Indiana

Five family members found shot to death

A 20-year-old man with a history of mental illness fatally shot four family members early Saturday before turning the gun on himself, investigators said.

The man’s 82-year-old grandmother, who survived, called police to report the shooting.

Authorities said the gunman was 20-year-old Terry Dennie, whose body was found next to a semiautomatic handgun. Police said Dennie had a history of mental problems and that a SWAT team was sent to the northwest Indiana home a year ago after he threatened to kill himself. Family members told Chicago radio station WBBM that Dennie had recently been released from a mental-health treatment center and had a history of violence.

The other four dead were Dennie’s mother, a brother, a sister and a 2-year-old nephew. Elizabeth Walton, his grandmother, was being treated at a hospital for gunshot wounds.

Tennessee

Team’s school bus crashes; one killed

A school bus carrying a high school cross country team collided with two cars Saturday, killing the driver of one of the cars and sending 19 people to hospitals.

The assistant coach driving the bus overcorrected after running off the road, then drove into oncoming traffic and struck a minivan and a Jeep, Nashville police spokesman Don Aaron said. The minivan driver was killed, and all five occupants of the Jeep were hospitalized in critical condition.

Eleven students and three adults on the bus were also taken to the hospital, but none was seriously injured, Aaron said. The bus was carrying 22 students from Kenwood High School in Montgomery County, about 40 miles northwest of Nashville.

Maryland

Critics cry foul as sport made of cheerleading

Cheerleading is now a varsity sport at the University of Maryland, a move critics say is designed to sidestep federal sex discrimination law.

The university and the federal Office of Civil Rights say it is the first instance of a school seeking to use cheerleading scholarships to comply with Title IX, the 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination by any school that receives federal money.

Critics say the move is intended to skirt the law so Maryland can increase funding for men’s programs. Title IX calls on schools to make their percentage of female athletes proportionate to female enrollment, or to demonstrate that they are meeting demand for women’s sports programs.

Cheerleading is not recognized as a sport by the NCAA.

Montana

Army private, fiancee marry by double proxy

An American soldier stationed in Iraq married his Italian fiancee in a Montana double proxy ceremony that neither attended.

Instead, Pfc. David Gaynor’s parents, Phillip and Rebecca Gaynor, above, exchanged vows and rings Friday for the absent couple — and sealed their son’s marriage with a kiss.

Gaynor’s uncle and teenage sister stood in as best man and maid of honor for Gaynor, 21, and bride Ilaria Caon, 19. A justice of the peace presided.

After enlisting in 2001, David Gaynor went with the 173rd Airborne Division to a base north of Venice in Vicenza, Italy, where he met Ilaria, the daughter of an Italian policeman.

They made plans to marry and eventually live in Montana. The couple expects a child in November.