Genealogical society holding May meeting PAGE 25
Desert Dolls bring roller derby to Peoria PAGE 20 peoriatimes.com
INSIDE
This Week
FEATURES .... 16 Officers riding for ‘hope’ in Virginia
SPORTS ........ 23 Rugby match coming to Pioneer Park
OPINION................. 14 FEATURES............. . 16 SPORTS................... 23 RELIGION............... 24 CLASSIFIEDS.......... 26
Peoria’s Hometown Newspaper
May 9, 2019
No new safety plans at Grand Canyon BY CARISSA WIGGINTON Special to Peoria Times
Two nonlife-threatening medical calls came in at once to Grand Canyon National Park’s 911 center one day in late April, and the park’s search-and-rescue team was dispatched. Calls like these aren’t unusual: Last year, the team responded to 265 of them. But the very next day, a 69-year-old Peoria woman plummeted 200 feet to her death in the canyon, becoming the fourth fatality in or near the park in five weeks. It was the third fatality from an accidental fall in the park this year. The woman, Cynthia Ackley, fell from the top of a rocky point of Pipe Creek Vis-
ta, according to park spokeswoman Vanessa Ceja-Cervantes. A call for help had been placed, but park rangers were too late. The three previous fatalities occurred over eight days. On April 3, a 67-year-old man fell about 400 feet below the rim east of Yavapai Geology Museum. A 50-yearold visitor from Hong Kong died on March 28 after he tried to get a photo of Grand Canyon West, according to reports. And the body of a possible foreign national was reportedly found March 26 in a forested area near the South Rim. Park officials said the recent fatalities weren’t out of the ordinary — 17 people die at the Grand Canyon every year — and no safety changes are planned. However, there’s an increased focus on helping the
Long-awaited northern park breaks ground
park’s more than 6 million annual visitors understand the dangers that exist near the edge of a yawning chasm and of hiking in what will become excessively hot weather. “The three (deaths) that we experienced happened in close proximity and time,” park spokesman John Quinley said April 22. “One of them was outside the park, so not within Grand Canyon National Park. There weren’t any common threads among those, you know, so it wasn’t anything particularly bad-weather related or some other event that sort of helped those to occur.” Brandon Torres, the branch chief of emergency services at the park, heads the SEE CANYON PAGE 2
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BY DARRELL JACKSON Peoria Times Staff Writer
Northern Peoria residents are finally getting a community park they can call their own, with city officials having broke ground on Paloma Community Park April 30. Nearly five years into the planning stages, the celebration kicked off the first stage of the park, which comprises 85 acres east of Lake Pleasant Parkway at Dixileta Road. Construction is expected to officially commence this fall. SEE PARK PAGE 4
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