Briefly

Pennsylvania

Autopsy: 4-year-old died of malnutrition

A 4-year-old girl who weighed 11 1/2 pounds when her body was found in a picnic cooler behind her home died of malnutrition and dehydration, an autopsy shows.

Armstrong County Coroner Robert Bower released the autopsy results Sunday for Kristen Tatar, confirming initial findings that the girl suffered from malnutrition, dehydration and neglect.

Kristen’s body was found in the cooler Thursday as state police and child welfare officials searched the home in Parks Township, about 20 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. Officials have said they believed the girl had been dead for weeks.

The cooler had been wrapped in garbage bags and placed in a trash can near a shed in the back yard, authorities said.

James Tatar, 41, and Janet Crawford, 35, were being held without bond in the girl’s death. A preliminary hearing for the couple was scheduled for Thursday.

Milwaukee

Lutherans hope to avoid gay controversy

Leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America gathering this week for their biennial meeting hope to dodge the controversy about homosexuality that dominated an Episcopal assembly.

More than 1,000 ELCA leaders are expected to shape the church’s mission and governance for the next 10 years.

The Lutheran agenda also calls for updates on a homosexuality study and a statement on human sexuality, but leaders hope to chart a course around anything contentious.

“Now, I’m not painting a picture of an assembly that will be absent of controversy,” said new Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson. “I tell people, ‘If you think that a healthy church is a church without controversy, you obviously don’t read the New Testament. To be followers of Jesus is always to be experiencing a certain amount of tension and challenges.”‘

Texas

Bush visit to promote forest-thinning plan

President Bush will survey a fire-ravaged community in Arizona today as part of a push to get the Senate to approve steps aimed at preventing catastrophic wildfires.

Bush’s helicopter-and-hiking tour of the devastation left behind by the June fire in mountainous Summerhaven, Ariz., near Tucson, is also meant to illustrate what he says his proposals can help save.

The preventive forest thinning Bush is trying to accelerate helped ensure the survival of $2 billion in telecommunications equipment, camps owned by churches and Boy Scout and Girl Scout groups and two mountain observatories, said James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Bush is at the family ranch this month in Crawford for vacation.

West Virginia

Police: Suspect shoots deputy, daughter, self

A sheriff’s deputy pulled over a double-homicide suspect during a traffic stop and was shot in the chest — but still managed to chase the gunman while relaying information to police.

John Richard Mayhew Jr., 35, was captured Saturday night, but not before he fatally shot his 18-year-old daughter, Christina McKibben, and turned the gun on himself, police said.

Mayhew had been on the run since late Thursday. Police in Ohio said he had shot and killed a former wife and her fiance, then took his daughter hostage.

In West Virginia’s Greenbrier County on Saturday, Deputy Nathan Hershman stopped Mayhew’s car for not displaying a motor vehicle inspection sticker.

Mayhew was in serious condition with a chest wound at a Virginia hospital but was expected to survive.