Officer recovers from finger severing\nSOUTH BEND -- A police officer is recovering from surgery to reattach three of his fingers, which were severed when a stolen glass table he was recovering shattered, slicing off the digits.\nSgt. Gene Eyster, a 29-year-old veteran of the South Bend Police Department, was working with other officers Jan. 21 to recover stolen property from a house.\nEyster was carrying a glass-topped table to a cargo truck when he slipped on the front steps and fell backward, briefly knocking the wind out of him.\nAs he sat there getting his breath, one officer began yelling, "Get an ambulance!" while another cried out "Get some towels!"\nPuzzled, Eyster looked down and saw a pool of blood around his right hand -- and his severed fingers lying on the pavement. He realized the broken table top had sliced off his middle finger and his ring finger and made a spiral cut through his trigger finger, leaving it dangling on a strip of flesh.\nAs an EMT for 13 years, Eyster said he was surprised he didn't feel any pain. "It didn't bother me," he said.\nRemaining calm, he asked the other officers to grab a first aid kit, and from it Eyster took a rubber glove, picked up his two fingers and put them inside it. He put the glove into the snow, then sat down to await the ambulance.\n"There was not much I could do," he said.\nAt the hospital, doctors reattached his fingers with 45 stitches. They expect him to make a full recovery.\nEyster still faces a month or more of hand therapy before he can return to full-time duty. When he does, he expects to endure plenty of kidding from other officers about almost losing his trigger finger.
Mountain lion escapes from car\nFORT WAYNE -- A 150-pound mountain lion that had escaped Saturday night from its owner's car following a minor traffic accident was shot and killed by police after it became agitated and tried to jump on an officer.\nTom Rhoades, a spokesman for the Fort Wayne Police Department, said the cat was hiding in the bushes of a residence when an animal control officer fired several shots of a tranquilizer gun and it became agitated and tried to jumped on a police officer.\nPolice then fired two shotgun rounds, killing the cat around 11 p.m., Rhoades said.\nThe mountain lion's owner, Gary Dutcher of Fort Wayne, was returning from a veterinary hospital about 6:30 p.m. after receiving treatment for the four-year-old cat's injured tail. The cat, named "Samson," was riding uncaged in the vehicle when Dutcher was involved in a minor accident and his car slid off the roadway.\nWhen Dutcher opened one of the car's doors to check on the cat, it bounded out of the car and into the night a couple miles from Dutcher's home.\nAlthough the cat had been mildly sedated during its visit to the animal clinic, it was fully awake by the time the search began, said Fort Wayne Animal Care and Control Director Belinda Lewis.\nScott Charters, an Indiana Conservation officer, said the mountain lion was tame, yet it was still dangerous. "It may be a pet but it's still a wild animal," Charters said.
2-year-old boy suspected in scalding\nMONON, Ind. -- A 1-year-old boy who suffered fatal burns may have been placed in a bathtub filled with scalding water by his older brother, police said.\nIndiana State Police said that when Ervin William Norris' mother found him in the family's bathroom Friday night he was not breathing and had second-degree burns.\nThe boy was taken from the White County home about 90 miles northwest of Indianapolis to a Monticello hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later.\n"We know he has second-degree burns from the mid-thigh down," State Police Sgt. Jay Kistler said. "We don't know if the 2-year-old brother did that. We don't know, we are just getting started in this investigation."\nKistler said an autopsy will be performed to find out how the child died. The boy's 2-year-old brother, who was at the home when his mother returned, was not injured.\nInvestigators did not release the names of the child's parents and other details.
