Around the Region

Body found in car believed to be Indiana man\nLONG GROVE, Ill. -- Authorities believe a body found in a burning car is that of an Indiana man who disappeared a week ago after visiting his parents' Urbana home.\nSgt. Gary Govekar of the Lake County Sheriff's Department said Monday that some jewelry found inside the charred car led authorities to believe the remains are those of Derrick A. Prout, 31. Investigators are awaiting dental and fingerprint records to confirm their findings.\nFirefighters responded to a call of a burning vehicle in a soybean field on Saturday. After extinguishing the fire, which police believe was deliberately set, emergency crews forced the trunk open and found the body.\nAn autopsy was conducted Sunday. Coroner Barbara Richardson said the fire did not cause the man's death, but she declined to say how he died.\nMeanwhile, sheriff's investigators were trying to retrace the movements of Prout between the time he left his mother's home and when his car was found burning about 140 miles to the north.\nProut's mother, Madelyne Prout, said she last saw her son June 17, when he left Urbana to drive to the home he shared with his wife and three children near Indianapolis.\nProut's wife reported him missing June 18.\nMan convicted of selling professional-strength fire works \nFORT WAYNE -- An Ohio man faces up to 35 years in prison after being found guilty of illegally selling professional-strength fireworks to customers of his Angola business.\nKenneth B. Shearer, 44, of Toledo, Ohio, was convicted in federal court last week of selling and receiving fireworks that are classified as explosives under federal law. Shearer did not have the required license from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to sell regulated fireworks, authorities said.\nShearer has operated All American Professional Fireworks in Angola, a small city about 40 miles north of Fort Wayne near the Indiana-Ohio state line.\nHe also was found guilty of putting labels on cartons of fireworks that hid the warnings about the risks of transporting the explosives.\nThe ATF and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission began investigating the business in June 1999, the safety commission said Wednesday. Investigators found that Shearer had illegally bought more than $25,000 in professional fireworks and then sold them for as much as a 500 percent profit to roadside fireworks dealers across the Midwest.\nFederal officials said Shearer stored the fireworks in a public storage center and in a trailer behind his business.\nShearer is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 16 in federal court in Fort Wayne.\nGas additive levels soar at elementary school\nROSELAWN, Ind. -- Preliminary test results from wells at Lincoln Elementary School show the highest levels yet of the gasoline additive MTBE at the school.\nFigures released Tuesday by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management showed three of those test wells had hits for the suspected carcinogen methyl tertiary butyl ether, the highest being more than 20 times the acceptable level.\nJust northwest of the school's well results showed MTBE in levels of 1,070 parts per billion; southwest of the well and directly south of the first boring, 729 ppb; and west of the well, 129 ppb.\nMTBE is an unregulated contaminant, which has a maximum acceptable level of 30 to 40 ppb. Samples taken from the school's drinking water have consistently been more than 100, with some more than 200 and 300 ppb.\nThe information was released to Newton County officials at a meeting they had requested with IDEM, said Newton County Councilwoman Sharon Miller.\nThe borings were done in an attempt to determine which direction the MTBE is coming from. The contamination, which has plagued the school for at least two years, became public April 2. The school's well was shut down and bottled water used for the remainder of the school year.\nIDEM spokeswoman Keri McGrath said the samples were taken at different levels, 15, 25 and 50 feet. All three hits were detected at 50 feet, the same depth as the school's well, she said. All three also were termed "downgradient" or in the direction of groundwater, which flows north from the school to the Kankakee River, McGrath said.