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Illinois derailment empties town briefly
Emergency officials ordered what turned out to be a relatively brief evacuation after a freight train derailed in suburban Chicago on Thursday.
The Canadian National Railway train derailed in the village of Matteson around 10:30 a.m. The company issued a statement about 1:30 p.m. saying that about 25 cars derailed. There were no reports of fires or injuries, although one car containing “residue liquefied petroleum gas” leaked, the company said.
Steve DeJong, a firefighter with a statewide hazardous material response team, said during an afternoon news conference that the substance is commonly known as propane and the train was carrying only residual amounts.
Propane is flammable, and emergency responders didn’t know how much of it they were dealing with they arrived at the derailment, so they ordered a two-block radius evacuated as a precaution, Matteson Mayor Sheila Chalmers-Currin told reporters. The evacuation order applied to up to 300 people, she said.
DeJong said the leak was small and firefighters were able to contain it. The propane that did escape evaporated, dispersing so widely that it didn’t register on detectors, he said.
“We are now telling our residents there is no danger to any of them at this time and they can return home,” Chalmers-Currin said. “There is no danger. There is nothing toxic that will harm anyone here.”
Seattle officer guilty in ’19 on-duty death
A jury found a suburban Seattle police officer guilty of murder Thursday in the 2019 shooting death of a homeless man outside a convenience store, marking the first conviction under a Washington state law easing prosecution of law enforcement officers for on-duty killings.
After deliberating for three days, the jury found Auburn Police Officer Jeffrey Nelson guilty of second-degree murder and first-degree assault for shooting Jesse Sarey twice while trying to arrest him for disorderly conduct. Deliberations had been halted for several hours Wednesday after the jury sent the judge an incomplete verdict form Tuesday saying they were unable to reach an agreement on one of the charges.
The judge revealed Thursday that the verdict the jury was struggling with earlier in the week was the murder charge. They had already reached agreement on the assault charge.
Nelson was ordered into custody after the hearing. He’s been on paid administrative leave since the shooting in 2019. The judge set sentencing for July 16. Nelson faces up to life in prison on the murder charge and up to 25 years for first-degree assault. His lawyer said she plans to file a motion for a new trial.
The case was the second to go to trial since Washington voters in 2018 removed a standard that required prosecutors to prove an officer acted with malice — a standard no other state had. Now they must show the level of force was unreasonable or unnecessary.
Potential trial date set for Idaho suspect
It could be another year or more before a man accused in the 2022 stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students goes to trial.
A judge and attorneys discussed Thursday starting Bryan Kohberger’s trial sometime in June 2025, nearly three years after the killings shocked the small university town.
Idaho Judge John Judge said he wants to set aside two weeks for jury selection, two months for the trial and two weeks at the end for sentencing and other matters if Kohberger is convicted.
“I think already we’re about 13 months from the arraignment, and I think at this point … we’re getting to a point of diminishing returns,” Judge said after he sent a proposed schedule to attorneys last Friday.
Lawyers for both sides generally agreed with the schedule.
A motion to move the trial from Moscow, Idaho was tabled until August. Kohberger’s attorneys fear publicity would prevent a fair trial in Latah County.
Oklahoma man executed for 1984 murder
McALESTER, Okla. — Oklahoma executed a man Thursday who was convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing his 7-year-old former stepdaughter in 1984.
Richard Rojem, 66, received a three-drug lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and was declared dead at 10:16 a.m., prison officials said. Rojem, who had been in prison since 1985, was the longest-serving inmate on Oklahoma’s death row.
When asked if he had any last words, Rojem, who was strapped to a gurney and had an IV in his tattooed left arm, said: “I don’t. I’ve said my goodbyes.”
He looked briefly toward several witnesses who were inside a room next to the death chamber before the first drug, the sedative midazolam, began to flow. He was declared unconscious about 5 minutes later, at 10:08 a.m., and stopped breathing at about 10:10 a.m.
Rojem had denied responsibility for killing his former stepdaughter, Layla Cummings. The child’s mutilated and partially clothed body was discovered in a field in rural Washita County near the town of Burns Flat on July 7, 1984. She had been stabbed to death.
