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(05/17/06 10:55pm)
Bear's Place\nIf you are looking for a great karaoke time spent with friends, Bear's Place on 3rd Street is, well, the place. Thursday nights starting at 9 p.m. the back room throbs with the drunken warbles of college students having a good time. The DJ also has a good time, with a strong selection of music, and for a $2 cover charge the evening can be yours.
(05/11/06 1:14am)
A Bloomington man has been arrested and jailed for promoting prostitution after an IU Police Department undercover sting found him soliciting teenage boys at a local shelter.\nMark C. Gillette, 44, of 465 N. Adams Street, was arrested Monday afternoon on two counts of promoting prostitution and also one count of attempted promotion of prostitution for trying to persuade an IU cadet, posing as an underage teen, to become a prostitute.\nGillette, who is unemployed, befriended the cadet and other boys at the Shalom Center, a downtown shelter where homeless and low-income people gather for a free meal and socialize off of the streets. Gillette was a soup kitchen volunteer.\nThe six-week sting operation began after a 16 year-old boy and his parents came forward March 20. IU police allege the teenager met a man whom he knew only as "Mark" at the Center, and was offered large amounts of money to become a prostitute. \nGillette allegedly took the teenager to a computer cluster in the HPER building and showed him sexually explicit Web sites, the parents said. Gillette told the young man he would, effectively, act as the teenager's pimp, arranging for him to meet with the men from the Web sites, with the men first paying Gillette for the sexual favors the teenager would perform.\nGillette claimed, however, he first needed to "interview" the young man, to ascertain if they were suitable sexual partners. \nIUPD Lt. Jerry Minger said there is no reason to believe that anyone was on Gillette's payroll yet. He believes Gillette was just "using this as a way to create a sexual relationship with young men."\nIU Tech Security found Gillette had obtained the name and password of a person on campus and was using the comprised e-mail account to log onto the computers, Minger said.\nThe day after police confiscated the computer used by Gillette and increased patrols in the HPER, Gillette was found in the same computer cluster with a 17-year-old man, going through the same routine he had used on the first teenager. \nThe 17-year-old said Gillette had met him at the Monroe County Library and had promised him $10 for a ride to the HPER building. While there, Gillette also said he would give him $500 to allow Gillette to "interview" him in the bathroom, where he performed oral sex on the teenager.\nThe 17-year-old also told police that March 20, Gillette had taken him and the 16-year-old to Ballantine Hall, and police reports on the incident said, "Gillette took time to convince the 16-year-old he needed to 'interview' him for the prostitution job" by allowing him to perform oral sex on the teenager.\nNo money was ever received by either teenager. To confirm the stories of the two young men, IU police initiated the undercover sting in an attempt to draw Gillette out.\nGillette was unable to post bail, and remains in the Monroe County Jail today. Minger asked that anyone who might have additional information regarding the case to call the IUPD at 855-4111.
(05/08/06 12:36am)
Two people are currently under arrest after a midnight argument escalated into a stabbing Saturday, police said Sunday.\nKenyada Thaddis, 23, was arrested Saturday for battery with a deadly weapon, after allegedly stabbing Bloomington resident Brian Jackson, 25, in the back with a steak knife. Jackson has been arrested for a battery misdemeanor for breaking a beer bottle over a 25-year-old man's head, police reports said.\nThe altercation took place at about 12:30 a.m. on the corner of North Lindbergh Drive and 14th Street, where a witness observed a gold Chevy Caprice pull up to the intersection, and saw a loud argument with several individuals occur.\nThe violent argument escalated until the victim was observed pulling up the right side of his sweatshirt, apparently referring to what Jackson and his friend thought was a gun. At this point, Jackson swung an empty beer bottle he had been carrying with him over the victim's head, the report said. At that point, Jackson and his friend turned to flee, found they could not get back into the Caprice and began panicking, afraid that the man he had just injured would shoot at them.\n"Drive, drive, he's gonna kill me," Jackson screamed after he and the friend wriggled through the driver's side window of the car. Thaddis approached Jackson from behind at this point and began punching or hitting him in the back and legs, the police report said. It was not until after the car had pulled away that Jackson realized he had been injured.\nAs they began driving toward the 1300 block of West 12th Street, the friend noticed a large amount of blood coming from Jackson's back. When they exited the vehicle, Jackson collapsed on the ground.\nPolice responded to the scene of both incidents, which were reported separately. On 12th Street officers found Jackson, his mother and the friend caring for his wounds in a nearby apartment. Jackson initially thought he had been shot, but a survey of the wounds revealed they were made by a knife. A broken off steak knife was found still attached to his pants.\nAt the second incident, an ambulance had been sent to care for the injured 25-year-old. The other end of the steak knife was found lying on the ground in plain view of the police vehicles, while a second steak knife was found not far away in the front yard of the residence. Both men were taken to the Bloomington Hospital, where they were treated for their injures and released.\nAt both incidents, outside witnesses were able to corroborate portions of Thaddis' and Jackson's stories. Both individuals were booked into the Monroe County Jail Saturday.
(04/30/06 5:05am)
Former IU basketball player Lewis Monroe, 24, was in the Monroe County Jail Wednesday night after being arrested on a misdemeanor battery charge.\nAccording to police records, the arrest stemmed from an April 7 incident, when Monroe, a senior, allegedly assaulted a 22-year-old man outside of Kilroy's Sports Bar in the 300 block of North Walnut Street. \nDetective Sgt. David Drake said Officer Ethan Haley was "flagged down" soon after the assault, which occurred at 3:13 a.m. Both Kilroy's Sports Bar employees and security guards for Graham Securities were in the Taco Bell parking lot at 7th and North Walnut Streets with the victim, who was sitting on the ground bleeding with a laceration to the back of his head.\nA security guard who witnessed the attack said the victim had been "badgering" some IU basketball players about their poor performance this season when Monroe hit him.\nA punch to the lower left jaw knocked the man to the ground, where his head snapped back and hit the concrete. A security guard said when the victim's head had hit the sidewalk, he "began making a gurgling sound and shaking, as if convulsing," Drake said, reading from the report.\nThe 22 year-old briefly lost consciousness, witnesses at the scene reported. He was taken to the hospital following the incident.\nWhile the victim was unable to see who his attacker had been, both his cousin, who was a witness to the incident, as well as a security guard, positively identified the perpetrator as Monroe.\nMonroe was arrested after failing to cooperate with Bloomington police, who had difficulty locating Monroe to ascertain his side of the story. A warrant was issued Tuesday for his arrest on a misdemeanor battery charge.\nMonroe was booked into the Monroe County Jail Wednesday afternoon and held on a $6,000 bond. Drake said the bond was $5,500 surety and $500 cash. \nJail records show he was released on bail early Thursday morning.\nMonroe, a native of Madison, Wis., transferred to IU from Auburn University in 2004.
(04/28/06 3:51am)
A Bloomington man was allegedly robbed at gunpoint Thursday morning at the intersection of Second Street and Eastside Drive.\nAccording to police reports, the 19 year-old victim was walking home from Starbucks when he was approached by a man he didn't know.\nThe man, in his early 20s and sporting a goatee, asked him if he "knew where he could score some weed," Sergeant David Drake said, reading from the report.\nAfter the victim said no, the man pulled a silver-colored semi-automatic hand gun out of the puffy black jacket he was wearing and demanded money. The victim only had $1 in his possession, so the man took his iPod and bookbag as well.\nThe backpack, a brown and tan Element, contained two books, "The Rain Gods" and "Remembering How to Say Mouth or Face."\nAfter taking the victim's belongings, a white, newer sedan pulled up, and the man jumped into it, driving away.\nThe suspect is described as a 5-foot-10-inch white male, last seen wearing a large puffy black jacket.\nThe case is still under investigation. Anyone with information on this or other crimes can contact BPD at 812-339-4477.\nTwo teens suspended after bus stop brawl\nTwo 16 year-old girls have been suspended from school after an argument Wednesday morning at the bus stop got out of hand.\nStudents were waiting at the bus stop, located at Westwood Drive and Belle Avenue, at about 7:15 a.m., when one girl alleges the other yelled at her and slapped her on the side of the head, knocking off her sunglasses, according to police reports.\nThe first girl was on her cellular phone when the second yelled at her to "shut up" and get off of it. When the victim refused, she was slapped. \nThe first girl's father, who reported the incident at about 5 p.m. yesterday, reported a different version of events from the second girl's mother. According to the second girl, there was an altercation, but she only hit the victim after being slapped herself. \nThe victim was allegedly calling the girl names, and after approaching her and saying, "Why don't you say that to my face?" she was hit by the victim.\nThe two teenagers have a long history of disliking each other, the police report said.
(04/26/06 4:14am)
Twenty-nine students of Summit Elementary School were sent to the hospital after a pick-up truck crashed into a school bus Tuesday morning.\nThe accident occurred at 8:45 a.m. on Rockport Road, about 145 feet south of Graham Drive. The school bus had stopped and was boarding students when a brown pick-up truck traveling southbound hit the bus head on.\n"The stop arm was out, and the lights were flashing," said Bloomington Police Department Detective Sgt. David Drake, reading from the police report.\nThe 17-year-old driver of the truck said he was attempting to stop for the bus when his wheels slid on the wet pavement, according to the report.\nThe bus driver, Cynthia K. Wood of Bloomington, 37, sustained injures to her head, face and arms, as well as suffering a bruised knee. Officer Amy Myers, who responded to the accident, reported that Wood's eye and face also appeared badly swollen.\nThe students and driver were picked up by another bus and taken to the hospital, where they were later released. The other driver appeared uninjured. Both the school bus, which was six years old, and the truck had to be towed from the scene.
(04/26/06 3:39am)
Jon Day, 29, of Williams, Ind., remains in critical condition at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, five days after suffering an accident at the Maple Hill Quarry on Rockport Road. \nDay was one of two workers injured when a slab of limestone block broke loose from the wall of the quarry. The men were on a ledge preparing to work on the limestone when it partially fractured and fell, said Assistant Chief Joe McWhorter of the Perry-Clear Creek Fire Department.\n"It hit both men, but one (man) got caught between two rocks, and it pinned him," McWhorter said.\nThe second worker, Benjamin Strunk, 34, of Spencer, Ind., was crushed by the block, which at 10 by 10 feet and a foot thick, weighed roughly 10,000 pounds.\nThe fire department, which responded to the scene of the accident at 8:59 a.m., used rescue air bags and spreaders to extricate him from underneath the limestone.\nThe Monroe County Coroner's office pronounced Strunk dead at 10:45 a.m. at the quarry. Monroe County Coroner David Toumey said preliminary findings show Strunk died of massive blunt force trauma to the upper torso. Toxicology reports are pending. \n"It's pretty obvious it was an accident," Toumey said.\nOn Tuesday a relative of Day confirmed his care level at Methodist, and an employee at the hospital confirmed that Day is in the neuroscience critical care unit. The Monroe County Sheriff's Department was not available for comment regarding the accident.\nThe quarry, which is owned by B.G. Hoadley Quarries, Inc., of Bloomington, was not available for comment.\nBefore Friday, the latest death at the quarry occurred June 12, 2000, when Bobby G. Martin, a front-end loader operator with 17 years of mining experience, was crushed between two large limestone blocks. \nMartin, who was 48, was moving the blocks from a reject pile to a different location at the quarry for examination and marking. \nAccording to the Mine Safety and Health Administration's final report, one of the stones Martin was standing between was not positioned securely, and it toppled over, pinning him against the second block.
(04/26/06 2:08am)
Twenty-nine students of Summit Elementary School were sent to the hospital after a pick-up truck crashed into a school bus Tuesday morning.\nThe accident occurred at 8:45 a.m. on Rockport Road, about 145 feet south of Graham Drive. The school bus had stopped and was boarding students when a brown pick-up truck traveling southbound hit the bus head on.\n"The stop arm was out, and the lights were flashing," said Bloomington Police Department Detective Sgt. David Drake, reading from the police report.\nThe 17-year-old driver of the truck said he was attempting to stop for the bus when his wheels slid on the wet pavement, according to the report.\nThe bus driver, Cynthia K. Wood of Bloomington, 37, sustained injures to her head, face and arms, as well as suffering a bruised knee. Officer Amy Myers, who responded to the accident, reported that Wood's eye and face also appeared badly swollen.\nThe students and driver were picked up by another bus and taken to the hospital, where they were later released. The other driver appeared uninjured. Both the school bus, which was six years old, and the truck had to be towed from the scene.
(04/24/06 6:57am)
Two workers at the Maple Hill Quarry on Rockport Road were involved in a stone-cutting accident Friday morning, killing one and seriously injuring the other. \nBenjamin Strunk, 34, of Spencer, Ind., was pronounced dead at 10:45 a.m. at the quarry, which is owned by B.G. Hoadley Quarries, Inc. of Bloomington. He was killed after a slab of limestone broke loose from the wall of the quarry and crushed him.\nThe Perry-Clear Creek Fire Department responded to the initial emergency call from the quarry. \nMonroe County Coroner David Tourney said preliminary findings show Strunk died of massive blunt force trauma to the upper torso. Toxicology reports are pending. \n"It's pretty obvious it was an accident," Tourney said. \nMonroe County Sheriff's Deputy Ted Baugh was not available for comment regarding the accident.\nAccording to news reports, another worker was injured and treated at Bloomington Hospital Friday. As of 8 p.m. Sunday, a patient care director said the \nhospital could not release any information on the patient, and he was not listed in the patient directory. Bloomington Hospital patients are given a choice whether they want to be listed in the directory.\nPatsy Fell-Barker, the owner of B.G. Hoadley Quarries, Inc., was not available for comment.\nThe last death at the quarry was June 12, 2000, when Bobby G. Martin, a front-end loader operator with 17 years of mining experience, was crushed between two large limestone blocks and killed. \nMartin, who was 48, had been moving the blocks from a reject pile to a different location at the quarry for examination and marking. \nAccording to the Mine Safety and Health Administration's final report, Martin had been standing between the stones when the rear block, which was not positioned securely, toppled over and pinned him against the second block.
(04/21/06 4:46am)
Police retracted a statement they made Tuesday that a 25-year-old Bloomington man and his wife, who were victims of a hate crime earlier that morning, were black.\nCpt. Joe Qualters apologized for what he called a police \nerror. \n"An incorrect assumption as to the victim's race was made based on the racial epithets directed at him," Qualters said. "The department apologizes to all involved and regrets the error made in this instance."\nSgt. David Drake added at Thursday's press time that police didn't include the victim's race in the actual incident report.\nQualters said there seemed to be confusion as to the location of the incident as well. The attack on the couple took place near Kilroy's Sports Bar, which is located in the 300 block of North Walnut Street.\nThe couple was walking to their vehicle after leaving the bar when several white men began shouting racial slurs at them. One of the men knocked out the husband with a skateboard, police reports said.\nThe victim said he was attacked "just because of his race," Drake said Thursday, explaining the police report's specific references to the racial slurs spoken led him to assume the victim was black.\nThe victim, who was taken to the hospital by his wife following the incident, told police he suffered from a concussion and that two bones had been dislocated in his arm. Officer Brando Lopossa, who was called to the hospital at 4:15 a.m., also reported there were several abrasions and lacerations on the victim's head. \nThe suspects had shaved heads, were in their early 20s and were wearing dark clothing at the time of the incident. The victims had no prior contact with the assailants before being attacked.\nQualters said a "more careful analysis of case reports" will be taken from now on before information is released to the press.\nBPD detectives continue to investigate the hate crime. They are currently reviewing local businesses' surveillance videos in an attempt to catch the crime on tape. The incident also was referred to the city's human rights council. Anyone with information on this or other crimes should contact BPD at 339-4477.
(04/19/06 5:18am)
A 25-year-old Bloomington resident and his wife were attacked on North Walnut Street early Tuesday morning by several men on skateboards, in what police are calling a case of aggravated battery.\nAccording to police reports, the newlyweds, who are both black, were leaving Kilroy's Sports Bar and Grill at about closing time and heading to their vehicle when "three or four men began yelling racial slurs at them." Two of the men approached the man and hit him over the head, rendering him unconscious, police said. \nAfter her husband fell to the ground, the woman ran and retrieved their vehicle, which was close by. She then loaded him into the car and drove directly to Bloomington Hospital, Sgt. David Drake said, reading from the report. Though the victim said he thought he had been hit with a baseball bat, his wife identified the weapon as a skateboard, Drake said.\nOfficer Brandon Lopossa was called to the hospital at 4:15 a.m. and reported that there were numerous abrasions and lacerations to the victim's head. The victim said he had also suffered a concussion and had two bones dislocated in his arm, the police report said.\nThe suspects are described as white men in their early 20s, wearing dark clothing at the time of the incident. The victim said they all had shaved heads or were bald. The couple that was attacked had not had any contact with the perpetrators prior to the attack.\nThe case is being investigated by a Bloomington Police Department detective. In addition, the incident has been referred to the city's human rights council. Anyone with information on this or other crimes should contact BPD at 339-4477.
(03/31/06 4:39am)
Police arrested a Bloomington man early Tuesday morning on preliminary charges of carrying a handgun without a permit, possession of marijuana and resisting law enforcement.\nBloomington police encountered Michael Wise, Jr., 23, at the intersection of Second and Patterson streets parked in a green Pontiac with a female passenger in the front seat beside him. Wise told the officers he was having car trouble, the police report said. Wise had no license and he told police he was not driving.\nAccording to the police report, Wise had an open beer bottle in his hand and was exhibiting "nervous behavior." He also refused to take his right hand out of his coat pocket. As the police questioned him, Wise attempted to exit the vehicle. After resisting the officers, Wise took off running along West Second Street, the police report said. The officers caught him after he ran 150 yards. They discovered a plastic bag filled with marijuana in his possession. A handgun was also found in the vicinity of the chase and police speculate he had dropped it, the report said.\nDrugs suspected in recent robbery\nA Bloomington resident was robbed at knife point a little after midnight Tuesday on the 400 block of East Allen Street.\nThe 19-year-old victim said two men wearing ski masks entered his residence while he was watching TV, ordering him to the floor and demanding a lockbox in his possession.\nAccording to police reports, one robber held a knife close to the face of the victim and asked, "Where is it?" After retrieving the safe, the robbers ordered the man to stay on the floor and fled through the front door, according to the report.\nThe safe was owned by a third party who did not cooperate with the police, Capt. Joe Qualters said. In the police report the officers said the crime was likely drug-related, due to the reluctance of the victims to tell the police what the safe contained.\n"One would speculate, based on prior experience, that the safe contained an illegal substance," Qualters said.\nThe first robber was wearing a red sweatshirt and a ski mask. He was described as being 5 feet 6 inches tall with a medium build. The second robber was wearing a blue sweatshirt and ski mask. He was described as being 5 feet 10 inches tall with a thin build. The case is still under investigation.
(03/27/06 10:15pm)
A Bloomington man was arrested early Thursday morning after confessing to police that he had planned to rob the Taco Bell on South Walnut Street. \nJoshua H. Arthur, 18, a Taco Bell employee, was charged with attempted burglary after Bloomington police found him in the woods behind the fast food restaurant with a black bag and ski mask.\nOfficer Jared Oren responded after an anonymous call to the police department said someone was attempting to break into the Taco Bell. After arriving on the scene, \npolice heard crackling in the woods behind the restaurant and saw a man crunching through the snow. He was making his way up the hill away from the building, Bloomington Police Department Sgt. David Drake said, reading from the police report.\nWhen police tried to stop him, the man, who smelled strongly of gasoline, dropped the black tote bag he was carrying and started to walk away from it, according to the report. He then changed his mind, picked his bag up and began to approach the police, the report said. At that point, a purple ski mask hanging out of the bag got caught on a low tree branch and fell to the ground. A search police conducted through the tote bag revealed a hammer, a saw and a container full of gasoline.\nInitially, Arthur told police he was just taking a shortcut home after work, but eventually he admitted to the attempted burglary of the Taco Bell, the report said. The tools in his bag were part of a plan to break through a window of the building and then open up the safe, police said. The gasoline was to burn into the safe if the hammer and saw didn't work, according to the report. Drake said Arthur had gone home after getting off work at Taco Bell at 2 a.m. and had returned with the materials to break into the building.\nArthur was allegedly trying to break into the business because he was being evicted from his apartment later that day and he needed $400 to make a down payment on another apartment. In Arthur's written statement, he said he needed the money because his father depended on him, and they couldn't live on the street.
(03/09/06 4:48am)
It was June 6, 1944, a date that would soon be known as D-Day. War reporter Ernie Pyle walked across the blood-soaked beach in Normandy, France, watching as the waves from the English Channel brushed against the cheeks of dead men gently floating in the shallow waters. His fingers weren't itching for his pad of paper or a pen to write down the details quickly, to help him remember the images later when he sat in front of his typewriter. There was no way he could forget.\nHis prose captivated the minds of readers across the United States, earning him front-page stories and a large following in the 1940s.\nToday, Pyle is considered the typified ideal of the war journalist: the correspondent who finds an average person to relate the impact of war to the audience at home. He revolutionized the practice of war reporting.\nPyle, who attended IU but left before graduating, inspired the University to name its journalism building after him, an anomaly in the world of alumni gift-giving. His untimely death in the South Pacific turned him into a myth: the war correspondent that wasn't afraid to hunker down in the foxholes with the average GI. \n"I think a huge shift in war reporting came with Ernie Pyle," Associate Professor of Journalism Claude Cookman said. "Before he came along, newspaper war reporting was primarily passing along the official line."\nYet Pyle would never have considered himself a literary artist, at least not in the same vein as great novelists at the same time.\n"If you had asked him if he was a writer -- like John Steinbeck -- he would have laughed himself silly," said Associate Professor of Journalism Owen Johnson, an expert on Pyle's life and works.\n"Pyle's fame is associated with the fact that for the readers, Pyle's columns meant that they could picture for themselves what their friends and families were going through," Johnson said. "Art gives you the experience. Pyle could do it in the telling of the story."\nBut, like Pyle, not many war journalists would appreciate the word "artist" being added to their resumes. \n"A lot of journalists who generally try to expose pretension in other people would see pretension in the word 'art' and would try to avoid labeling themselves with it," Cookman said.\nThe facts, however, reveal an inordinate amount of men and women who have returned from wars and turned their writing talents to other forms of literary art, relating their memories of war in a smooth combination of fiction and fact. From Toronto reporter Ernest Hemingway's book "A Farewell to Arms," about the fictionalized events of a medic in WWI, to National Public Radio correspondent Anne Garrels' 2003 memoir "Naked in Baghdad," war reporting creates a breadth of experiences journalists come home and write about.\n"It's no wonder that there's a strong compulsion to write about this experience," Cookman said. "War is an extremely intense experience, whether you are a soldier or a journalist."\nAnd the people who write about these experiences are often just trying to sort out what the war meant to them, Johnson said.\nAfter all, war correspondence is dangerous business. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, more than 60 journalists have been killed just in Iraq since 2003, making this war one of the deadliest for the media since Vietnam.\nBut memoirs are a booming business in America right now. A quick search through www.amazon.com using the specific terms "war correspondent" revealed more than 300 books about the subject, while a broader search for war memoirs culled over 3,000.\nAustralian historian and journalist Keith Windschuttle doesn't find this surprising. \n"The art of war reporting goes to the very core of Western culture," he wrote in a 2005 academic piece called "The Journalism of Warfare."\nHe explained that the "origins of journalism lie in exactly the same place as the origins of history." The first "genuine" historian, Thucydides, a Greek who wrote The History of the Peloponnesian Wars, was also the first journalist, said Windschuttle. He just didn't know it.\n"The responsibility of the journalist is the same as that of a historian: to try to stand outside his own political interests and his own cultural preferences and to tell his audience what actually happened," Windschuttle said.\n"Telling a story is one of the oldest things humans do, and it's deeply embedded in who we are," Cookman added. \nFor the public, there remains a certain amount of mystique surrounding the war correspondent. They are heroes and heroines, wrote book editor Ralph Berenger in an essay exploring modern war correspondent memoirs. They brave flying bullets and shrapnel to help readers understand why they should care about a conflict so far removed from their own world, Berenger said. They keep the stories told from the frontlines on the front page.\nIn part, the allure of being a war correspondent is being able to watch history unfold, and making the readers back home part of that larger history. \nKim Komenich, a Pulizter prize-winning photojournalist for the San Francisco Chronicle visited IU in the fall on his way back from a stint in Iraq. He told the students who attended his presentation that what kept him out there on the frontlines every day was knowing that his was helping to shape history. \n"This is history -- it's on my watch," he said. \nWar correspondents are also driven by a need to understand the unexplainable.\n"So many people now know individuals who have served in Iraq and can't yet talk about it," Johnson said. "People who have gone into the military to serve -- they don't know if they are coming back. It changes their outlook."\nAnd the public continues to read.\n"It's a respect for courage, although some people would say it's foolhardiness," Cookman said. "It's a certain amount of envy. These people have seen something we aren't likely to see and we want to tap into this"
(03/03/06 7:50pm)
A man robbed the Peoples State Bank at the corner of Kirkwood Avenue and Washington Street Thursday afternoon, according to police. \nOfficers from the Bloomington Police Department -- which is stationed just two blocks from the bank -- responded to the incident.\nThe perpetrator was no longer at the scene when police arrived, and the bank was closed for the remainder of the day. \nBPD Sgt. Joseph Sanders said the robber entered the bank and displayed the note to a teller, who handed over an undisclosed amount of money. After leaving the bank, the robber fled south, Sanders said. \nBank employees described the robber as being a white man, about 5-foot-10, with a medium build. He was wearing white gloves, a dark-colored fleece jacket and a ball cap with an Indiana Pacers logo on it. \nOfficers are reviewing the surveillance video from Peoples State Bank, as well as outside surveillance videos from nearby businesses to get a better view of the suspect, Sanders said.\nThe police are continuing to follow up on leads, including a report of a suspect who was seen catching a cab at about 3:15 p.m. Anyone with information on this or other crimes can contact BPD at 339-4477.\nCheck www.idsnews.com, for continuing coverage.
(03/03/06 4:48am)
An 87-year-old Bloomington woman said a man broke into her home and verbally attacked her Thursday morning, according to police reports. \nSteven J. Fernandez, 20, reportedly kicked in the back door of the elderly woman's home in the 700 block of East 12th Street at 2:13 a.m. Thursday. The victim said she was sitting in her living room during the early morning hours because she was unable to sleep when the man entered, approached her and began "yelling and screaming at her," according to the police report. The man kept screaming "Where are they?" while getting close to her face and yelling obscenities. \nShe also said the intruder threatened to shoot her if she didn't tell him where they were, the report said.\nWhen the victim tried to call 911, the man took the phone from her hands, then went from room to room in the house, looking for someone or something before leaving the house, according to the report. \nThe police report said the man had hit the door so hard, the nails in the frame of the door had been knocked out of the wood.\nWhen police responded to the call, they found Fernandez beating on the front door of a residence in the 600 block of East 13th Street. \nThe report stated he had dropped a pair of handcuffs by the door. Police discovered them during their investigation. \nPoliced arrested Fernandez on suspicion of burglary, theft, intimidation, interfering with the reporting of a crime and consumption of alcohol.\nPolice arrested a man Wednesday after they received two separate complaints from Bloomington residents of a driver threatening others on or by the road with a knife.\nDavid P. Oakley, 26, was arrested on preliminary charges of intimidation for the second altercation, with a photo lineup set up to identify him as the man in the first incident.\nAccording to reports, the first altercation occurred at 6:26 p.m. on South Henderson Avenue. Police reports stated a 26-year-old man and some friends had been in a vehicle traveling north when a man in a maroon Honda Civic began honking his horn repeatedly, yelling out his window and gesturing at the vehicle in front of him. When the first vehicle pulled into the Hoosier Court parking lot, the man followed. \nHe approached the group of men who had gotten out of their vehicle, telling them he was going to "kill them," according to the police report. The man then pulled out a pocket knife and grabbed one of the men in the group by the neck. \nThe man waved the knife close to the victim's face and threatened him, telling him he had just spent seven years in prison and "was not afraid of anything," according to statements in the police report.\nThe group of men got back into their vehicle, at which point the man also went back to his car and left the lot.\nThe second incident occurred outside the Justice Building in the 300 block of North College Avenue. \nA group of residents across the street from the building noted a man honking his car horn continually and screaming, according to the report. \nThe group told the man to quiet down. Then he got out of his car and approached them on the steps. He pulled out a knife and reportedly threatened to cut them with it. \nWhen police responded to the incident, Oakley was sitting on the hood of his vehicle. \nOakley has a criminal record that includes burglary charges, stolen vehicle charges and probation violations.
(02/24/06 4:36am)
Monroe Circuit Judge Kenneth Todd sentenced two women on Wednesday who took part in the 2005 stabbing of a man at Griffy Lake. Both received maximum penalties for their crimes.\nAmy D. Boyce, 29, pleaded guilty to a felony battery charge for stabbing Bloomington resident Sky "Hatchet" McMillan three times last September and was sentenced to eight years in prison.\nTwo years of her eight-year term were suspended, with 168 days of credit. Boyce will serve out the final two years of her term on probation. In return for her plea of guilty, the state agreed to drop the charges of attempted murder, aggravated battery, conspiracy to commit battery causing serious bodily injury and obstruction of justice.\nBoyce's attorney, Stuart Baggerly, unsuccessfully attempted to convince the court that Boyce's mental disabilities and physical dependencies were grounds for a lower sentence. Boyce suffers from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as addictions to drugs and alcohol.\n"(She's) a desperate, pathetic person who has never had anything good happen to her," Baggerly said. "She's always been at the receiving end of bad things."\nBaggerly said Boyce was likely to respond affirmatively to probation.\nBoyce also took the stand to defend herself. \n"If I serve any more time that would not allow me to get the mental treatment and the drug treatment I need," she said.\nTodd found the aggravating factors of the case outweighed the mitigating ones in his final decision.\nJessica N. Stanger, 20, of Solsberry, was also sentenced Wednesday for taking part in the stabbing last fall.\nStanger, who had no previous criminal record, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of assisting a criminal and received a three-year prison term, with two and a half years suspended on probation. A conspiracy charge to commit battery resulting in serious bodily injury was dismissed by the court.\n"I didn't call the cops and ... I gave a false story (to the police)," Stanger admitted.\nBoyce and Stanger both related their version of the events leading up to the stabbing of McMillan. Stanger alleged she had no prior knowledge of the plan to harm McMillan, and after the group began attacking him, she retreated to the car. Boyce claimed she was forced to stab McMillan after being threatened by another member of the party.\nTwo other people charged in connection with the stabbing have been previously sentenced. In January, Katharine Lewis, 21, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of assisting a criminal. She received a three-year prison sentence with all but six months suspended on probation. Brandon Sloan, 18, pled guilty in December to an amended felony charge of assisting a criminal. He received a three-year prison term, with all but one year and 194 days suspended on probation.\nBoyce, Lewis, Sloan and Stanger were part of a group who lured McMillan, 36, to Griffy Lake Sept. 17, 2005, with the intent to harm him. According to police documents, the victim allegedly incited the group at People's Park that evening by making offensive comments about a deceased friend.\nAfter engaging in a hostile dispute at the park, they traveled with the victim to Griffy Lake, Boyce and Stanger said. After beating and stabbing McMillan, the group left him there.\nMcMillan, who suffered two stab wounds and a partially collapsed lung, called 911 from the lake's boathouse. Paramedics admitted him to the Bloomington Hospital that night as a critical care patient.
(02/22/06 4:29am)
A 6-year-old Templeton Elementary student ran into a passing vehicle while crossing the road to catch the school bus Tuesday morning, a police report states.\nAccording to the Monroe County Sheriff's Department, which received the call at 8:25 a.m., the girl was crossing Rolling Ridge Way when she ran into the side of a northbound car. The driver of the vehicle, Kirsten Paster, reported hearing a thump on the right rear passenger side of her car. When she stopped and looked behind her she saw a pedestrian lying on the roadway, the report said.\nWitnesses said the child had just gotten out of a parked vehicle and did not look before beginning to cross the road. Her mother was also getting out of the vehicle, but when she saw the car driving by she shut her door and was unable to stop her daughter.\nThe school bus that collects the students on Rolling Ridge Way must drive past the bus stop every morning and turn around before picking them up. It was during this turn-around period, when students were getting out of their parents' parked vehicles to wait at the bus stop, that the incident occurred.\nAn ambulance was called, and the student was reported as being fine, suffering from scuffed legs. The car was undamaged. Had the car hit the child instead, the impact would have killed her, the sheriff's department said.
(02/15/06 4:59am)
A young woman was arrested Tuesday morning after threatening employees in the Arlington Park Apartment complex with a loaded handgun, according to a Bloomington Police Department report.\nLana Thomas, 25, admitted to firing a gun in the business office of the apartment complex, at 1320 N. Arlington Park Dr., at approximately 8:45 a.m., according to the report. When police responded to the call, Thomas had left the scene, but was found soon after exiting an apartment at the complex. She was detained by the officers and a .22-caliber revolver was found in her purse.\nShe told the police she was angered after discovering a note outside the apartment indicating her car had been towed, the report said. She then confronted complex personnel, pointing her gun at one of the employees and firing it toward the ground, according to the report.\nThomas was charged with criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon, possessing a handgun without a license and pointing a firearm at an individual. At press time, she was being held at the Monroe County Correctional Center with bail set at $4,000 surety and $500 cash. \nRepresentatives from the Arlington Park Apartment office refused comment as of press time.
(02/08/06 5:29am)
Sophomore Julianne Martin, who is half-Cuban, is one of hundreds of students who applied for the Hudson and Holland Scholarship Programs as an incoming freshman, hoping her high academic scores as well as her heritage would help give her a chance to go to IU.\n"It was a big factor in me coming to IU," Martin said.\nBut besides meeting her monetary needs, the program hasn't been much of a help, Martin said. \n"At times, I almost felt out of place," Martin said. \nMany of the programs Hudson-Holland run to retain students never interested her, as they were suited mainly for black students, who make up about 75 percent of the scholars, she said. \nIf she weren't a dedicated student who had wanted to attend IU in the first place, the programs might not have kept her at IU.\nEdwardo Rhodes, vice chancellor for academic support and diversity, said the Hudson and Holland Scholarship Programs, with an annual budget of approximately $2 million, are "fairly modest program(s)." Each year the dual programs afford 150 students, mostly blacks and Hispanics from Indiana, a chance to come to IU.\nThe Hudson and Holland Scholarship Programs, according to their Web site, are designed to award students scholarships based on several academic criteria, and is geared toward students who "demonstrate a commitment to working with underrepresented and disadvantaged populations." \nBut up until 2004, when the faculty voted to change the program's name to Hudson-Holland, it was known as two separate programs, the Minority Achievers Program and Mathematics and Science Scholarships. MAP was a race-exclusive scholarship program designed to financially assist high-achieving African-American, Hispanic and American Indian students.\nThis fundamental change in the program's purpose was in response to two landmark rulings made in June 2003 on affirmative action limits, said Hudson-Holland Director Kevin Brown, though he added that the program's name change was not. \n"There was a change which occurred in our membership," he said. "We did move from being a race-exclusive program to allowing whites and Asian students."\nIU, like many other universities that have been discarding scholarships and programs typically reserved for minority students, is focusing on issues of diversity, not simply race. This includes renaming offices and programs with ethnic imagery and replacing them with other terms, like diversity.\n"Minority is a race-conscience concept, while the concept of diversity is a race-neutral concept," Brown explained. \nRhodes admitted IU hasn't seen much controversy over the programs it offers for underrepresented minority groups. Unlike the University of Michigan, which had to revoke its admissions quota system in 2003, and Southern Illinois University, which was threatened with a lawsuit from the U.S. Justice System this past fall, IU's inclusive system was already strongly in place.\nThe Office of Academic Support and Diversity was created in 1998 and has primarily focused on "underrepresented groups," such as first-generation and high-achieving low-income college students, not "minority" students.\n"There are other universities that had a lot of tightly restricted programs," Rhodes said. "That just simply was not an issue for us. We have a fairly consistent philosophy to outreach to people no matter what their background is."\nEric Love, director of diversity education, said by creating more inclusive programs, IU and other schools are developing more "culturally competent" students. \n"If you want a job or you want a highly sought after position, you must be culturally competent," he said.\nThat doesn't mean IU is a stranger to the issue of race exclusiveness. Statistically, the University draws proportionally fewer minority students. For example, black student enrollment at IU is just 4.4 percent of the total student body, which is half the amount of total African Americans living in Indiana and only one-third of the U.S. Census' national average. \n"Clearly the major, major problem is a lack of minority students at Indiana," Brown said. "There's still a lot of work that has to be done."\nHudson-Holland and other similar programs designed to recruit and retain minority students are a major way Rhodes hopes to combat the low numbers. \nOther programs, like Groups, which focuses on supporting first-generation, low-income and disabled students, and the 21st Century Scholars Program, a government-funded outreach service that mentors low-income Indiana students from middle school onward, are indirectly helping raise the low levels of minority students attending college, Rhodes said.\n"We have a fairly consistent policy to outreach to (underrepresented) people no matter what their background, whether they are rural whites or urban blacks," he said.\nBut Brown cautioned that IU still has a long way to go in strengthening its minority numbers. \n"Indiana University has to overcome its reputation," he said. "There is still a lot of work that has to be done. We need to be much more aggressive in our recruiting of black and Latino kids and black and Latino professors."\nBrown added that the recent controversy surrounding IU President Adam Herbert "sends a bad message to state of Indiana on the state of African Americans on our campus."\n"Just opening doors is not enough anymore," Rhodes said.