QUOTE OF THE DAY “We’re underneath a giant cloud of smoke.” Jonathan Lambert, general manager of Classic Coffee in Glendora, Calif., which was being affected by a wildfire in the San Gabriel Mountains Article, 5A Police slay killer of 2 at Indiana grocery

ELKHART, Ind. - A man fatally shot two women in a northern Indiana grocery store and was waving a gun at a kneeling store manager when police officers arrived and killed the gunman, authorities said Thursday.

The manager and another employee at the Martin’s Super Market in Elkhart escaped unharmed despite confrontations with the gunman Wednesday night, Indiana State Police Sgt. Trent Smith said at a news conference.

Smith said city police received a call about a gunman in the store shortly after 10 p.m. Officers who were nearby on an unrelated call arrived within three minutes and found the shooter brandishing a semiautomatic handgun at the manager, who was on his knees on the floor as if in prayer.

When the gunman turned toward the officers, the manager ran. The gunman then also ran, down a parallel aisle, Smith said. Police ran into him moments later as they were clearing the store and as the gunman was doing something with the gun. That’s when officers shot the man, Smith said.

State police identified the shooter as Shawn Walter Bair, 22, of Elkhart.

Drugs extend execution to 25 minutes

LUCASVILLE, Ohio - A condemned man appeared to gasp several times and took an unusually long time to die - more than 20 minutes - in an execution carried out Thursday with a combination of drugs never before tried in the U.S.

Dennis McGuire’s attorney Allen Bohnert called the convicted killer’s death “a failed, agonizing experiment” and added: “The people of the state of Ohio should be appalled at what was done here today in their names.”

An attorney for McGuire’s family members said they plan to sue the state over what happened.

McGuire’s lawyers had attempted last week to block his execution, arguing that the untried method could lead to a medical phenomenon known as “air hunger” and cause him to suffer “agony and terror” while trying to breathe.

McGuire, 53, made loud snorting noises during one of the longest executions since Ohio resumed capital punishment in 1999. Nearly 25 minutes passed between the time the lethal drugs began flowing and McGuire was pronounced dead at 10:53 a.m.

Prison officials gave intravenous doses of two drugs, the sedative midazolam and the painkiller hydromorphone, to put McGuire to death for the 1989 rape and fatal stabbing of a pregnant newlywed, Joy Stewart.

The method was adopted after supplies of a previously used drug dried up because the manufacturer declared it off limits for capital punishment.

Judge rejects Detroit debt-swap plan

A federal bankruptcy judge ruled Thursday that Detroit could not proceed with a plan to extricate itself from some costly long-term financial contracts by paying $165 million to two big banks.

Judge Steven Rhodes said in his decision that Detroit had hurt itself financially in the past by going forward with hasty and imprudent decisions, and that the practice “must stop.”

At the same time, Rhodes said Detroit could go ahead with a special $120 million loan from another bank, Barclays, which Detroit has said it urgently needs to provide municipal services in bankruptcy.

Detroit had asked the court to approve a bigger loan from Barclays, for $285 million, but it had planned to use the first $165 million to pay Bank of America and UBS to end the financial contracts, known as interest-rate swaps.

Officials have said that without the special loan from Barclays, Detroit would soon run out of cash and not be able to pay its workers. But because Detroit is already in default on some of its bonds, it could not take on new debt without pledging collateral, and the only money it could pledge was tied up in the interest-rate swaps.

Oklahoma’s Coburn says won’t finish term

OKLAHOMA CITY - U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn will finish out the current congressional session and then resign from his seat nearly two years before his term is to end, he said in a statement late Thursday.

The 65-year-old Republican said he would give up his seat at the end of the current session in January 2015. His term was scheduled to end in 2016, and Coburn already had vowed not to seek a third.

Coburn, a physician from Muskogee, recently was diagnosed with a recurrence of prostate cancer, but said his decision was not about his health.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 01/17/2014