Local news briefs for February 28, 2000

Monday, Feb. 28, 2000 | 10:55 a.m.

Woman, girl, 4, in critical condition

A North Las Vegas woman and a 4-year-old girl remained in critical condition this morning at University Medical Center after a Clark County school bus rear-ended the woman's pickup Friday morning.

Lakisha Harrison, 26, was southbound on Allen Lane and stopped at the intersection of Red Coach Avenue in her 1994 GMC pickup about 8:45 a.m., North Las Vegas Police said.

The school bus, occupied only by a 59-year-old driver, was also southbound on Allen but failed to stop at the stop sign at the intersection, police said. The bus continued through the intersection hitting the pickup from behind as Harrison made her way south on Allen.

Two other children in the pickup were not seriously injured.

Grand jury indicts Las Vegas man

A Las Vegas man has been indicted by a Clark County grand jury on charges that he defrauded three insurance companies out of nearly $18,000.

William Frank Dinger, 47, is alleged to have committed six felony counts of insurance fraud, a spokeswoman for the state attorney general's office said.

The indictment charges Dinger applied to three different insurance companies for coverage on the same 1989 Jaguar XJS and then reported an accident to the car to all three companies, collecting $17,838.

Slain NLV man is identified

A North Las Vegas man found shot to death Friday was identified as 23-year-old Octavio P. Serrano.

Serrano was found about 6:55 p.m. Friday in the 2100 block of Glider Street shot in the chest, North Las Vegas Police said.

Detectives suspect he may have been shot and then dropped off near Fifth Street and Owens Avenue Friday evening.

Neighbors and witnesses in the area did not report hearing gunshots, and police have not yet determined a motive, Lt. Chris Larotonda, North Las Vegas Police spokesman, said.

Anyone with information in this case is asked to call North Las Vegas Police at 633-9111 or Secret Witness at 385-5555.

Work being done on dam, U.S. 95

Traffic on U.S. 93 near Hoover Dam and U.S. 95 from Lake Mead Boulevard to the Martin Luther King Boulevard exit will be delayed this evening.

The Nevada Department of Transportation will inspect the bridge in front of the Hoover Dam parking structure throughout the evening.

NDOT crews will also be performing core drilling operations on U.S. 95 from tonight at 10 through 5 a.m. Tuesday.

Halfway house resident sought

An inmate at the Southern Nevada Restitution Center was still missing this morning after failing to return to the halfway house after work 5 p.m. Saturday.

Dawn Shaffer, 26, was serving two concurrent one to four-year sentences for burglary and possession of stolen property, Nevada Department of Prisons spokesman Howard Skolnik said.

Shaffer is white, 5 feet 3 inches tall, about 120 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes and a fair complexion.

Work to start on new facility

Metro Police will break ground on a new academy and northwest area substation on Tuesday near Cheyenne Avenue and Fort Apache Road.

The new facility, at 9600 W. Cheyenne Ave., will include a 21,000- square-foot academy and a 17,000-square-foot substation. It is expected to open in early October.

The academy will feature a 140-seat auditorium, an outdoor track and athletic field, locker rooms and staff offices.

Gear box said to have caused collapse

Two of the four escalators at McCarran International Airport's D gates are open this morning after officials found a faulty gear box was to blame for an accident that injured 16 people.

On Feb. 17, 30 to 40 people landed in a heap at the bottom of one of the escalators when it stopped and the steps folded, creating a slide. All four escalators were closed until a cause was found.

The contractor, Montgomery Kone Elevator-Escalator, sent some of the parts of the broken escalator to labs in Los Angeles and Cleveland and determined that the gear box caused the accident, Hilarie Grey, airport spokeswoman, said.

The accident sent six people to local hospitals for minor injuries. Another 10 escalator riders were treated in the airport by paramedics and released. Other people on the escalator didn't wait for paramedics to arrive.

Planes suffer problems at McCarran

About 500 passengers on two flights were stranded in Las Vegas Sunday night because of airplane maintenance problems, an official at McCarran International Airport said today.

Officials for Canada 3000 and American Trans Air issued vouchers to passengers so they could spend Sunday night in area hotels an airport official said, noting that the airlines apparently ran out of vouchers, forcing some customers to spend the night at McCarran.

Both flights took off this morning, an airport official said.

Jones selected to national committee

Nevada Democrats on Saturday elected former Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones as a national committeewoman.

The Nevada Democratic Central Committee meeting in Tonopah attracted 180 people, who elected Jones, now spokeswoman for Harrah's, by a more than 2-1 margin over Nancy Harkess, spokeswoman for the Department of Energy. Jones will attend the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles in August.

The unpaid four-year job lasts only three more months, but it's a high-profile position.

The job was held by Judy Klein, a longtime Democratic fund-raiser who was sentenced Feb. 4 to 15 months in prison for embezzling about $98,000 when she was executive director of the International Association of Gaming Attorneys.