Everett Daily Herald, September 15, 2015

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TUESDAY, 09.15.2015

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Convicted robber files $6.3M claim By Rikki King

wants Snohomish County to pay him $6.3 million for his troubles. Kirkpatrick, 57, recently filed a legal claim Todd Kirkpatrick against Snohomish County, a precursor to a lawsuit. The claim was obtained by the newspaper under state public records laws.

Herald Writer

EVERETT — Todd Kirkpatrick robbed banks. Until he got caught. Interrupted mid-robbery, he ran from a Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy. In his attempt to escape, Kirkpatrick leveled his gun at the deputy, who shot him twice. Now Kirkpatrick, an inmate at Clallam Bay Corrections Center,

He wrote that his medical bills from the gunshot wounds amounted to more than $300,000, and that other police officers failed to stop Deputy Dan Scott “from trying to execute me.” Kirkpatrick was robbing a KeyBank in Stanwood on Sept. 25, 2012, when he spotted Scott on patrol outside and tried to run. The deputy chased Kirkpatrick across the street into the Haggen parking lot.

Scott reported that Kirkpatrick leveled a gun at him before the deputy opened fire. Kirkpatrick’s gun was recovered. It wasn’t loaded. Before his arrest, Kirkpatrick was the subject of police bulletins throughout Western Washington, dubbed the “Phony Pony Bandit” because of a wig he wore during his heists. He was convicted of four bank robberies and sentenced to 17

Delving into drones

years. He got a longer sentence because he used a firearm in his holdups. In his claim, Kirkpatrick wrote, “I was obviously unarmed and severely shot up.” He also suffered long-term loss of mobility to his left arm, left hand and left leg, he wrote. Kirkpatrick, who is from Anacortes, had been a businessman See CLAIM, Page A4

CT seeks faster bus commute on I-5 Community Transit to spend $2 million to build more reliability into Everettto-Seattle routes as daily travel times increase. By Jerry Cornfield Herald Writer

“My senior project, nobody was knocking on my door to pay me money for it,” said Mike Vander Wel, Boeing Commerical Airplanes Production Engineering Chief Engineer. “I think that speaks to the quality of what’s coming out of here.” Everett Community College is the first community college to be asked to be a part of the program — called Aerospace Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering or AerosPACE.

Increased congestion on I-5 isn’t just making the commute take longer for those driving to Seattle each day. It’s affecting riders on Community Transit buses as well, as the buses get stuck in the same bumper-to-bumper traffic and fall behind schedule. Starting Sept. 27, Community Transit will spend roughly $2 million to improve its on-time performance. It won’t be with more buses but with a new schedule reflective of the longer travel times between Everett and Seattle. For regular riders of buses running on I-5 it may mean leaving a couple minutes earlier or arriving a couple minutes later depending on when one boards. Overall, the time for the average Everett-Seattle trip will increase by about 10 percent in the peak hours. “We are adjusting our schedules to the reality of what it now takes for those routes,” said Martin Munguia, transit district spokesman. “When traffic is not moving, we cannot fly over those other cars but what we can do is make our schedule be more reliable.” Some days, when traffic is light, delays are minimal or not all, he said. But last Thursday, when traffic was heavy, the trip into Seattle took 18 minutes longer than usual — that’s enough to make people late for work and peeved when they get there. “A lot of research has gone into

See DRONES, Page A2

See CT, Page A2

EvCC students are learning how far the evolving technology can go Imagine a rover landing on the surface of Mars. What if drones emerged from the spacecraft to explore the landscape? Those unmanned aerial vehicles need to be designed, built and flight tested. That’s the assignment for as many as 20 Everett Community College students starting this fall. The college is being asked to be a part of a prestigious program that taps college students to build

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drones for real-world — or in this case, out-of-this-world — scenarios. It’s an academic exercise, but the students will get professional experience. The second-year EvCC students will work in teams with students from several other colleges around the country. They’ll be supervised by faculty but also work directly with mentors from Boeing and NASA as well as other companies. “We coach them, but we don’t tell them what to do,” Barry McPherson, a Boeing Learning, Training and Development

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leader, said. At the end of the school year, the students will come together in a central location to fly their creations in front of these engineers and executives. “It’s not something you can get out of,” said Michael Richey, an Associate Technical Fellow at Boeing. “You actually have to fly a vehicle and you have to fly it in front of industry people.” Students who have gone through the program in past years have been offered jobs, obtained patents and sold their ideas to aerospace companies.

Preach it, Bernie Bernie in the lion’s den: Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders gave a speech at Liberty University, the school founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell. Student reaction was tepid but respectful (Page A6). Considering the polite Dear Abby . . . B3 Good Life . . . . B1

response given the socialist senator, another famous bleeding heart, Jesus of Nazereth, said he might consider speaking there someday, too. Who said the rich have it easy? The IRS has announced that next year it will no longer accept checks for $100 million or more because its check-processing

Horoscope . . . B5 Lottery . . . . . . A2

Obituaries . . . A5 Opinion . . . . . A9

equipment can’t handle checks written for more than $99,999,999. If you owe the IRS more than $100 million you’ll have to write out two checks (Page A7). For the rest of us, this gives us an easy way to spot the 1 Percenters; they’re the ones with writer’s cramp. Don’t know much about Short Takes . . B4 Sports . . . . . . C1

history: On this day in 1955, Vladimir Nabokov’s novel “Lolita,” was published (Today in History, Page B4). It would take pop songwriters another 25 years to find a suitable rhyme for Nabokov, as Gordon “Sting” Sumner, in “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” paired the author’s name with “cough.”

—Jon Bauer, Herald staff

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CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

Everett Community College welding instructor Kimberly Allen demonstrates how to fly a drone. EvCC students participating in a Boeing program will be building a drone with Boeing mentors and teams of other students from around the country.

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