2 boys wounded in South Seattle

Seattle

2 boys wounded in South Seattle

Two boys were shot — one in the arm and the other in the leg — near the parking lot of an apartment building in the 8600 block of Rainier Avenue South about 7:30 Sunday night, Seattle police said.

A suspect fled, police said.

Seattle police said they were investigating the possibility the shootings were related to Saturday's shooting at the Westfield Southcenter Mall that left one teen dead and one wounded, according to television-news reports. A suspect in that case has not been caught.

The victims were not identified, and their ages were not available. Both were taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, KOMO-TV reported.

Homicide and gang detectives were investigating.

Officers responded to a call of shots fired, police said.

Seattle

Nightclub shooting leaves man dead

A man was shot dead early Sunday inside a nightclub at Ninth Avenue and Madison Street.

Police said the man was shot in the head by an assailant who is still at large. No details on the victim or the shooter were available Sunday.

The Seattle Police Department's gang and homicide units are continuing to investigate the shooting, which occurred at 12:06 a.m. inside Vito's Madison Grill on First Hill. Kent

Man shot to death found in parked car

Police are investigating the shooting death of a 32-year-old man, whose body was found slumped over the steering wheel of a parked car on Sunday afternoon.

Kent Fire Department personnel and King County medics tried to revive the man, whose body was discovered at 11:44 a.m. in a car parked in the northbound lanes in the 23200 block of Pacific Highway South.

Circumstances surrounding his death have not been determined.

Liberty, Kittitas County

Professor urges new name for creek

A professor who studied rocks around Negro Creek near Blewett Pass is trying to have the name of the stream changed.

James MacDonald Jr., of Fort Myers, Fla., applied to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names on May 23 to change the name to Etienne Creek. The request has been referred to the Washington State Board on Geographic Names.

The creek was renamed in 1968 after being known by a racial slur against African Americans.

Antoine Etienne, a freed slave, was a Civil War Army interpreter who found gold in the creek in the 1870s. He later grew peaches, grapes and cherries.

MacDonald is an assistant professor of geology at Florida Gulf Coast University. He spent most of four summers from 2001-04 studying Jurassic-period rocks in the drainage.

Kennewick

Fair vendors detain forgery suspect

Vendors at an arts and crafts fair at the Benton County Fairgrounds held a 54-year-old Yakima man they suspected was buying items with bad traveler's checks.

Vendors at the Christmas Memories show watched as the man bought a small amount of merchandise from several vendors with $100 traveler's checks, then pocketed the change from the purchases, said Kennewick police Cpl. Glenn Ball.

"They saw him acting suspicious going from vendor to vendor passing these traveler's checks," Ball said. The vendors began talking and noticed all the checks had the same routing number, Ball said.

They then asked the man to stay while they called police. "They just said, 'By the way, sir, you're not leaving,' " Ball said. Officers called the department's Criminal Apprehension Team.

The man is facing 17 counts of felony forgery. He also was found with a suspected fake ID and is being held in the Benton County Jail on suspicion of identity theft and a felony warrant in Utah for grand larceny, Ball said.

All the vendors' money was recovered, Ball said.

Seattle Times staff and news services