4A
--the home Wednesday. The two-story house had a big patio, where there was furniture, a children's bicycle and a plastic basketball hoop. The yard was landscaped and well-manicured.
NEWS / THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
NATIONAL
Explosives found in suspect's home
Murder suspect Christopher Spireg is led out of State Police headquarters in Appomattox, Va., Wednesday. He is accused of killing eight people and leading police on an overnight manhunt
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Police accuse guard of killing eight,but are still silent on details
APPOMATTOX, Va. — A bomb squad discovered a multitude of explosives Wednesday at the home of a man accused of shooting to death eight people, and crews were detonating the devices as more details about the suspected gunman came to light.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Christopher Bryan Speight, a 39-year-old security guard, surrendered to police at daybreak Wednesday after leading authorities on an 18-hour manhunt following the slayings at a house in rural central Virginia where deputies found a mortally wounded man and seven bodies.
As of Wednesday afternoon, bomb squads had detonated seven explosives. The blasting was expected to continue into Thursday.
Speight had no weapons when he hurrendered. He was wearing a bulletproof vest over a black fleece jacket, camouflage pants and mudcaked boots. Neither the Sheriff nor a state police spokeswoman would disclose what Speight said when he gave up.
Authorities remained tight-lipped on most details surrounding the slayings, including any possible motive. Nor did they immediately identify any of the victims or their relationship to the suspect. Investigators would say only that he knew his victims.
Speight, who was jailed while awaiting charges, co-owned and lived in the home where some of the bodies were found.
Reporters were allowed to see
Neighbor Monte W. Mays said Speights mother deeded the house to Speight and his sister in 2006, shortly before she died of brain cancer.
Mays, the county's retired commissioner of accounts, said Speight was a good neighbor. They waved as they passed each other on the
road and sent their dogs out to play with one another.
Speight had long been a gun enthusiast and enjoyed target shooting at a range on his property, Mays said. But the shooting recently became a daily occurrence, with Speight firing what Mays said were high-powered rifles.
"Then we noticed he was doing it at nighttime," and the gunfire started going deeper into the woods, Mays said.
Mays said the entire community is devastated and wondering what
"The only one who's going to know now is Christ" he said.
triggered the slayings.
David Anderson, co-owner of the Sunshine Market grocery store in Lynchburg, where Speight sometimes provided security, said Speight was worried that his sister and brother-in-law wanted to kick him out of the house.
Speight never wanted to talk about it, but he "constantly paced the floor," Anderson said. "I thought he was going to wear a trench in it."
NATIONAL
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN FRANCISCO — Gay men and lesbians are a politically unpopular and relatively powerless force in the U.S., even though the public tends to think otherwise, a political scientist testified Wednesday during a historic trial on the constitutionality of California's same-sex marriage ban.
Stanford University professor Gary M. Segura cited hate crime statistics, anti-gay remarks by elected officials, the relatively low number of gay office holders nationwide and the success rate of ballot initiatives such as
California Proposition 8 to argue that gays do not possess a meaningful degree of political power.
"By any measure, gays and lesbians would have to
defeats for the gay rights movement dating back to the 1970s, including 33 of the 33 measures dealing with marriage.
Segura said Proposition 8 was part of a chain of ballot box
be understood as a minority faction," Segura said. "People who accept the normativity of heterosexuality have held power essentially forever"
— called Segura to the witness stand to buttress their argument that gays are a disadvantaged group that deserves the same protections from discrimination afforded other vulnerable minorities under the U.S. Constitution
Lawyers for two same-sex couples suing to overturn Proposition 8 — California's gay marriage ban
GARY M. SEGURA Stanford University professor
Attorney Charles Cooper, who is representing Proposition 8 sponsors, argued in his opening statement that gays enjoy substantial political power as evidenced by the array of political officials and labor and religious groups that opposed Proposition 8.
That measure was motivated not by "ill-will nor animosity toward gays and lesbians, but special regard for the institution of marriage," he said.
"People who accept the normativity of heterosexuality have held power essentially forever."
Earlier Wednesday, a gay Colorado man testified that
the reversal therapy" he underwent as a teenager to change his sexual orientation drove him to the brink of suicide.
R y a n Kendall of Denver was called to the
witness stand to demonstrate that a person's sexual orientation cannot usually be changed.
James Campbell, a lawyer for the ban's sponsors objected to Kendall being allowed to testify, saying it was irrelevant to the legal issues in the case. Campbell cross-examined Kendall, asking if he ever believed the therapy could help, since he had been forced to go by his parents.
"Your only goal for conversion therapy was to survive the experience, is that true?" Campbell asked.
"Very true," Kendall answered
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sandbags are placed in a backyard affected by mudflow as residents are asked to follow mandatory evacuation orders in a hillside neighborhood in La Canada Flintridge, Calif., Wednesday. Winter storms have created a mudslide risk in areas burned by the Station wildfire last year.
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"Look at our house, we're pretty well fortified here," Starr Frazier said. "If any rain or mud or anything comes down, it'll be blocked by our barricades and we're very well stocked with food and water."
Despite stern pleas from authorities and door-to-door calls by police officers and sheriff's deputies, some residents refused to comply with evacuation orders issued for Los Angeles-area foothill communities below the steep San Gabriel Mountains where 250 square miles of forest burned in a summer wildfire.
NATIONAL
Mudslide feared from Calif. storms
LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE, Calif. — A third powerful Pacific storm pounded California with heavy rain and snow Wednesday, forcing evacuations of hundreds of homes below wildfire-scarred mountains, shutting a major interstate and unleashing lightning strikes on two airliners.
Rick and Starr Frazier put their faith in concrete barriers and a 2-foot-high wall of sandbags on the perimeter of their home in La Canada Flintridge.
Forecasters warned of powerful wind gusts and rainfall rates as high as 1 $ \frac{1}{2} $ inches per hour on soil already saturated from two days of wild weather that caused urban street flooding in coastal cities, spawned a damaging tornado and toppled trees, killing two people.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
When they told Los Angeles County deputies they weren't
While most others in the Frazers' community appeared to be complying, officials in nearby Los Angeles reported only about 40 percent compliance by residents of 262 homes in that jurisdiction.
leaving, the deputies asked them to fill out forms stating they'd been advised of the danger. They also were warned it might not be possible to rescue them.
Police Chief Charlie Beck sternly urged the rest to go.
"We're not doing this because your carpet is going to get wet; we're doing it because your life is at risk," Beck told a press conference.
Steady rain was expected to
By early afternoon, part of Interstate 5 was closed due to snow and ice in 4,100-foot-high Tejon Pass north of Los Angeles. Vehicles were to be escorted down from the pass by Highway Patrol officers.
Two Southwest Airlines aircraft were struck by lightning Wednesday morning after reaching their arrival gates in Burbank, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said.
Two people on one plane reported feeling numb and were taken to a hospital, he said.
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