08/12/2006

Associated Press

The Seattle monorail is rolling again. Regular 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. service has resumed after $3 million in repairs.

The monorail has been shut down since Nov. 26 when its two trains sideswiped each other on a curve.

New doors were made by the set creators for the Seattle Opera for the trains that were built for the 1962 world's fair. Insurance will pay for most of the bill, the city said Friday.

The one-mile line between the Seattle Center and the downtown Westlake Center is a big tourist attraction that has carried about 2 million passengers a year.

The repair project also included one big improvement: an automated stopping system to prevent collisions. During the monorail's downtime, Seattle Monorail Services also performed systemwide maintenance and improvements. Structural columns were cleaned, inspected, sealed and repainted.

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SEATTLE — A Seattle mortgage broker has pleaded guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to engage in money laundering, federal prosecutors said Friday.

Todd Love, 48, a broker at Seattle Mortgage Advisors LLC, entered the plea Wednesday. He admitted that he helped three drug dealers with property investments, though he knew that the hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash used as the down payments came from drug dealing.

He will face as much as 20 years in prison when he is sentenced Nov l. Love has agreed to forfeit $149,500 in cash as part of a $600,000 forfeiture.

According to the plea agreement, convicted drug kingpin Robert Kesling bought a Woodinville home in September 2003 for $722,869. Love served as mortgage broker on the transaction. Kesling gave Love $176,600 in cash for the down payment. Love knew that Kesling led a drug organization that smuggled marijuana into the U.S. from Canada and cocaine into Canada from the U.S., prosecutors said.

Love created false documents indicating that the money was a gift to Kesling from his father, as well as a letter purporting to be from a local CPA firm claiming that Kesling was in property management and that the firm had done his taxes for three years.

U.S. Attorney John McKay has said Kesling has been sentenced to 17 years in federal prison.

Two other transactions were also cited in the plea agreement.

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SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — A Spokane County deputy sheriff's fatal shooting of a Billings, Mont., man last February has been ruled justifiable by the county prosecutor, the sheriff's office said Friday.

Deputy Tom Edelbrock shot Dustin Lowe, 29, after the man repeatedly dropped into a shooting stance and yelled that he would "shoot" during a foot chase at the north end of Silver Lake off State Route 902, a report of the shooting said.

Lowe was hit once in the head.

In a July 17 memo released Friday by the sheriff's office, Deputy Prosecutor Jack Driscoll wrote, "Under (the circumstances), it is reasonable to conclude Deputy Edelbrock was justified in believing Lowe posed a threat of serious physical harm and therefore was justified in using deadly force."

Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Dave Reagan said in the morning hours of Feb. 2, Edelbrock stopped to check on a 2005 Dodge Neon parked alongside the highway in which a man appeared to be slumped over the wheel. He discovered the car had been reported stolen in Montana at about the same time that Lowe ran from the vehicle.

Edelbrock chased the man nearly a half mile before the shooting.

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OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — The state Health Department has expanded a ban on recreational shellfish harvesting in central Puget Sound from Picnic Point in Snohomish County, south through King County to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Pierce County, officials said Friday.

Marine biotoxins that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning have been detected at concentrations above the safe level in shellfish samples from beaches in all three counties.

"The levels of biotoxins are very high," said department spokesman Jeff Smith. "They're at the lethal level.

The closure includes clams, oysters, mussels, scallops and other species of shellfish. Crab is safe but so-called "crab butter" is not, the state agency said, referring to fatty external deposits.

Marine biotoxins are not destroyed by cooking or freezing and can be life-threatening.