California

Girl, 6, found alive 10 days after crash

A 6-year-old girl found in a ravine survived for 10 days on dry noodles and Gatorade while remaining near her dead mother following a car crash, relatives said.

Ruby Bustamante was in good condition Wednesday at a hospital where she was recovering from dehydration.

Her great-grandfather Bill Cooney said she didn’t appear to remember much about the crash in which her mother, 26-year-old Norma Bustamante, was killed.

State transportation department workers repairing a road barrier Tuesday found the girl, her mother’s decomposing body and a wrecked Ford Taurus 150 feet down a ravine off the 60 Freeway, some 70 miles east of Los Angeles, said Chris Blondon, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol.

Cooney said Ruby told him she survived on ramen noodles and Gatorade. Ruby also said her mother was alive for “a couple days” after the crash, he said.

Wisconsin

College student charged with faking abduction

A college student accused of faking her own kidnapping last month was charged Wednesday with lying to police in what they suggested was a desperate attempt to get her boyfriend’s attention.

Audrey Seiler, a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Wisconsin, was charged with two misdemeanor counts of obstructing officers. Each charge carries up to nine months in jail and a $10,000 fine.

Seiler disappeared from her off-campus apartment March 27 without her coat or purse. She was discovered in a marsh four days later, and told police that a man had abducted her at knifepoint.

But police concluded that Seiler made up the story after obtaining a store videotape that showed her buying the knife, duct tape, rope and cold medicine, which she claimed her abductor used to restrain her.

Montana

Boys’ alcohol deaths won’t be prosecuted

Authorities will not bring charges in the deaths of two sixth-graders whose frozen bodies were found in a snowy field after they guzzled large amounts of vodka, investigators said Wednesday in Polson.

The sheriff’s department investigated suspicions that an adult supplied the liquor to Justin Benoist and Frankie Nicolai III, both 11. But authorities have closed the case after failing to find any evidence to charge anyone, the department said Wednesday.

Almost from the time their bodies were found March 1, there were claims the boys may have stolen the liquor from area homes.

Alcohol poisoning killed Frankie, whose blood-alcohol level was 0.50 percent, more than six times the drunken-driving threshold in Montana.

Justin, whose blood-alcohol level was 0.20 percent, died from a combination of alcohol poisoning and hypothermia.