In brief: Stabbed man enters gas station

A man walked into a downtown gas station about 7 a.m. Thursday, saying he had been stabbed in the chest after an argument under the Interstate 90 viaduct.

“He came in and fell on the floor and said, ‘I’ve been stabbed. I’ve been stabbed,’ ” said Vickie Pike, clerk at the Shell station at Third Avenue and Division Street.

Pike said the man, whom she had seen before and believes is a transient, was bleeding and clutching a bloody knife.

The 40-year-old victim was in stable condition with cuts and a punctured lung Thursday at Sacred Heart Medical Center, said Spokane police Officer Jennifer DeRuwe.

Tommy D. Canfield, 26, was later arrested at a home at 3200 W. Fifth Ave., DeRuwe said. He was booked into jail on charges of first-degree assault.

Man flees court; reward offered

A Secret Witness reward is being offered for a man who ran from a courtroom Wednesday after a judge told him he was going to jail.

Vincent W. Hulse, 29, was arrested on warrants for giving alcohol to minors, for disorderly conduct and four counts of driving with a suspended license, according to a Spokane County Sheriff’s Office news release.

The repeat offender has been convicted of resisting arrest, making false statements, violating probation, assault and harassment, the release states.

Hulse is white, 6 feet tall, weighs 210 pounds, and has brown hair and brown eyes. His last given address was 8078 E. Augusta Ave., according to the release.

The Secret Witness reward is for information that leads to Hulse’s arrest, and people can anonymously call (509) 327-5111. Secret Witness is not affiliated with law enforcement.

16-year-old hit by car on Monroe

A 16-year-old boy was hit by a car and reportedly broke both legs Thursday evening while crossing North Monroe Street at a construction site, police said.

Southbound traffic had stopped near West Ide Avenue, and the boy stepped into the northbound lane without looking – in front of a Buick Sentry driving at “a pretty good speed,” said Cpl. Tracie Meidl of the Spokane Police Department.

Monroe Street traffic bogged down for nearly 30 minutes as emergency crews responded.

The boy, whose name was unavailable, was taken to a hospital, Meidl said. His condition was unavailable late Thursday.

The Buick’s driver was not cited, though the car was towed, Meidl said.

SEATTLE

Ruling appealed in bomb plot

An appeals court ruling in the case of would-be millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam could “significantly diminish” the government’s ability to prosecute terrorists, the Justice Department wrote Thursday in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case.

Ressam, an Algerian national, was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2005 after being convicted on nine counts for plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport around Jan. 1, 2000. Customs agents in Port Angeles caught him with explosives in the trunk of his rental car when he drove off a ferry from British Columbia in December 1999. The ensuing scare prompted the cancellation of New Year’s celebrations at Seattle’s Space Needle.

Early this year, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Ressam’s conviction on one of the charges – carrying explosives during the commission of a felony, which carries a mandatory 10-year sentence. In a 2-1 decision, the court reasoned that the law required prosecutors to show the explosives were carried “in relation to” the felony, which in this case was lying on a Customs form.

Sheriff apologizes in lost woman case

King County Sheriff Sue Rahr has apologized to the husband of a woman who spent more than a week trapped in the wreckage of her sport utility vehicle, saying the Sheriff’s Office could have done more to help him as he tried to get his wife’s disappearance investigated.

“Could we have done more? Yes, we could have,” Rahr said at a news conference Thursday.

With Tom Rider standing next to her, Rahr said the Sheriff’s Office could have eased his frustration by better explaining how missing-person cases are processed and by giving him more specific instructions about what he could do while he was waiting for more help from detectives.

Rider’s wife, Tanya, 33, was found clinging to life after authorities using cell phone records tracked down her SUV in a ravine off a highway south of Seattle on Sept. 27. She had suffered kidney failure, dehydration, a dislocated shoulder, broken collarbone, and a host of other injuries.

Doctors have said they expect her to make a full recovery, but that she’ll likely remain hospitalized for weeks and will need extensive physical therapy and counseling.

Because of a misunderstanding about who had access to Tanya and Tom Rider’s joint bank account, the Sheriff’s Office did not have probable cause to get a search warrant for the cell phone records until four days after Tom Rider reported Tanya missing.