2-year sentence, fine for Internet fraud

Seattle

A Seattle man convicted of defrauding would-be customers of more than $94,000 through phony deals on the Internet has been sentenced to serve two years in prison and pay $73,873 in restitution to his victims.

U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Martinez handed down the sentence Friday to Jordan Edward Dias, 40, saying the man "is good at what he does: defrauding other people."

Dias, who was convicted of mail fraud, used a number of names and online identities when he offered computer and camera equipment and other items for sale on the Internet auction site eBay, federal prosecutors said. The items were never delivered to customers.

Dias established a number of accounts on eBay and PayPal and changed Internet service providers, e-mail addresses and bank and credit-card accounts in an attempt to avoid being caught, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Puyallup

Man in custody after 8-hour standoff

A man who had barricaded himself in his home and refused to release his 2-week-old daughter was taken into custody Saturday morning after an eight-hour standoff that resulted in the evacuation of a three-block area of Puyallup.

Events began to unfold just after midnight Saturday morning when, according to Puyallup police, the 36-year-old drove to his home in a stolen vehicle and barricaded the door with furniture. The man's infant daughter and an unrelated 20-year-old woman were in the residence at the time.

Metro SWAT was called to help and assisted the woman as she escaped through a window, but the man refused multiple requests to either come out himself or allow his baby daughter to be removed.

Since the baby hadn't eaten for several hours, authorities were worried about her health, police said.

After more than eight hours, police decided to enter the house. They successfully retrieved the baby, who was treated by medics, reunited with her mother and taken to Mary Bridge hospital in Tacoma. She was reported to be in stable condition.

The father was shot with a Taser gun as police were taking him into custody. He, too, was treated, at Good Samaritan Hospital, and will be held at Pierce County Jail on several felony charges, police said.

Seattle

Bicyclist killed in accident ID'd

The bicyclist killed Friday afternoon when he was hit by a dump truck near Seattle's University Bridge has been identified by the King County Medical Examiner's Office as Bryce A. Lewis, 19. The truck was traveling north on Eastlake Avenue East and was turning right onto Furhman Avenue East when it hit Lewis and another unidentified man, who was also bicycling, according to Seattle police spokesman Mark Jamieson. The unidentified bicyclist was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, Jamieson said.

Shoreline

19-year-old man drowns in park pond

A 19-year-old man drowned Saturday evening in Shoreline after going into a pond to retrieve a soccer ball, a Shoreline Fire Department spokeswoman said.

The man and a friend were kicking the ball around in Ronald Bog Park when the ball went into a pond around 6 p.m., said Melanie Granfors of the fire department. The two men took off their shoes and went in, but the 19-year-old went under.

Divers with the King County Sheriff's Office found the man's body around 7:30 p.m. in murky water 12 feet deep, Granfors said. The body was about 50 feet off shore.

Seattle

Magazine seller sought in attack

Seattle police are requesting the public's help in finding a man they describe as a suspect in the attack of a woman late last month.

Police identified the man as Antonio M. Smokes, 25. He is about 5-foot-10, 175 pounds. Police believe he may be heading east, possibly toward Florida.

Smokes is a suspect in the Aug. 31 attack of a 27-year-old woman in her Eastlake apartment, police said. The attacker was selling magazines door-to-door.

Police ask that anyone with information on Smokes' whereabouts call 911.

Selah, Yakima County

Wildlife biologist killed by helicopter

A veteran state wildlife biologist was killed Saturday afternoon in the Yakima River canyon when he accidentally walked into the rotating blades of a sitting helicopter, officials said.

Rocky Spencer, based in King County, had worked for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife since 1978. He earned a reputation as a knowledgeable and well-liked mentor to many in the agency, department spokesman Craig Bartlett said Saturday evening from Olympia.

He was part of a team assigned to relocate bighorn sheep from private property in the canyon to a Pullman research facility for Washington State University, Bartlett said.

About 3 p.m., the helicopter landed east of Highway 821 and 13 miles north of Selah.

Bartlett said Spencer had flown on wildlife helicopters before, but this time the craft came to rest on angled ground, causing the rotor blades to point downward more than usual. When he stepped out of the helicopter, he apparently walked into the blades, Bartlett said.

"Rocky was doing what he loved, and it's a dangerous job. He was really one of the best we had at doing this kind of thing," Bartlett said.

The exact cause of the incident remained under investigation, and Bartlett could not immediately address the agency's protocol for safely exiting helicopters. Pilots generally recommend landing on as flat a surface as possible to avoid rollovers and other mishaps.

Fish and Wildlife uses contractors for helicopter missions across the state. Bartlett said he did not know which firm was hired for Saturday's project.

Spencer's tenure with the agency began in 1977, when he volunteered to trap and band grouse, according to a biography posted on the Fish and Wildlife Web site. He started as a temporary scientific technician in 1978.

He worked in Olympia and at several regional offices during his career.

Boise

Grizzly-bear killing under investigation

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game are investigating the killing of a large grizzly bear in north-central Idaho, where the last confirmed sighting of the species was in 1946, officials said.

The bear, a member of a threatened species, was killed Monday by a hunter near Kelly Creek about three miles from the Montana border, said Steve Nadeau, large-carnivore manager for Fish and Game.

Nadeau said the male grizzly weighed 400 to 500 pounds and was 6 to 8 years old. The hunter and a guide skinned the carcass and brought it out on horseback so it could be confirmed as a grizzly by authorities, Nadeau said. It is now in the possession of Fish and Game.

In April, the Fish and Wildlife Service lifted Endangered Species Act protections for grizzlies in and around Yellowstone National Park. But this bear was not part of that population, Nadeau said, and therefore retained federal threatened-species protection. "It's not a place you would expect to find a grizzly bear because after all they haven't been seen there in years," said Chris Servheen, Fish and Wildlife grizzly-bear recovery coordinator.

Portland

Woman improving after outdoor ordeal

Doris Anderson, the 76-year-old woman missing for almost two weeks in the rugged Wallowa Mountains of northeast Oregon, has taken a turn for the better, a hospital spokeswoman said Saturday.

"She has really, really stabilized and cleared. She's really had a big change," said Amy Dunkak, a spokeswoman for St. Elizabeth Health Service in Baker City.

Anderson had been listed in critical but stable condition. Dunkak said Saturday evening that she was stable and no longer critical.

She got lost with her husband and then became separated from him on a hunting trip in late August. She wasn't found until Thursday, when an Oregon State trooper and a Baker County sheriff's deputy located her near a creek.

Seattle Times staff and The Associated Press