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Teen arrested for Central Valley threat

A 15-year-old girl is facing felony charges for allegedly making a threat at Central Valley High School on March 20.

Deputies arrested the girl, who has not been identified, Tuesday morning.

The discovery of the threat last Wednesday led to the evacuation of the campus and cancellation of school for the rest of the day.

Sheriff's deputies, supported by Fairchild AFB K-9 teams, swept the school and did not find any suspicious device to back up the credibility of the threat and school resumed the following day.

Deputy Cole Speer has been investigation the case and determined that the 15-year-old reportedly made the threat because she was not prepared for an assignment that was due in one of her classes.

She was booked into the juvenile detention center Tuesday morning.

Bomb threat forces Central Valley evacuation

School will be back in session Thursday at Central Valley High School after a bomb threat scrawled onto a bathroom wall forced the evacuation of the campus and cancellation of classes Wednesday.

The threat was founded written on the wall in the girls bathroom around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. Law enforcement followed standard protocol and searched the entire school but didn't find anything inside.

The first day of spring brought a lot more than rain to Central Valley.

"Everyone is saying there is a bomb threat and I started freaking out and looking for my friends, making sure they were all safe<" student Caroline Gile said.

"It was very chaotic, it was rainy, it was cold, we didn't know what we were doing," student Ashly Krashowetz said.

The threat forced 1,900 students to evacuate. Bomb-sniffing dogs from Fairchild Air Force Base were brought in while Spokane County Sheriff's deputies searched the school for anything suspicious.

"Everyone was just scared," Gile said.

Krashowetz, a senior at CV, was one of the students who found the threat written in red sharpie in the bathroom.

Retired officer stops hit and run suspect

A suspected drunk driver, accused of hitting two cars and taking off, is in jail thanks to the quick action of three good samaritans.

�Just after 9 p.m. Friday, witnesses say a man driving a black truck rear ended a SUV, driven by a retired police officer at Argonne and Montgomery.� The momentum of the crash sent the officer's SUV into the van in front of him.� Witnesses said the suspect then took off, headed east bound on Montgomery. The retired officer, and two other witnesses followed the truck to a nearby parking lot. That's where the suspect jumped out of his truck and started running.

�Darrin Meleney, who was involved in the crash, ran after the man and grabbed him as he tried to scale a fence. Meleney put him in a choke hold until more witnesses showed up to help.

"He obviously had done something wrong, he wasn't going to be responsible," Darrin Meleney said

"And I've had other people hit me before and run before in the past so I guess I had a reason to go after him, wasn't going to let him get away," he added.

Jim Hill, another witnesses, and the retired officer helped keep the suspect on the ground until deputies arrived.�

A Spokane appliance specialist retires to battle ALS

Retiring at 43�is a dream for many people.�Nate Moats wore sandals and a Hawaiian shirt to his surprise retirement party at Ferguson Bath and Kitchen.�Even though�Friday was�his last day,�Moats knows his real work is just beginning.

"He's taking it way better than any of us can even imagine," employee Shannon Wertman said.

Nate's retiring young, because he's battling�ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. It's the�disease that attacks the body's nervous system, and eventually shuts it down while leaving�the mind sharp. He's trying to keep a positive attitude while battling this, and being a�single father to a 16-year-old girl.

"We all, we can die at anytime...I kind of have one up on everybody else because I kind of have a time frame," Moats said.

Nate's been in appliances for 16 years.�He's made a lot of friends from it and even helped out on KXLY's Extreme Team.�So when he was diagnosed days after Christmas, he told all of them in an e-mail.

"I wanted them to know�I appreciate them...I wanted them to know why I wouldn't be here anymore," Moats said.

Despite pattern of inappropriate behavior, teacher never removed from class

Court documents show a pattern of inappropriate behavior by former Central Valley School District teacher Anthony Cucinotti yet he was never removed from a classroom, put on administrative leave or fired.

This despite the fact that a former Bowdish Middle School student said she was molested by Cucinotti and the school district is now being sued for failing to protect the then 11-year-old girl from Cucinotti, who had a long history of inappropriate behavior with his students.

"They don't do anything about it, or if they do do something about it, they're just slapping the hand, you know and then letting the person go ahead until next time," attorney Richard Eymann said.

Eymann represents the victim, now 15, who said that when she was 11 she was molested by Cucinotti. Eymann said, based on disciplinary files with the Central Valley School District, the district failed to protect his client from Cucinotti.

"There were many years, many occasions where he was doing things which most people would say 'Wow that's inappropriate,'" he said.

Complaint alleges Central Valley School District failed to protect student from sexual abuse

The Central Valley School District is facing allegations it failed to protect a middle school student who claimed she was sexually abused by her science teacher.

On Thursday, a complaint against the school district and four administrators was filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of the victim and her family.�

The 18-page complaint accuses the school district of failing to investigate and take the necessary steps to protect female students from former Bowdish Middle School teacher, Anthony Cucinotti.

Cucinotti, who has not been criminally charged, resigned from the district in 2009.

Online documents obtained by KXLY reveal�Cucinotti received 8 warnings from the school district about his behavior between 1993 and 2009.

In a written warning Cucinotti received in 2004, the district advised him to keep teacher-student relationship on a professional level and to stop meeting at lunch and other non-academic times with small groups of girls.

The complaint alleges Cucinotti asked female students if they were naughty and needed to be spanked. He's also accused of looking down the shirt of female students.�

Prosecutor determines officer-involved shooting justified

The Spokane County prosecutor has determined a deadly officer-involved shooting in Spokane Valley last September was justified.

On Sept. 5, 2012, deputies Aaron Childress and Eric Werner responded to a domestic violence call at 1309 Skipworth Ct. in Spokane Valley. Edward Gover was returning to his girlfriend's house after he engaged in a brief chase with deputies in his her Mercedes Benz.

As he moved into her backyard he was confronted by deputies Childress and Werner.

When Childress and Werner confronted Gover, he told them he had a knife and was going to kill them. Gover hid one hand behind his back as if he had something in it and charged Childress.

"At that point, he's coming at the deputies; he's already told them you're going to have to kill me. Deputies don't know what kind of weapon he has and it was a lethal force situation," Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said at the time of the shooting.

Gover got within 10 feet of Childress; both Childress and Werner opened fire on him, hitting him.

Deputies began performing CPR on Gover, who was pronounced dead at the hospital.

It was later determined Gover did not have a knife.