Teen charged with second-degree murder

An 18-year-old man was charged Friday with second-degree murder in the shooting death of a 20-year-old man. Police and prosecutors allege in charging documents filed in King County Superior Court that John Kevin Horn shot 20-year-old Martez Jones after the two fought several times during a party on Monday.

Horn turned himself in to police on Wednesday. He is being held in the Regional Justice Center in Kent in lieu of $500,000 bail.

Cross-burning case results in probation

A 19-year-old Edmonds man was sentenced in federal court Friday to three years probation for conspiring to violate the civil rights of an Arab-American family by burning a cross at their home in July 2004.

Collin Patrick Sargent pleaded guilty to the crime, telling prosecutors he helped construct the nearly 5-foot-tall wooden cross, drove it to the family's Edmonds home on July 8, 2004, helped set it up and ignited it after it was doused with a flammable liquid.

The family wasn't home when the cross was ignited. Sargent faced up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. In addition to imposing probation, U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly sentenced Sargent to 90 days electronic home detention and 200 hours community service.

Two other men implicated in the case will be sentenced later this year, according to the Seattle U.S. Attorney's office. Both Jayson Russell, 19, of Snohomish, and Joseph Lin, 18, of Lynnwood, have pleaded guilty to lying to a federal grand jury by denying their involvement in the crime. Lin is scheduled to be sentenced April 7 and Russell on June 2, prosecutors said. They face up to five years in prison and $250,000 fine.

Senate approves new state budget

The state Senate narrowly approved a new state budget Friday after a partisan dust-up over whether majority Democrats are spending too heavily.

The new supplemental spending plan adds about $600 million to last year's $26 billion two-year budget and keeps $956 million in reserve.

House Democrats tentatively plan to produce their counterproposal next Tuesday. Negotiators, in consultation with Gov. Chris Gregoire, will iron out details.

The new budget plan would pump millions into education, health care and social services, while abiding by the governor's request for at least $900 million in reserve.

Minority Republicans on Friday said the overall level is perilously high and cannot be sustained in the next budget.

The King County Sheriff's Office is investigating the death of a man whose body was found Friday morning in the Duwamish River near the Southpark Marina.

A sheriff's spokesman said the body appeared to have been in the water for quite some time. The man's identity was not immediately known.

The body was found at 7 a.m. near the 16th Street Bridge and the 8600 block of South Dallas Avenue.

UPS grad gets $1,000 to study mosquitoes

A graduate of the University of Puget Sound has won an award to study mosquitoes.

Lisa Reimer was the winner of the 2006 William C. Reeves New Investigator Award, sponsored by the Mosquito and Vector Control Association of California and coordinated by the University of California, Davis, Mosquito Research Program, according to a press release from the university.

She received $1,000.

Reimer was the lead author of a scientific paper published last December in Insect Molecular Biology on the distribution of insecticide resistance genes in Anopheles gambiae. The researchers found that on Bioko Island, off the west coast of Africa, subpopulations of A. gambiae exhibit very different levels of resistance in response to pyrethroids, insecticides commonly used to kill mosquitoes, the release says.

Reimer received her bachelor's degree in biology in 2000 from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma.

Times staff and news services