Ohio standoff ends with 2 people slain
TOLEDO, Ohio -- A man who charged out of his house and shot and killed an Ohio police officer after a two-hour standoff had repeatedly made incoherent statements to negotiators and vowed he wouldn't be taken alive, the police chief said Wednesday.
Officers fatally shot Christopher Anderson, 27, on Monday, seconds after he opened his front door and began firing two handguns, Toledo Police Chief George Kral said.
One of the shots struck officer Brandon Stalker, who was crouched behind a police vehicle. Stalker, a 24-year-old who became an officer in 2018, died Monday at a hospital.
Police had been looking for Anderson because he was suspected of vandalizing the Rosary Cathedral in Toledo and setting fire to its doors last weekend.
Officers surrounded his house Monday after spotting him with a gun, Kral said. He then barricaded himself in before police used tear gas to force him out. Anderson managed to get off nine shots before several officers returned fire, striking him eight times, Kral said.
During the standoff, Anderson made several posts on social media, vowing not to go to jail and saying police would have to kill him, Kral said. Anderson also repeatedly made "wildly incoherent statements" and homicidal threats to police negotiators who talked with him on the phone, the chief said.
Family members told investigators that they believed Anderson suffered from mental illness, and they had sought help for him in the past, Kral said.
Owed $584,000, ex-school official says
DOTHAN, Ala. -- A former Dothan city school superintendent who left the job last year is seeking almost $600,000 that she claims she is due from the system, news outlets reported.
Phyllis Edwards submitted a letter in September saying she planned to quit, and the board accepted her resignation about a week later. However, Edwards' attorney, Jacob Fuller, said she hadn't actually resign so the board owes her $584,000 in unpaid salary.
"We are prepared to file an action in federal court in Montgomery if our client is not properly compensated," Fuller told the Dothan Eagle.
Edwards resigned and has already been paid everything she'd due under her employment contract, said board attorney Kevin Walding.
Edwards worked at her Florida home from March 2020, the start of the coronavirus pandemic, until her departure, Walding said. Soon after, she sold her Dothan home and all of its belongings, he said.
The school system said in November the system also paid for her accrued vacation time and insurance premiums that totaled almost $38,000.
Tribe: No plan to tax oil, gas production
WEWOKA, Okla. -- The chief of the Seminole Nation said Wednesday that the Oklahoma-based tribe has no current plans to tax oil and gas production on all land within its traditional reservation boundaries, a move that drew quick praise from the state's attorney general.
Chief Greg Chilcoat said in a statement that while the tribe has the authority to levy oil and gas production taxes on non-tribal producers operating wells on tribal trust and restricted lands, which has been existing policy, it hasn't exerted taxation authority over nonmember oil and gas producers operating other lands within its boundaries.
Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter, who had asked the tribe in December to clarify its position after letters demanding payment of Seminole Nation taxes were sent to oil and gas producers operating in the area, including those operating on lands that were not trust land or restricted Indian allotments.
The Wewoka, Okla.-based tribe's jurisdictional area is in south-central Oklahoma, east of Oklahoma City.
Numerous concerns have been raised about tribal jurisdiction since a landmark decision last year by the U.S. Supreme Court determined that a large chunk of eastern Oklahoma remains an American Indian reservation.
City OK's returning tribe's prayer rock
LAWRENCE, Kan. -- The Lawrence City Council approved a measure to return an American Indian tribe's prayer rock that had been transformed more than 90 years ago into a monument honoring Kansas settlers.
The council voted 5-0 Tuesday to return the rock to the Kaw Nation. The move came after the tribe sent a letter to the city last month requesting the rock's return.
Before the Kaw people were forcibly moved from Kansas to what is now Oklahoma in 1873, they held ceremonies and gatherings before the 23-ton boulder known as the "Big Red Rock." But the boulder was moved from its site at the confluence of the Kansas River and Creek to a city park as part of Lawrence's 75th anniversary celebration in 1929. It was fitted with a plaque listing the names of the abolitionist settlers who founded the city.
It its letter, the Kaw Nation said the intent is to take the rock to Allegawaho Memorial Heritage Park in Council Grove as part of a long-range goal to develop the site into an educational resource for visitors to learn about the state's original inhabitants.