Stories as Old as Cain and Abel...

Except with a gun, not bashing the brother's head in with a rock...

In the past weeks,
I've covered a plane crash (a lucky landing actually, pilot overestimated and ran out of gas); the murder above; and a creepy guy who taped a coworker going to the bathroom at a local motel... along with a piece localizing the new concealed carry state law.

Tune in Tuesday (hard copy; online stories to follow) for news of the Rice Lake mayor's father -- a real winner -- who allegedly had consensual sex with a 13-year-old. She giggled nervously, like the now 14 year old she is, when asked yesterday on the stand to define her previous term "having sex". It means, when putting a penis into a vagina, she said, as though surely the adults present in the courtroom already knew that...

Innocence taken early. Children made mature before their time.

We also had a Minnesota man allegedly making remarks to 3 Mexican men outside a convenience store in Cumberland. Police responding to a call of a fight found one man cradling his arm, later found to be fractured and needing surgery to fix. He, and the two others exiting the store when the officers arrived, spoke no English, but through a translator told officers they were minding their own business, going in to buy something, when the Minnesota man began yelling at them to "go back where you came from" and allegedly called them wetbacks.

Somehow, he smacked the one on the elbow with a tire iron -- he was drunk and looking for a fight, it seems. Sadly, we'll never know the whole story. He got his wish: the injured man, the assistant DA told me, is reported to have returned to Mexico, and thus, the charges were dropped in court last week.

I wanted to run it still -- report what was know from the criminal complaint, what he was charged with, and why it was dropped (we'll prosecute if the Mexican man returns, I was told) -- but we decided against it. Maybe if it was a local guy, we'd want the young man's name out there, as he sounds like a real winner you'd want to watch in the future.

Sadly, I suspect this happens a lot. When you advocate bringing in illegal workers, with none of the protections afforded American workers and citizens, this is what you get. No harm, no foul ... if the workers are invisible and unheard, for the most part.