Wisconsin

Acres of tires burn at recycling plant

Fire erupted in a huge pile of tires at a recycling plant Tuesday, sending black smoke billowing for miles across southeast Wisconsin and shutting down roads as firefighters tried to contain the blaze.

About six acres of Watertown Tire Recycling Co.’s estimated 1 million tires were in flames Tuesday night, a smoldering mound expected to take days to burn itself out.

“Several days is being optimistic,” said Jennifer Warmke, emergency management deputy director for Dodge County.

No one was injured, but crews had to fight through acrid smoke as they used construction equipment to try to isolate the burning tires from unburned areas.

The plant sits just outside Watertown, a city of about 22,000 residents 35 miles west of Milwaukee.

Burning tires release pollutants into the air and can send toxic runoff into streams. In 1999, thousands of fish were killed by runoff from a 140-acre tire dump fire that burned for five days in northeastern Ohio. In 1995, a tire fire on four acres near Traverse City, Mich., burned for more than 20 days.

Oklahoma

Former soldier executed for murder

A former U.S. soldier who said steroids turned him into a killer was executed Tuesday evening for the 1991 murder of a convenience store clerk during a botched robbery attempt.

Michael L. Pennington, 37, who changed his name to Sharieff Sallahdin after converting to Islam at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, was given a lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m., corrections officials said.

Pennington’s only comment was, “No statement.” He then mouthed the words “I love you” to two family members who witnessed his execution.

None of the victim’s relatives were there.

The former weightlifter and body builder was convicted in 1993 of murdering Bradley Thomas Grooms, 20, during a robbery attempt at a Lawton convenience store.

Pennington, who was stationed at nearby Fort Sill, shot Grooms once in the back with a sawed-off shotgun, then left the store empty-handed because he couldn’t open the register.

Georgia

Six counselors charged in teen’s death at camp

Six counselors at a state-run wilderness camp for troubled boys near Cleveland were charged with murder in the death of a 13-year-old boy with asthma who was restrained for more than an hour.

A White County grand jury handed up the charges of felony murder, child cruelty and involuntary manslaughter Monday.

“This is all based on the criminal negligence or reckless conduct of these individuals,” said White County Dist. Atty. Stan Gunter. “It was due to the restraint, and how they applied it, that has led to these charges.”

Travis Parker died April 21, a day after he was held face down by counselors at the Appalachian Wilderness Camp in Cleveland, in the North Georgia mountains. The boy had angrily confronted one of the counselors for withholding food from him as punishment.

Parker had asthma and was denied his inhaler during the restraint. A medical examiner ruled the death a homicide.

Ohio

Infected hamster traced to pet center

A pet hamster blamed for spreading a virus that killed three transplant patients in April has been traced to an Ohio distribution center that supplies hamsters to pet stores throughout the East Coast, officials said Tuesday.

State and federal investigators quarantined the distribution center Monday and plan to test the animals for the virus in an effort to trace its origin.

“We don’t know whether the disease is there or not,” said LeeAnne Mizer, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Agriculture. “It’s a potential threat.”

The hamster had lymphocytic choriomeningitis, or LCMV, a virus that usually causes little or no illness in healthy people but can be deadly for those with weak immune systems.

It was shipped to a Warwick, R.I., pet store, where it was purchased for a woman shortly before she died this spring. The woman’s death wasn’t related to the virus, but three transplant patients who received a kidney, lungs and liver from the woman all developed flu-like symptoms and died within weeks.

Organs are routinely tested for many viruses but there is no commercial test for LCMV.