News briefs for November 20, 2001

Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2001 | 9:41 a.m.

Police planning crackdown

Law enforcement officers will rally this weekend to prevent drunken-driving related crashes.

Metro Police, the Nevada Highway Patrol and Henderson Police will patrol and conduct DUI checkpoints in areas where the number of fatal crashes has increased.

Officers will be on the Las Vegas Strip on Friday, in the northwest part of Las Vegas on Saturday and in the southwest area of the valley on Sunday.

Ammerman assistant manager

Shane Ammerman, a Clark County planner for the past decade, was promoted last week to assistant manager of the county's Current Planning Department.

Ammerman will address planning issues during Clark County Commission and Planning Commission meetings. Ammerman, a former principal planner for the division, has a bachelor's degree in Urban Design from Arizona State University.

Ammerman and his wife, Jennifer, work in the Current Planning Department.

Guard arrested for false story

A Reno/Tahoe International Airport private security guard has been charged after she admitted making up a story about a gun-wielding passenger that shut down flights for a couple of hours Friday, FBI officials said.

Cheryl Yvonne Shears, 45, was charged with making a false official material statement.

Shears told officials she found a three-inch folding knife in a passenger's carry-on bag and confiscated the knife. She went on break and was followed into the bathroom by the same passenger, who put a gun to her head and told her not to tell anyone about the knife, officials said she told them.

She then went to an airport bar and had a drink of vodka.

Flights were delayed for two hours based on her information, but she later said she made up the story to cover up that she had been drinking on duty, officials said.

Tourism official killed in crash

Lake Tahoe tourism official was killed and another was seriously injured when their car plunged 200 feet off a cliff on Kingsbury Grade between Minden and Stateline.

Debra Kirk, 49, of Gardnerville, controller for the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority, was killed in the accident early Monday.

Her passenger, Terry LeBan, 52, the authority's executive director, was taken by Care Flight from the accident scene. She is in fair condition at Washoe Medical Center.

A preliminary investigation by the Nevada Highway Patrol indicated that Kirk was driving toward Carson Valley when her car drifted off the edge of Nevada 207 near Tramway Drive and careened 200 feet down the side of the mountain.

The vehicle struck a large boulder and flipped, ejecting both women. Officers could not say if the two women were wearing seat belts. Kirk was pronounced dead at the scene.

Steve Teshara, executive director for Tahoe-Douglas Visitors Authority and the Lake Tahoe Gaming Alliance, said Kirk and LeBan were good friends.

"Debra and Terry were colleagues, but they were also very good friends and did a lot of things together socially," he said.

"They commuted up and down Kingsbury Grade, and normally on a Monday morning, they would be on their way to work," he said.

Kirk had worked for the LTVA for six years and LeBan had been there eight, Douglas County Commissioner and LTVA Treasurer Don Miner told the Reno Gazette-Journal.