Michigan: Mother found guilty, insane in murders

A woman was found guilty but mentally ill of first-degree murder Friday for stabbing and poisoning her two young daughters.

Tracy Leigh Camburn, 39, told police she killed her daughters in 2001 because voices told her “they” were coming to torture and kill her and the girls. The bodies of her daughters Candice, 10, and Kimberly, 5, were found in their home.

Prosecutors in Grand Haven said Camburn stabbed the children after forcing them to eat paint thinner. The girls had wounds indicating that they put up a fight, he said.

Alaska: Airplane diverted after death threat

A Northwest Airlines jet carrying 351 people from Minneapolis to Tokyo was diverted to Anchorage and searched by bomb-sniffing dogs after an unruly passenger claimed to be a terrorist, the FBI said.

Alcohol and medication are believed to have been involved in the incident Thursday, said FBI agent Eric Gonzalez.

The passenger, Matthew Leggett, 42, of Houston was charged with interfering with a flight crew, Gonzalez said. He was taken to Alaska Psychiatric Institute.

Leggett was scheduled to appear Monday in federal court. It could not be determined whether he had an attorney; a telephone message was left at an Houston-area home.

Gonzalez said Leggett claimed to be a terrorist.

“Mr. Leggett had threatened to kill another passenger,” Gonzalez said. “The pilots were able to calm him down, and a decision was made to divert the plane.”

The Boeing 747 remained in Anchorage overnight Thursday, said Mary Beth Schubert, a Northwest spokeswoman.

Colorado: Manure to stay until school official cleans up

The president of the Cheyenne County school board allegedly dumped a pile of horse manure on the counter of a weekly newspaper because he was upset about a critical article, the paper’s publisher said Thursday.

Range Ledger Publisher Joyce Escudero said she was leaving the pile of manure on the counter until board president Sam Mitchek agreed to clean it up, and she planned to press charges.

“It’s a nice day, we’ve had the windows open and some candles burning,” she said. “I suppose we’ll have to go get some air freshener after awhile.”

Escudero said Mitchek was upset about an article she wrote that said the public was denied the right to comment at a school board meeting. She said Mitchek came in Wednesday afternoon and dumped a 5-gallon bucket of manure that spilled onto the counter, the floor and her son, Gary.

“He wouldn’t let people speak at that meeting and that made residents angry,” she said. “I just wrote the truth, and he got completely out of hand.”

Escudero said many town residents went to the paper Thursday to see the pile and to express their anger toward Mitchek.

Washington, D.C.: Security scare causes airport evacuation

About 1,000 travelers were evacuated Friday night from Reagan National Airport after a woman set off an alarm when she walked through a metal detector.

The woman set off the alarm in the airport’s North Terminal and kept walking toward the concourse gate after being told to wait for a security check, said David Steigman, a spokesmen for the Transportation Security Administration.

He said about 1,000 US Airways passengers were evacuated but were allowed to return an hour later for rescreening.

Security officers were searching for the woman, who was not identified.