Las Vegas news briefs

Metro Police detectives arrested a woman on Thursday in connection with a November accident that killed a Las Vegas couple.

Nancy Ann Oheron was arrested and charged with two counts of felony driving under the influence of alcohol, two counts of felony reckless driving and two counts of manslaughter in the Nov. 16 deaths of Shane Bates, 24 and Amber Bates, 23.

Police believe that Oheron, 31, lost control of her BMW on Durango Drive near Eldora Street and crashed into the couple's motorcycle.

District Court Judge Michael Douglas set Oheron's bail at $600,000.

LV man dies on loading dock

An early-morning industrial accident killed a 58-year-old Las Vegas man at Consolidated Freightways Thursday.

At about 1:45 a.m., Dale O. McAffee was killed when he was pinned between a truck and the loading dock in the industrial complex at 4723 W. Hacienda Ave., Metro Police said.

Witnesses told police that McAffee was standing between the loading dock and a tractor-trailer with two trailers. McAffee died at the scene.

Man booked in murder, robbery case

Ronald Calvin, 20, was booked Wednesday into the Clark County Detention Center on two counts of murder and robbery with a weapon.

Calvin waived extradition after his arrest in Fresno, Calif., on March 26 for the March 23 stabbing deaths of his grandmother, Evangeline Lee, 72, and Diane Paynes, 58.

The bodies of Lee and Paynes, were found in their Jones Boulevard apartment by Paynes' son on March 23 when Paynes failed to show up for work and did not answer her phone at home.

Homicide Lt. Wayne Petersen said Calvin had been sharing their three-bedroom apartment.

Brake malfunction blamed in CAT crash

A Citizens Area Transit bus driver told Metro Police that a brake malfunction is what caused her to drive the bus into a concrete block wall Thursday afternoon.

The paratransit services bus, a smaller bus used to pick up people in wheelchairs, was headed westbound on Tropicana Avenue at about 5:30 p.m. when the driver says the brakes went out.

The bus rear-ended a Chevrolet Astro van, which then hit a Ford Mustang on Tropicana just east of Valley View Boulevard. The bus came to a stop by hitting a block wall at the Shell Station at 3680 W. Tropicana.

No one was hurt. The vehicles sustained minor damages.

Wash committee launches website

The Las Vegas Wash Coordination Committee recently launched its own website, bringing information about one of the region's most important environmental resources as close to the public as the nearest keyboard.

The website allows a lot of information to get out to the public very quickly, said Kim Zikmund, project coordinator of the Las Vegas Wash Project Team. "The coordination committee has only existed for a few months, so to have this website up and running so soon is quite an accomplishment," she said.

After a citizens' panel studying regional water quality recommended a management program for the Las Vegas Wash, the coordination committee was created in September 1998.

The wash drains all of the Las Vegas Valley's floodwaters, urban runoff, treated waste water and water from the shallow ground water system into the Las Vegas Bay of Lake Mead. Although wash flows contribute less than 2 percent of the water to the lake, managing the wash effectively is important to protect Southern Nevada's major drinking water supply, Zikmund said.

The site is www.lvwash.org

Babbitt warns of likely forest blazes

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said that forest fires could sweep the West this summer, including Southern Nevada, because the winter has been extremely dry.

The National Interagency Fire Center released its 1999 fire season outlook Thursday in which Babbitt said the federal government will try to burn excess brush in the national forests.

The southern Great Basin, especially Nevada and Utah, will be prone to large blazes, the center's forecast said.

Babbitt fears that this summer could rival 1994 and 1996 for major forest fires in the Western states and Florida, where it has been drier than usual.

Southern Nevada has had devastating fires in the past. Cold Creek Canyon in the Spring Mountains west of Las Vegas burned thousands of acres in 1981, destroying some 3,000-year-old bristlecone pine trees and threatening Mount Charleston.

The Southwest's fire season could begin early and escalate depending on lightning from summer thunderstorms, the forecast said.

Nevada climatologist John James said nowhere in the state has been drier than Las Vegas since October.

Sunrise to participate in nationwide study

Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center has been named a satellite treatment center for the National Emphysema Treatment Trial, a nationwide study comparing alternative treatments and testing for patients with emphysema.

Nearly 4,700 patients are enrolled so far in the five-year study. Other facilities involved in the study include Johns Hopkins University, Cleveland Clinic, Cedars Sinai and the University of California at San Diego.

Dr. Charles MacPherson will give a lecture on the study at the hospital at 1:30 p.m. on April 13.

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