Wisconsin: Troopers track toddler after crash kills parents

A 2-year-old girl who survived a car crash that killed her parents wandered across a freeway and was found in a grove of trees three hours later by authorities who tracked her footprints in the snow.

The girl, Anita Kayachith, on Monday was at home with relatives in Minnesota, three days after the wreck.

The car was struck by a tractor-trailer that slid on ice and crossed the median of Interstate 94 early Friday near Hixton, the Wisconsin State Patrol said. The girl’s parents, who were from Brooklyn Park, Minn., were killed.

A trooper who noticed children’s clothing, diapers and a sippy cup in the car started searching for a child.

Trooper Rhonda Waldera, who is pregnant with her third child, spotted small footprints in the half-inch of new snow. Anita was sitting by a fence, in stocking feet in 25-degree cold.

Massachusetts: Teenager pleads guilty in school massacre plot

A teenager accused of leading a group of students in plotting a Columbine-like massacre at their school pleaded guilty Monday.

Investigators say Eric McKeehan, then 17, was the ringleader of five teenagers who planned to set off explosives at New Bedford High School, kill students and faculty and then kill each other. Police uncovered the plot in November 2001.

McKeehan pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy to commit assault and murder and unlawful possession of ammunition. Prosecutors have recommended a sentence of three years’ probation.

Amylee Bowman, 18, who prompted the initial police investigation by alerting a teacher to the plot, was sentenced in November without a guilty finding to one year of pretrial probation.

Nevada: Infamous brothel faces demolition

Three years after seizing Nevada’s most celebrated brothel, the federal government announced plans to demolish the Mustang Ranch.

The pink stucco main building and a smaller unit will be destroyed rather than renovated, said Mark Struble, spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management. The buildings in Mustang are in violation of safety codes, he said.

“It would take too much money to rehabilitate the buildings because they’re of shoddy construction. They certainly didn’t pump their profits back into the buildings,” Struble said.

The legal house of prostitution 15 miles east of Reno has been closed ever since the IRS seized the place in 1999 following the conviction of the bordello’s manager and its parent companies in a fraud and racketeering case. The women who worked there were evicted and the brothel was padlocked.

Maine: Canadian’s gas trip brings felony plea

A Canadian man jailed for more than a month after crossing the border to buy cheap gas pleaded guilty Monday to a felony count as part of a deal that will spare him additional jail time.

Michel Jalbert of Pohenegamook, Quebec, was arrested in October after he crossed the border into Estcourt and failed to check in with customs. Border Patrol agents also found a .20-gauge shotgun that Jalbert said he had in his car for hunting.

Under the plea deal, Jalbert pleaded guilty in federal district court to a felony charge of entering the country as an illegal alien with a firearm. Jalbert, whose wife is a United States citizen, agreed to never enter the country again.

His arrest started an international debate on border security. Since the terrorist attacks, security has been beefed up along the porous 5,525-mile U.S.-Canada border. But critics said it was wrong to arrest somebody on a driveway that leads nowhere except to a gas station, where scores of Canadians go each day.