News briefs for March 19, 2001

Monday, March 19, 2001 | 11:11 a.m.

Woman killed on Fremont Street

Metro Police have arrested a Las Vegas man on charges of driving under the influence resulting in death after the truck he was driving struck a woman who was attempting to get into her car.

Darwin Ellison, 48, was arrested near Fremont and Seventh streets at about 12:30 p.m. Friday, minutes after a 58-year-old North Las Vegas woman was hit and killed on Fremont, 143 feet east of Las Vegas Boulevard.

The woman was getting into her car, which was parked along the south curb on Fremont when a 1979 International truck heading east on Fremont veered into her. The woman was pinned against her car door and then run over by the truck's rear tires, police said. She died at the scene.

Ellison was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on DUI charges, hit and run and an open alcoholic container. The accident remains under investigation by Metro accident detectives.

NRC schedules open house

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has invited the public to meet March 28 between 7 and 9 p.m. during an open house, scheduled to discuss activities related to the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

The open house is scheduled at the Suncoast hotel, 9090 Alta Drive.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site under study by the U.S. Department of Energy for the burying of 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste from commercial reactors and defense activities. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must license any construction or operation of a repository.

NRC staff from Las Vegas and the agency's Rockville, Md., headquarters are scheduled to attend and be available for one-on-one discussions regarding the commission's oversight role. The mountain has not been recommended by the NRC as a repository site. That recommendation is not expected until the end of the year.

Warrants issued for man, 20

A 20-year-old man is wanted in connection with a November shooting death of a man in a trailer park.

Warrants are on file charging Jamaar J. Williams with murder in connection with the Nov. 7 slaying of 25-year-old Reggie Ezill in a trailer park in the 4000 block of Las Vegas Boulevard North, police said.

The Criminal Apprehension Team is searching for Williams, who is believed to still be in the Las Vegas Valley. The team is composed of detectives from Metro, Henderson and North Las Vegas police, FBI agents and U.S. marshals.

Williams is described as black, 6 feet 1 inch, about 180 pounds with black hair and brown eyes.

Anyone with information in this case is asked to call the FBI office at 385-1281 or Secret Witness at 385-5555.

Dry conditions threaten state

Nevada faces the prospect of another severe fire season because of dry conditions and increasing home construction in fire-prone areas, fire officials in Reno said.

Wildland fires blackened nearly 650,000 acres across Nevada last season and about 1.6 million acres in 1999. The combined acreage was more than twice the amount charred during the previous decade.

"If we get a wet spring we'll be fine, but right now we're preparing for an early season and another long season," Tom Harbour, a top fire officer for the Forest Service, told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

The 2001 fire season is still a couple months away, but the Sierra snowpack is about 75 percent of average for the season and even lower in places such as the Truckee River basin.

Experts said there's little chance there will be enough late-season storms to turn the situation around.

"It's probably impossible to catch up," said Tim Roide, a Bureau of Land Management fire ecologist.

Increasing development next to wildland areas has boosted the risk of losing property and lives, fire officials said.