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THURSDAY April 4, 2013
34 Years of Service Page A3 Man celebrates long career in postal service
Baseball Page B1 White Sox beat Kansas City
Weather Partly cloudy today. High 55. Low 32. Sunshine expected on Friday. High 52. Low 35. Page A6
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Garrett senior wins Lilly scholarship Waterhouse plans to attend Purdue BY SUE CARPENTER suec@kpcnews.net
GARRETT — A Garrett High School senior always knew his future was in aviation — and Purdue University was the only school to make that dream come true. Both goals moved closer to becoming a reality last week when Charles “Charlie” Waterhouse got a phone call from the DeKalb
County Community Foundation revealing he is this year’s DeKalb County Lilly Endowment Community Scholar. Waterhouse will receive four years of full tuition at an Indiana college of his choice and a book stipend of $900 per year. He ranks first in his class of 148 students at Garrett and is president of the senior class. Waterhouse said he was
“surprised and honored” to learn he is the recipient of the scholarship during a phone call last week. His family was leaving later in the day for spring break in Waterhouse Florida and returned over the weekend. Waterhouse became interested in aviation through Scouting, which he joined in first grade. He
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Classifieds...............................B7-B8 Life...................................................A3 Obituaries.......................................A4 Opinion............................................A5 Sports.......................................B1-B3 Weather..........................................A6 TV/Comics.....................................B6 Vol. 101 No. 93
SEE LILLY, PAGE A6
Ritz leery of bill
Statehouse honor set for champion choir INDIANAPOLIS — Senior members of DeKalb High School’s Classic Connection show choir will be honored Monday in the Indiana House of Representatives. State Rep. Ben Smaltz, RAuburn, will present the choir members with a resolution honoring their state championship, earned in a competition March 16 in Plainfield. Tentative plans call for Smaltz to introduce the resolution around 1:45 p.m. Monday. Following a vote by House members, the choir members will sing “Back Home Again in Indiana.” The students then will tour the Statehouse and Supreme Court chambers. “We are really excited about this and looking forward to our visit on Monday,” said Kent Johnson, who assists his wife, director Shelley Johnson, with the choir. “This is quite an honor and is an occasion that these students will not soon forget,” Smaltz wrote in a letter inviting the choir to the Statehouse. “Their long-term success demonstrates not only their commitment, but the commitment of the school, staff, parents and community. Rare is the occasion a team of any kind wins the state championship, and to win this trophy four of the last five years is unparalleled!” Classic Connection won the Indiana State School Music Association championship for smaller schools in 2009, 2010 and 2011 as well as this year. Smaltz said he will provide copies of the resolution for every member of the choir, its staff and the high school.
earned his Eagle Scout rank in December 2012. One of the merit badges he earned was for aviation. The Vintage Aircraft Association holds Young Eagles rallies at the DeKalb County Airport, where young people ages 8-17 fly for free with parental permission. “I had always loved aviation, but that really sparked my interest — knowing that was what I wanted to do,” Waterhouse said. He got to know a lot of the
AP
South Korean marines work on their K-55 selfpropelled howitzers during an exercise against possible attacks by North Korea near the border
village of Panmunjom in Paju, South Korea, Wednesday.
North Korea: Military cleared for attack SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Ratcheting up the rhetoric, North Korea warned early Thursday that its military has been cleared to wage an attack on the U.S. using “smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear” weapons. The Pentagon, meanwhile, said in Washington that it will deploy a missile defense system to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam to strengthen regional protection against a possible attack from North Korea. The defense secretary said the U.S. was seeking to defuse the situation. Despite the rhetoric, analysts say they do not expect a nuclear attack by North Korea, which knows the move could trigger a destructive, suicidal war that no one in the region wants. The strident warning from Pyongyang is latest in a series of escalating threats from North Korea, which has railed for weeks against joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises taking
place in South Korea and has expressed anger over tightened sanctions for a February nuclear test. Following through on one threat Wednesday, North Korean border authorities refused to allow entry to South Koreans who manage jointly run factories in the North Korean city of Kaesong. Washington calls the military drills, which this time have incorporated fighter jets and nuclear-capable stealth bombers, routine annual exercises between the allies. Pyongyang calls them rehearsals for a northward invasion. The foes fought on opposite sides of the three-year Korean War, which ended in a truce in 1953. The divided Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war six decades later, and Washington keeps 28,500 troops in South Korea to protect its ally. U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Washington was doing
all it can to defuse the situation, echoing comments a day earlier by Secretary of State John Kerry. “Some of the actions they’ve taken over the last few weeks present a real and clear danger and threat to the interests, certainly of our allies, starting with Hagel South Korea and Japan and also the threats that the North Koreans have leveled directly at the United States regarding our base in Guam, threatened Hawaii, threatened the West Coast of the United States,” Hagel said Wednesday. In Pyongyang, the military statement said North Korean troops had been authorized to counter U.S. “aggression” with “powerful practical military counteractions,” including nuclear weapons. SEE KOREA, PAGE A6
Crews corral crippled cruise ship MOBILE, Ala. (AP) — The crippled cruise ship whose sewage-filled breakdown in the Gulf of Mexico subjected thousands to horrendous conditions tore loose Wednesday from the dock where it’s being repaired, lumbered downriver and crunched into a cargo ship. Wind gusts near hurricane strength shoved the 900-foot Carnival Triumph free from its mooring in downtown Mobile, Ala., where the ship was brought in a five-day ordeal that began when an engine fire stranded it off of Mexico in February. Hours later, four tug boats used several mooring lines to secure the ship to the cruise terminal. A 20-foot gash about 2 to 3 feet wide was visible about halfway up the hull from the water and it wrapped partway around the stern. Underneath the gashed area, two levels of railing were dangling and
broken. Electric cables that had been plugged in on shore were dangling from the port — or left — side of the ship. Carnival said damage, though, was limited. The violent weather Wednesday also blew a nearby guard shack into the water. One shipyard worker was rescued and crews were searching for another, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said, but the cruise ship’s mishap was unrelated. Some crew members and workers had been staying on the ship while it was being repaired and people could be seen looking out the windows and on the deck of the ship Wednesday. Carnival said all 800 of its crew members and contractors who were working aboard were safe. An engine fire disabled the Triumph on Feb. 10 and thousands of passengers were disabled for days.
Schools chief says arming staff should be left up to districts INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana’s state schools superintendent signaled her opposition Wednesday to a plan that would require public and charter schools to have an employee armed with a loaded gun, saying such decisions should be made by the individual districts rather than mandated by the Legislature. Glenda Ritz, a Democrat who Ritz took office in January, said she didn’t know about AREA the proposal LEADERS before a react to Republicanproposed controlled Indiana legislation. House committee SEE PAGE A6. added it Tuesday to a Senateapproved bill aimed at starting a school security grant program. The armed employee proposal would have to clear both the full House and Senate by the Legislature’s April 29 adjournment deadline to become law. Leaders of the Indiana School Boards Association and the Indiana State Teachers Association also said they didn’t believe the proposal was well thought out. Supporters of the requirement say it would lessen the vulnerability of schools to violent attacks such as the December elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., in which 20 students and six teachers died. The plan, however, is facing questions over whether people not trained as police officers should have such responsibilities and the potential costs school districts would face to ensure a trained armed person is present during all school hours. Ritz said local school officials should make decisions about what security steps are needed, including whether to hire police officers or have them assigned to SEE RITZ, PAGE A6
Girl’s body found in county 25 years ago Crime remains unsolved despite efforts FROM STAFF REPORTS
SPENCERVILLE — Twentyfive years ago today a jogger found the body of April Tinsley, 8, in a drainage ditch along DeKalb C.R. 68, two miles west of Spencerville. The crime remains unsolved, but investigators have not given up trying to catch the person who killed the little girl from Fort Wayne. “We’re still going through the
list of any tips we get,” said Indiana State Police detective Mark Heffelfinger, now the lead investigator in the case. Those tips number more than 700 since the television series “America’s Most Wanted” shone its spotlight on the Tinsley case in 2009. “Once a week something will come in,” Heffelfinger said Monday. Many of the tips involve
people who already are convicted sex offenders, but so far, none of them have led to the killer. “Someday, somehow, somebody’s going to say something” that cracks the case, Heffelfinger April Tinsley said. He encourages people with tips to call the Indiana State Police or Fort Wayne Police Department.
“It’s so tragic. It’s not right for it not to be solved.” Detective Mark Heffelfinger Lead investigator
• The little girl was abducted April 1, 1988, which also was SEE BODY, PAGE A6