said the fourth man’s testimony was critical.

“Clearly his testimony told the jury what happened - and then the victim and the physical evidence - essentially, the things that went hand-in-hand with that to show that he was telling the truth,” he said.

Defense attorneys argued that the sex was consensual.

The three men are scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 16.

azcentral.com

The fate of three men accused of raping a 19-year-old Flagstaff woman this spring in the woods near Doney Park is now in the hands of a Coconino County jury.

Prosecutors in the trial against David T. Huskon, 40, Michael Reed Jr., 31, and Aaron C. Charley, 37, all of Cameron on the Navajo Nation, questioned their last witness Thursday. The defense then called one defendant, Charley, before resting.

Judge Fred Newton will formally hand the case over to the jury for deliberations this morning.

In his testimony, Charley, a laborer, said he had sex with the accuser in his car, parked in the woods off Silver Saddle Road. He said she had made advances toward him and the sex was consensual.

Under cross-examination, deputy county attorney Dennis Harrison picked at inconsistencies between Charley’s interview with a sheriff’s department detective and his testimony on the stand, characterizing much of his police interview as untruthful.

azdailysun.com

A patch of culturally rich land between Flagstaff and the Navajo Nation that has sat unoccupied for hundreds of years is about to be developed with exclusive ranches, but its first inhabitants will not be forgotten.

With the assistance of Northern Arizona University anthropology graduate student Ted Tsouras, developers for Merrill Crater Ranches are not only preserving the archaeology of the area, they are protecting its unique history and using it as a selling point.

Merrill Crater Ranches developers donated $17,500 to support Tsouras’ thesis project that investigates and records the ancient history of the area.

Tsouras’ findings are guiding the developers from building a dozen or so ranches on the archeologically rich areas that were once home to ancient pueblos and ceremonial sites. Tsouras’ data also will be shared with the public at a Merrill Crater Ranches visitor center, scheduled to open next year.

The funding allowed Tsouras to quit his job in NAU’s Paint Shop, focus on his thesis and head 17 miles east of Flagstaff to gather archaeological evidence that is helping developers create, “a refreshingly different kind of development, with the concept of people who aren’t just owners of the property, but are stewards of the property,” said Chris Downum, an anthropology professor at NAU.

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Flagstaff police were still looking Tuesday night for the armed robber who held up a downtown bank that afternoon.

The gunman brandished a silver revolver at a teller at Bank of America, 125 E. Birch Ave., just before 2 p.m. and received an undisclosed amount of cash.

He put the money into a black stocking cap before fleeing on foot, said Sgt. Tom Boughner of the Flagstaff Police Department.

Police picked up an “investigative lead” not long after the robbery, when they found a man who matched the suspect’s description near the Sunshine Rescue Mission on South San Francisco Street.

However, after several hours of questioning and a search of his belongings, police released the man without filing charges.

The search continued as of Tuesday night, with help from multiple agencies — including the FBI, which is typical with bank robberies.

Surveillance video from Compass Bank, about one block away at 2 E. Birch Ave., showed that the suspect had been there about 10 minutes before the Bank of America robbery.

azdailysun.com

PHOENIX — A drunken man who was tackled by Greyhound bus passengers Wednesday after he threatened them with a shotgun was identified as Anthony Mireles, 42, the Department of Public Safety said Thursday.

The passengers told CBS 5 Mireles was belligerent when he boarded the bus in Flagstaff and was drinking from a bottle of Southern Comfort whiskey during the ride.

Near Anthem, Mireles allegedly pulled out a shotgun and threatened the nearly 50 people on the bus. DPS said he also had a knife.

Passenger Karen Kahn said Mireles “pointed it at all of us, including the children, and said, ‘I’m going to finish you all off at the next stop.’”

That’s when four men tackled Mireles and took his gun away.

“We just did not want to get shot, because he was swinging the gun,” Jay Lee said. “He started trying to reach for his gun, and we just all tackled him right there.”

DPS said the bus driver stopped on Anthem Way so the passengers could pull Mireles off the bus. The passengers held Mireles on the ground until officers arrived to take him into custody.

KPHO

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) - Coconino County sheriff’s deputies arrested four people from the Phoenix area after they found drugs and loads of IDs and credit cards in their possession.Deputies stopped the four at 1:30 p.m. yesterday south of Flagstaff after receiving a call about a suspicious vehicle following women joggers near a park.Sheriff’s officials say when they searched the car, they found marijuana seeds, baggies with meth residue and pipes used to smoke meth.

They also found a two-inch thick stack of IDs, credit cards and Social Security cards. Subsequent investigation found that one set of IDs was taken during a purse snatching and another was taken in a car theft.

Twenty-year-old Monique Romero, 20-year-old Margaret McFall, 19-year-old Nathaniel Goad and 22-year-old Carlos Maurer were arrested on charges of drug possession and ID theft.

KVOA

Revised budget numbers of the Flagstaff Unified School District, approved Thursday by the governing board, will allow the district to start replenishing its rainy day fund.The surplus $570,000 has come from spending less money than anticipated, according to the FUSD finance director.

“This gives us some breathing room,” said Paul Kulpinski, governing board president. “It’s not like we found it and will spend it right away. We’ll tuck it away as savings.”

Last year, approximately $500,000 in unexpected special education costs resulted in an overspent budget that cut into the contingency fund, said Adrianne Sanchez, finance director. This year, it is the utility costs that could pose a threat to the district nest egg.

During the meeting, Sanchez attributed the $570,000 bump to actual district expenditures being less than the amount estimated when the budget was adopted in July.

To save money after last year’s overspending, the governing board cut nine teaching positions and closed Renaissance Magnet Middle School.

Those cuts are not being restored, despite the unexpected budget windfall.

azdailysun.com

A Tucson company was part of a team that designed the Northern Arizona University Applied Research and Development Building, which has received a Platinum Certification by the U.S. Green Building Council.

The building is only the second in Arizona to receive the certification through the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and is the most widely accepted rating system for green building used today.

The NAU building is a three-story, 60,000-square-foot, brick, wood, glass and aluminum structure located at the western gateway to the NAU campus. The building forms a long arc facing south to capture the winter sun in a glass-enclosed three-story gallery. The gallery is shaded by louvers and blinds that, in winter, allow the sun to warm the building. In summer the gallery buffers the offices behind it from sun and heat.

Burns Wald-Hopkins led an international team of architects, engineers and landscape architects to design the building, which included Schneider Structural of Tucson, Hopkins Architects of London, Arup of London and San Francisco, Arizona Engineering of Flagstaff and Barnabas Kane Landscape Architect from Flagstaff. Kitchell Contractors, headquartered in Phoenix, was the general contractor.

azstarnet.com

The city has taken another big step toward increasing commercial air service at Flagstaff Pulliam Airport, telling a city consultant that it has $1 million in incentives to offer a new tenant.

The offer comes on the heels of the addition of 1,800 feet to the airport runway to accommodate regional jets.

A consultant working for the city has sent letters to Delta, United, Frontier and Horizon Airlines to gauge interest in providing direct air service to and from Flagstaff.

Currently, Pulliam is served by America West Express, which offers service only to and from Phoenix.

City staffers told the council Monday a majority of the funding stems from $850,000 the city has set aside for economic incentives to businesses. 

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This year has been a long, strange trip for John Holmes.

When Holmes came out of retirement to serve as the city’s acting city manager, he was told he would serve for six months.

But after the city’s choice for a permanent manager backed out at last minute, Holmes was resigned to serve for a few more months.

Mayor Joe Donaldson hinted he wanted to see Holmes to be considered for the position, permanently.

The city charter forced Holmes to drop the acting-interim title, even as the city looked for another city manager.

Holmes said he hoped he’d leave by Thanksgiving after Boulder Deputy City Manager Kevin Burke got the nod.

He finally left on Wednesday, leaving Deputy Manager Jim Wine to temporarily serve as acting city manager.

But on Monday, his last day of service, Holmes got one final gift from the city — Donaldson read a proclamation designating the day as “John Holmes Day.”

azdailysun.com

Northern Arizona University and the Northern Arizona Intergovernmental Public Transportation Authority, which operates the Mountain Line bus system in Flagstaff, are collaborating on a plan to enhance bus services and link the NAU campus to nearby community shopping and services.

The university and NAIPTA signed an intergovernmental agreement that lays the groundwork for NAIPTA to assume operation and management of NAU’s on-campus transit system and expand the bus service between downtown Flagstaff and Woodlands Village Shopping Center through the NAU campus.

It is anticipated that the new service, to be called Mountain Links, would be an extension of the Mountain Line transit system. Mountain Links would utilize a fleet of energy-efficient hybrid electric buses and be fully operational in 2011. However, full implementation will depend on the availability of funding from a variety of sources, including NAU, federal grants and local resources. 

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When Ken Blaisdell was young, English was one of his worst subjects. Today, the 55-year-old Gilbert man is promoting his first published novel.

“I never really said, ‘Someday, I’m gonna write the Great American Novel,’” Blaisdell said. “It really didn’t occur to me.”

Yet years of writing short stories for fun eventually led to a 408-page mystery novel titled The Weaver Conspiracy.

The book, released last month, follows a Secret Service agent who encounters a plethora of roadblocks as she investigates an attempted assassination on the President.

Although much of The Weaver Conspiracy takes place in Washington, D.C., as well as Blaisdell’s home state of Massachusetts, some Arizona elements also appear; the main character is a former Northern Arizona University Lumberjack, and her grandmother lives in Arizona Biltmore Estates, Blaisdell said.

azcentral.com

It’s beginning to look a lot like winter, thanks to another storm moving through northern Arizona.

Low pressure systems from Idaho and Baja converging over northern Arizona have prompted snow forecasts through tonight.

This snow will likely end Wednesday, but models used at the National Weather Service in Bellemont are unclear about the weather for the coming weekend, meteorologist Clair Ketchum said.

Flagstaff’s high temperatures are not expected to exceed the low 40s through Monday.

The service was predicting 2 to 4 more inches of snow today on top of whatever fell overnight. By late afternoon Monday, Flagstaff had officially received 3.5 inches of snow.

This past weekend’s storm and current one have ensured the start of winter recreation opportunities.

Arizona Snowbowl plans to open 9 a.m. Thursday. The Flagstaff Nordic Center opened to the public Monday.

Sledding at Wing Mountain opened the weekend of Dec. 2. Recreation Resource Management charges $10 per car and Chief Operating Officer Kelly Moffitt said staff counted about 500 cars at the site this recent weekend.

azdailysun.com