A couple found dead in their South Seattle home Wednesday have been identified as Nancy Herron, 58, and Arnold Smith, 55.

The King County Medical Examiner's Office determined that Herron was shot in the head. They're calling her slaying a homicide. Investigators have not released Smith's cause and manner of death.

Investigators said there were no obvious signs the house, in the 9600 block of 54th Avenue South, was broken into. Police found a gun in the home but haven't determined whether it was used to commit a homicide-suicide, said police spokesman Rich Pruitt.

Transient charged in fatal stabbing

A 25-year-old homeless man was charged with second-degree murder yesterday after police and prosecutors said he stabbed an acquaintance over $20.

They said Joseph Slate Longmire, a transient with ties to Alaska and Spokane, stabbed Walter Mason on Oct. 16 on Third Avenue in Belltown after the two argued about money Mason said Longmire owed him.

King County prosecutors said Mason, who had once been homeless, had previously offered Longmire a place to take a shower and loaned him $20. When Mason confronted Longmire about the money, the two fought, then Longmire stabbed Mason, prosecutors said.

Bail has been set at $500,000 for Longmire, who remains at large.

Seattle

The state Department of Transportation and Sound Transit said yesterday they will spend the next few months studying how proposed changes to the layout of lanes along the Interstate 90 floating bridge might affect traffic, and how much such changes would cost.

Sound Transit's board of directors will use the results as it decides whether to send light rail or a high-speed bus system over Lake Washington as part of its program to connect the region by buses, trains and other types of mass transit.

Mercer Island residents are especially interested in what type of transit eventually will flow over I-90, the only road on and off the island. A 1976 agreement allows solo island drivers to use the bridge's carpool lanes. If Sound Transit picks light rail, however, those lanes would be replaced by train tracks. Leaders from Mercer Island, Seattle, Bellevue and King County have asked the state to allow solo island drivers to use future carpool lanes planned for the bridge.

Seattle

Inquest finds shooting justified

It took a King County District Court inquest jury less than an hour to find that Seattle Police Department officers were justified when they shot and killed a man who had brought an inactive grenade into the lobby of the federal courthouse in Seattle.

Inquest jurors unanimously answered 20 questions about the facts of the shooting, including a pivotal one about whether officers had reason to believe that Perry Manley, 52, of Seattle, presented an imminent risk of death or serious injury to civilians, court personnel and other officers when he brought the grenade into the courthouse on June 20, 2005, and tried to bypass security.

Prosecutors said jurors were shown a surveillance tape of Manley trying to sneak around courthouse security, with a backpack strapped to his chest and a grenade in his hand.

The jurors on Wednesday found that officers in the courthouse saw the grenade in Manley's hand, warned him several times to put it down and eventually shot him after he failed to comply.

An inquest, in which a jury answers a number of questions about the evidence and facts of the case, is routinely ordered when a person is killed by a law-enforcement officer.

Times staff and news services