Wednesday, August 26, 2009
5
3 DEAD AFTER TENN. BARN STANDOFF
AP PHOTO/CITIZEN TRIBUNE, CHUCK HALE
Police cars surround a barn in Mooresburg, Tenn., that was the scene of an overnight standoff that ended Tuesday morning with three people dead.
M O O R E S B U R G , Te n n . — Authorities were investigating a possible murder-suicide on Tuesday after three people were found dead in a barn in rural northeastern Tennessee following a standoff with police. The bodies were found by officers around dawn after a 10-hour standoff that started Monday night. The deaths initially appeared to be a murder-suicide, said Kristin Helm, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. District Attorney General B e r k e l e y B e l l J r. t o l d t h e Citizen Tribune newspaper in Morristown that those found dead were Darran Blevins, his ex-stepfather, Dennis Christian, and Christian’s live-in girlfriend, Brandy Seal. Both Blevins and Seal were in their 20s and Christian was in his 60s, Bell said. He said authorities had been called to the residence before to settle disputes between Blevins and Christian. According to property records, Dennis and Holly Christian own
the barn and a neighbor, Laura Fugate, 76, said the couple had lived there for years until recently. The couple were going through a divorce and Holly Christian and Blevins, her adult son, had moved out, but lived close by, Fugate said. Fugate said no one has told her the identities of the victims found inside the home, but she said she saw Holly Christian talking with police outside the home on Tuesday. Hawkins County Sheriff ’s Detective Randy Collier said two men and a woman were found dead with gunshot wounds inside the barn, but would not confirm any relationships among the victims. The deputies responding to a domestic call arrived around 8 p.m., he said. “Upon arrival deputies heard voices inside and heard several gunshots,” Collier said. Around midnight, deputies entered the lower level of the two-story barn and found the bodies of a man and a woman,
Collier said. The deputies retreated after they heard movement in the upper level of the barn, a loft that had been converted into a living space with a bed and a computer. Collier said following the discovery of the bodies, a man appeared in a window in the loft and fired a weapon. It was not clear whether he was shooting at someone or if he shot himself, Collier said. Throughout the evening, Collier said they were unable to contact or establish communication with anyone inside the barn. Just before dawn on Wednesday, deputies went back inside and discovered a third body of a man in the loft. The barn is in an isolated area near Tennessee Valley Authority property north of the community of Mooresburg, about 50 miles northeast of Knoxville. Helm said the state agency was asked by Bell to open an investigation into the deaths. — AP
Deal scuttled in dispute over SMU’s Bush library
AP PHOTO/RON EDMONDS
In this Jan. 28, 2008, file photo, then-President Bush delivers his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress in Washington.
DALLAS — A deal that would have ended the property dispute involving George W. Bush's presidential library at Southern Methodist University has evaporated, attorneys on both sides of the case said Tuesday. Two former condominium owners filed a lawsuit accusing the school of illegally taking control of a Dallas condo complex and forcing out the residents. Last month, former condo owners Gary Vodicka and Robert Tafel reached confidential agreements with SMU to end the dispute. University attorney Mark Lanier said Tuesday that Vodicka and Tafel backed out of the settlement to try to squeeze more money from the school. However, Vodicka contends the deal fell apart after the university tried to expand the settlement beyond its original terms. Vodicka said the alleged bait-and-switch was the equivalent of SMU going to the grocery store to buy "milk, cereal, eggs and
peanuts, and now they want filet mignon, trout almondine and red snapper." "I did not agree to any of that," Vodicka said, "And if they want all that, then they have to pay for it." Tafel's attorney, Larry Friedman, said his client's agreement with SMU consisted of four points that took up a quarter-page of a legal piece of paper. But the agreement SMU's lawyers tried to have the court enforce was considerably longer — "a Magna Cartatype document," Friedman said. "They have to abide by the deal they made or negotiate a new deal," Friedman said. In 2005, Vodicka and Tafel filed their lawsuit that claimed SMU lied about its intention to use the condominium property for the Bush library. SMU has said the process of acquiring the complex was lawful and that it did not intend to bid for the presidential library when it began buying condos in 1999. A court hearing is scheduled for Friday,
and the settlement dispute is likely to be discussed, Vodicka and Lanier said. The lawsuit centers on SMU's acquisition of University Gardens, a 40-year-old condominium complex across from the university. SMU decided at the end of 1998 to begin buying up the approximately 350 units. It bought enough units to gain a majority of seats on the board of the homeowners association. The school filled those seats with SMU employees and others affiliated with the university who did not own units or live at the complex. The university eventually bought out all but two condo owners: Vodicka, who had four units, and Tafel, who owned one unit. SMU bulldozed the condos in 2006 and later that year, it became apparent the school would be the site of Bush's library. Officials hope to open the library in 2013. — AP
Immigrants fight to bring adult children to US
AP PHOTO/REED SAXON
Teresita Costelo shows a photo of herself, at right, with her two daughters and grandson taken Jan. 3 in Manila, while at her sister's home July 23 in Carson, Calif. Teresita Costelo is one of several immigrants across the country suing the federal government to try to get their adult children into the country without another lengthy wait. in California, New York, New Jersey and Ohio, immigration attorneys said. The complaints argue that the 2002 law allows grown children to use the parents’ date of application as a starting point. The government disagrees and says the law only holds for grown children who were sponsored directly for green cards from the very beginning or for those listed on the application of a foreign parent who was sponsored by a legal resident spouse. The government contends that Congress passed the law to help current U.S. citizens and residents reunite with their
Sandy Beaches’ BACK-TO-SCHOOL CHECKLIST notebook history notes pencils
families, not to help future immigrants bring their families here. The plaintiffs argue that the law reads more broadly than that, and should include adult children whose parents had differing forms of sponsorship, including that by siblings. The country’s immigration appeals court recently ruled in favor of the government in a case in which a Chinese man immigrated in 2005 based on an application filed by his sister. The man tried to get a green card for his daughter, who had aged out, and sought to have her application marked with the initial 1992 filing date. But the court ruled the application was new and his daughter would have to wait. Sharon Rummery, a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, declined to comment on the dispute. Immigrant advocates say the government should not require families to wait so long to immigrate together, claiming it discourages legal immigration. Nor should aspiring immigrants be forced to choose between their children and reuniting with their siblings and parents in the United States. But some argue these are choices immigrants should have to make. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, said the lengthy wait times are a symptom of much bigger problems in the country’s immigration system. “There is a deeper policy problem here, which is that we overpromised and underdelivered on legal immigration,” said Krikorian, who favors stricter limits on family-based immigration. — AP
CATHOLIC CASINO NIGHT! THE UNION BALLROOM AUGUST 27 7 p.m.
MASS WITH ARCHBISHOP BELTRAN
9 p.m.
Stadium
unlimited tanning for a whole school year! LOW - $109.95 SPEED - $159.95
LINDSEY Farmer
PREMIUM - $209.95 360 BED - $399.95
Use both locations: Dorms 364-7344 • Crimson Park 321-7344 sandybeachesok.com
Huffman
100 S nson St. (405) 321-0990 ST. THOMAS MORE PARISH
Timberdell
JENKINS
SANTA ANA, Calif. — Evelyn Santos began her quest for a green card nearly two decades ago, hoping someday she and her family could leave the Philippines and start a better life in the United States. The opportunity came in 2007, but with a painful caveat: Her two elder sons were now too old to qualify as dependents, so they would have to stay behind. The mother moved to Northern California with her husband and two younger children, and filed a new round of paperwork hoping to get at least one of her older sons into the country without another decade of waiting. “I have a joke with my son — am I still alive when you come here?” said Santos, 55, a supermarket clerk who lives in Livermore. “I am always praying somebody can help us in the government so we can bring my kids here.” Immigration attorneys say thousands of immigrants are stuck in a similar situation. In countries such as the Philippines, Mexico and China, relatives of U.S. citizens and residents sometimes wait a decade or two for a family-sponsored green card because of country-based immigration quotas. Santos is one of several immigrants across the country suing the federal government to try to get their adult children into the country without another lengthy wait. Under U.S. immigration law, children 21 and older cannot immigrate under their parents’ applications for green cards. Immigration attorneys say a 2002 law aimed at preventing children from “aging out” due to lengthy processing means these grown children should be allowed into the country soon after their parents file new paperwork on their behalf. But the government argues that many of those who got too old during the wait are now new applicants and must start from the beginning. “They want them to go from the front of the line, where they almost made it, and go to the back of some other line that may be 10 to 20 years away, said Carl Shusterman, an attorney representing immigrants in one of the lawsuits. “It is like double jeopardy.” Robert Reeves, an immigration attorney who filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit in federal court in Santa Ana, said he believes 20,000 immigrants living in the United States face similar problems bringing their children here. Roughly a dozen individuals have filed separate lawsuits
Stinson St. Thomas More