Florida: Lottery may carry ‘Amber Alert’ messages

Playing the lottery in Florida could become a way to help find abducted children.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement wants to print messages on lottery tickets similar to those put on highway signs as part of an “Amber Alert” system used last week to help find two California teenagers.

Printing an abduction alert on lottery tickets would allow information to be instantly handed out to the hundreds of thousands of people each day.

The “Amber Alert” program, which aggressively publicizes child abductions through broadcast bulletins and other means, is named for Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old Texas girl who was kidnapped and killed in 1996. Today, there are 41 programs across the country, credited with recovering at least 19 children since 1997.

California: Suspect enters plea in abduction, murder

A Lake Elsinore, Calif., man accused of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and asphyxiating 5-year-old Samantha Runnion pleaded innocent Friday, after his lawyer failed to get his arraignment postponed a second time.

Alejandro Avila, making his first court appearance, entered a metal cage shackled at the waist and feet. The black-haired man sported wire-frame glasses and a moustache.

Standing behind bullet-proof glass and closely guarded by four deputies, Avila entered the plea through his attorney, Assistant Public Defender Denise M. Gragg, before a packed courtroom in Santa Ana.

Judge Ronald P. Kreber set a pre-trial hearing for Sept. 16.

If convicted, Avila, 27, faces the death penalty for a crime that seized the public’s imagination, following other high-profile kidnappings of young girls, including Danielle Van Dam, 7, in San Diego and Elizabeth Smart, 14, in Utah.

Montana: Teenagers ‘rescued’ from wilderness therapy

Eleven teenagers in a wilderness therapy program were placed in state custody after social workers found them camping in cold, rainy weather with limited food and shelter, officials said Friday.

The state notified the parents of the teens, who were “cold and dirty” but otherwise unhurt, said Shirley Tiernan, chief of the state Department of Public Health and Human Services’ child and family services division.

“We’re waiting for them to come pick up their children,” she said Friday.

The youths were enrolled in the High Peaks Wilderness Program based in Roosevelt, Utah. That state closed the program there last week over alleged violations of licensing and safety requirements.

The teens and two High Peaks counselors were camping near the small town of Ramsay, west of Butte. A neighboring landowner called authorities after noticing the group had been there for a number of days with only makeshift shelters from the cold and rain.

Social workers sent there Wednesday found very limited food, some of which had spoiled, Tiernan said. Most of the teens did not have proper clothing for the weather, she added.

Honolulu: Boulder crashes house, kills sleeping resident

A 5-ton boulder rolled down a mountain slope and crashed through the upstairs wall of a house, killing a 26-year-old woman sleeping in her bed, authorities said.

The woman and her bed were knocked through the floor by the boulder, which measured 5-foot in diameter, said Capt. Richard Soo, spokesman for the Honolulu Fire Department.

He said the rock zigzagged for about 100 yards, then hit a drainage ditch and became airborne before crashing into the home.

Other family members in the house weren’t injured.