COLD SPRING, MINN.
Officer killed in ambush
A six-year police veteran was shot to death late Thursday in what authorities called an ambush killing. Officer Tom Decker, a father of four, was responding to a report of a suicidal man when he was shot twice after getting out of his squad car near an apartment behind a bar in downtown Cold Spring. He died at the scene. Investigators said Friday that several guns were found, and the man who was reported to be suicidal was taken into custody. Ryan Michael Larson, 34, was being held Friday on suspicion of second-degree murder.
PAULSBORO, N.J.
Derailment causes leak
A freight train derailed Friday on a railroad bridge that has had problems before, toppling tanker cars partially into a creek and causing a leak of hazardous gas that was blamed for sickening dozens of people, authorities said. Members of the National Transportation Safety Board arrived Friday afternoon to investigate. They will try to determine whether the derailment was caused by a problem with the bridge or if the derailment was to blame for the bridge’s partial collapse.
ATLANTA
Rifles swiped from train
Federal authorities were hunting Friday for more than 100 rifles stolen from a boxcar parked in an Atlanta train yard. The weapons were taken from a CSX rail yard on the city’s northwest side in mid-November, said Richard Coes, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The weapons include assault rifles that Coes described as “AK-style.” He declined to discuss other aspects of the case.
BATON ROUGE, LA.
Vouchers struck down
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s private school tuition voucher program has been ruled unconstitutional by a state judge. State Judge Tim Kelley said Friday that the program improperly diverts money allocated through the state’s public school funding formula to private schools. He also said it unconstitutionally diverts local tax dollars to private schools.
Compiled from wire reports.
