LAS VEGAS

Ohio shootings suspect agrees to extradition

A man suspected of peppering Ohio highways with gunfire for 10 months, killing a passenger in one vehicle, agreed to extradition during a Nevada court appearance Friday.

The judge ordered Charles A. McCoy held without bail until his extradition, expected Saturday. McCoy is charged with assault in Ohio but faces additional charges when he returns, police said.

“You held a community at bay and terrorized the people of the state,” Judge Douglas Smith told McCoy, 28, who was shackled at the wrists during the brief appearance.

Oregon

Gay-marriage case to be expedited to high court

Both sides in the state’s dispute over gay marriage said Friday they had agreed to speed the issue to the Oregon Supreme Court.

Portland is currently the only major U.S. city where gay couples can get a marriage license.

The American Civil Liberties Union said it planned to file a lawsuit by April 14 seeking a declaration that any marriage law that excludes same-sex couples is unconstitutional.

The Defense of Marriage Coalition, which opposes same-sex unions, has already filed an initiative for a ballot measure for a state constitutional amendment that would limit marriage to a man and a woman.

Washington

Closing arguments made in lesbian pastor case

A lawyer for a Methodist minister being tried by her church for being a lesbian urged jurors Friday to be faithful to church teachings on inclusiveness rather than to rules that say open homosexuals can’t be ordained.

“We need to be careful about creating rules that exclude people,” the Rev. Robert C. Ward said in closing arguments at the Rev. Karen Dammann’s trial in Bothell.

“You are faced with a choice to make love practical, to make love plain, and to do what is right,” he told the jury of 13 pastors, which began deliberating Friday afternoon.

The jury was to resume deliberations today, said Bishop William Boyd Grove, who is presiding over the trial.

PHOENIX

Second inmate indicted for sexual assault

A second inmate was indicted Friday for sexually assaulting a female guard who was held hostage in a prison tower during a 15-day standoff.

The officer accuses inmate Ricky Wassenaar of attacking her the day he and fellow inmate Steven Coy took her hostage at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Lewis in Buckeye, according to the indictment. The guard had previously accused only Coy of sexual assault.

A message left Friday with Wassenaar’s attorney was not immediately returned. Officials at the Maricopa County Jail, where Wassenaar is being held until he is tried, did not respond to a request for an interview with Wassenaar.

DETROIT

Women drop objections to breast-implant deal

The last major obstacle to Dow Corning Corp.’s settlement with women who claim silicone breast implants made them sick was removed Friday when the final group of women dropped their objections.

A lawyer involved in the settlement said the first checks should go out by the end of the year. A federal judge must set the date.

Dow Corning, a joint venture of Midland-based Dow Chemical and Corning, N.Y.-based Corning Inc., was forced into bankruptcy in 1995 after thousands of women filed claims charging that the company’s implants damaged their health.

PHILADELPHIA

Man pleads guilty in teen’s starvation

A man pleaded guilty to third-degree murder Friday for starving his girlfriend’s 18-year-old son, then sending the dying teen off to Florida to find his estranged father.

Paul Hoffman, 39, faces up to 20 years in prison. Sentencing was scheduled for April 2.

Weighing less than 65 pounds, Chester Miller knocked on a stranger’s door in Milton, Fla., in September 2002 and begged for help. He died several days later of an infection caused by a ruptured stomach.

Prosecutors said Hoffman was irritated that Miller had come to live with his mother in Hazleton, and tried to force him out after he turned 18 by physically abusing him and refusing to allow him to eat.

Kentucky

Gunman kills self, girlfriend, neighbor

A man whose girlfriend sought refuge at a neighbor’s house shot the two of them to death Friday and critically wounded three others before killing himself.

Five children, ages 3 to 10, survived by hiding under a bed. Another woman in the home also escaped injury.

Police found the gunman, 40-year-old Mark W. Pledger, dead in a stream near his mobile home, a half-mile from where the shootings took place in Pippa Passes.

The dead were Pledger’s live-in girlfriend, 34-year-old Harlene Harwood, and her neighbor, Raymond Hall, 47, a disabled coal miner.

PHOENIX

Bishop apologizes to family of accident victim

Bishop Thomas O’Brien apologized in court Friday to the family of the pedestrian he killed in a hit-and-run last year, saying, “I know there is no one to blame for this but me.”

The 68-year-old cleric spoke during a pre-sentencing hearing. He could get anything from probation to three years and nine months in prison when he is sentenced March 26 in the death last June of Jim Reed.

In court papers, prosecutors asked Judge Stephen Gerst to sentence the bishop to six months behind bars and four years of probation.