6A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2009
CHARITY
Silent auction to benefit Lawrence Community Shelter
BY JESSE RANGEL jrangel@kansan.com
With the harshness of winter approaching, the Lawrence Community Shelter is preparing to harbor the homeless.
The Bachelor of Social Welfare Club, a service-oriented group of students, has committed to help through a silent auction.
With the lack of resources and space available to the Lawrence Community Shelter this winter, the club is now focusing on helping the shelter in any way it can.
ABOUT THE EVENT:
ABOUT THE EVENT:
WHAT: Bachelor of Social Welfare Group Silent Auction
WHEN: 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
tonight
WHERE: Abe and Jake's
COST: $34,973.99
Money raised goes to
Lawrence Community
Shelter.
The group will donate proceeds from its annual auction tonight
exclusively to the shelter.
Anna Bailey, Wamego senior and president of the Bachelor of Social Welfare Club said there would be two live bands.
She also said many items would be auctioned off, such as a portable grill, beauty products, gift certificates from local veterinarians and KU sports memorabilia, including a basketball signed by the men's basketball team.
Ali Finkelshyte, Dallas senior and vice president of the club, said the club chose to sponsor the LCS this year because its need became so great after the Salvation Army
shelter, at 946 New Hampshire St. closed during the summer. She said the state of the economy had increased the homeless population not just nationally, but in Lawrence as well.
"It's a big, big need and we see that." Finkelshtyne said. "We thought this would be a great time to do it. This is our big project for the Fall."
Loring Henderson, director of the LCS, said the shelter must raise 80 percent of its funds through individual and group donations.
“That’s why we appreciate so much what they’re doing.” Henderson said.
Henderson said the LCS was speaking with other agencies to figure out how it is going to deal with the challenge of being the only shelter in town this winter.
Finkelshtyne said that the group raised about $2,000 last year for the East Central Kansas Economic Opportunity Corporation, but that the need would clearly be greater this year.
"That was mostly turnout from the School of Social Welfare, people affiliated with it," she said. "We just think it could be so much bigger than that."
Bailey said the money would go to the shelter's immediate need this season.
"Obviously in the winter, I would assume they would have higher demands," Bailey said. "We felt that the Lawrence Community Shelter and some recognition in the community, and we have not recently done something to specifically support them."
The auction will be held from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Abe & Jake's Landing, 8 E. Sixth St.
— Edited by Jacob Muselmann
Ill. jury sentences man to death for rape, murder of child
NATIONAL
Karen Schweitzer holds a teddy bear made from clothing belonging to her sister, and her husband Kurt's hand, left, as DuPage County State Attorney Joseph E. Birkett addresses the media on Wednesday. A jury said that convicted killer Brian Dugan should be executed for the 1983 nikkipping, rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico in Naperville, Ill. Dugan's second murder victim was Donna Kay Schwitzer, Karen Schweitzer's sister.
BY MICHAEL TARM
Associated Press
WHEATON, Ill. — A suburban Chicago jury said Wednesday that a convicted murderer should be executed for the rape and killing of a 10-year-old girl kidnapped from her home 26 years ago — a case that helped lead to landmark death penalty reforms in Illinois, including a moratorium on executions.
Patricia Nicarico gasped and put her hand over her mouth as a bailiff announced that Brian Dugan — who admitted yanking her 10-year-old daughter, Jeanine, out of the family's home in 1983 — should die rather than receive another life sentence.
"We are shedding tears of joy," Nicarico told reporters. "A death sentence is never really a joyful thing, But Brian Dugan is someone who deserves it."
The 53-year-old, already serving a life sentence, had been convicted in two other murders, including that of a 7-year-old girl in 1985.
Dugan showed no emotion even as Nicarico family members cried behind him, giving each other the thumbs-up sign.
The jury's decision follows years of court battles in which two other suspects were tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and spent more than 10 years in prison before being exonerated. They ultimately were awarded millions of dollars to settle wrongful prosecution lawsuits.
The case was cited by former Gov. George Ryan as one of several that led to his decision to stop all Illinois executions in 2000, as well as clear the state's death row just before he left office in 2003.
The moratorium remains in place.
Dugan had long offered to plead guilty to Jeanine's slaying if
not to seek the death penalty.
Prosecutors steadfastly resisted and Dugan eventually pleaded guilty in July in hopes of persuading a jury to sentence him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
described the day in 1983 when Jeanine, home sick from school, was abducted from her Naperville home.
Jurors heard how her raped and beaten body was found two days later in a nearby nature preserve, her head still wrapped in the towel and duct tape Dugan had used to blindfold her.
They presented chilling details, starting with the fingernail marks the struggling child left on a wall as she struggled to free herself from Dugan's grasp.
Patricia and Thomas Nicarico described in sometimes tearful testimony the daughter who had
"Brian Dugan is going to where he belongs, to death row, where his fantasies of raping little girls will now turn into a nightmare."
During the penalty trial, DuPage County prosecutors
JOSEPH BIRKETT DuPage County state's attorney
been the "joy in our lives," with the child's mother telling them she still thinks about how scared and terrified her daughter must have been.
DuPage County State's Attorney Joseph Birkett has been dogged by questions about his office's handling of
the time it took to indict Dugan, whom he called a "vicious monster" Wednesday.
the case for years and has defended
"Brian Dugan is going to where he belongs, to death row, where his fantasies of raping little girls will now turn into a nightmare." Birkett said.
moratorium, calling it a "joke," and said reforms in recent years have improved the death penalty process.
Dugan's attorney, meanwhile, reiterated what others have said for several months: that Dugan deserved to have his life spared because he came forward and
Birkett even took a swipe at the
confessed, and had been offering to confess for years.
"I don't expect anyone's going to put flowers on his gravestone
... but people may look back and say this is the person who changed the way we do capital punishment in Illinois and across the country," said Steven Greenberg.
POLITICS 'Gunny Pop' Marine seeks nomination for Congress
SAN DIEGO — A decorated Marine veteran famously photographed smoking a cigar after the fall of Baghdad is running for Congress in California's most
southern district.
Nick Popaditch announced Tuesday that he is seeking the Republican nomination to unseat Democrat Bob Filner.
Known as "Gunny Pop," the 42-year-old Popaditch was awarded the Silver Star for combat actions in Fallujah, where
he was blinded in one eye by a rocket-propelled orenade.
That April 2004 attack came nearly a year after an Associated Press photographer captured a smiling Popaditch smoking a cigar, with the just-fallen statue of Saddam Hussein in the background. The photograph landed on newspaper front pages, garnering Popaditch worldwide attention.
California's heavily Democratic 51st Congressional District stretches along the Mexican border from San Diego's suburbs to the Arizona state line.
Filner, first elected in 1992, was re-elected last year with 73 percent of the vote.
Associated Press