State News-Thursday, Jan. 11th

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Closing arguments are expected today in the trial of a man whose girlfriend was killed in a fall from the window of his high-rise apartment in Harrisburg. Twenty-six-year-old Kevin Eckenrode is charged with third-degree murder. His girlfriend, Rachel Kozlusky, allegedly slipped from his grasp while dangling from his 23rd floor apartment last February. Eckenrode's lawyer has decribed the death as a tragic accident that the victim helped bring about during drunken horseplay. However, prosecutors say her death was caused by a combination of heavy drinking and dangerous behavior for which Eckenrode should be held criminally liable.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Pennsylvania's congressional delegation is mixed over President Bush's plan to send more than 20-thousand additional forces to Iraq. For the most part, Democrats are skeptical and Republicans are more supportive. But Republican Representative Phil English is the exception. He's one of eight House Republicans who sent a letter to President Bush that noted that after 12-thousand troops were added in Baghdad in August, violence increased. English says there's no evidence that there will be a different result this time. Democratic Representative Chaka Fattah is more blunt. He says Bush's plan is "disturbingly familiar" to the escalation of troops in Vietnam under General William Westmoreland and will lead to a repeat of the fall of Saigon.

NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) - Two years after police seized a freed killer's junked vehicle, Montgomery County prosecutors still await D-N-A test results. Prosecutors are hoping to tie 53-year-old Jack Lee Colin to a case involving two headless women. Colin is serving seven years for a weapons offense. Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor says as long as Colin's in prison, he still has time to build a case. Authorities have focused on Colin because at the time of the early 1980s killings because he lived near the victims and because of his violent history. He killed his parents when he was 19, but was acquitted by reason of insanity. But prosecutors haven't been able to make a case so far in the dismemberment slayings.

BETHLEHEM, Pa. (AP) - An autopsy is pending on the body of a suspended Northampton County teacher on trial on corruption of minors charges. When 55-year-old Keith Lord Snyder didn't show up in court yesterday, authorities went to his home and found him dead. His body was in the passenger seat of a car parked in his garage. An autopsy is planned. Snyder was accused of photographing teenage boys in revealing clothing. He had been suspended from his teaching job at Southern Lehigh High School shortly after the charges were filed in 2005.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - The Republican leader of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives says he wants to put an end to a practice that allows lawmakers to have others cast their votes. Jefferson County Representative Sam Smith says the House should eliminate so-called Capitol leave. Capitol leave lets members give their proxy votes to their parties' leaders to cast while the representatives are otherwise occupied in the Harrisburg area. The names of members granted Capitol leave are announced on the floor. Smith says he also wants to end sessions at 10 o'clock at night, provide public roll calls of votes within an hour, establish a gambling-industry oversight committee and more evenly divide committees between the parties.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - A state court has dismissed a lawsuit challenging the Pennsylvania Game Commission's deer-management program. The ruling says the sportsmen's group that sued lacks a legal foundation for its claim. The Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania asked the Commonwealth Court to order specific changes in the program, including an immediate end to the hunting of female deer pending a scientific study, on grounds that the current rules threaten to decimate the herd. But a three-judge panel says the game commission is legally required to manage the deer and has discretion over how to do that. The panel says the sportsmen's group cannot use the courts to change policies it disagrees with.

GREENSBURG, Pa. (AP) - Westmoreland County Coroner Ken Bacha says an inquest into a fatal shooting involving state Senator Bob Regola's gun probably won't be held this month as planned. Bacha says he's trying to find a retired judge or attorney to preside at the inquest -- someone with no ties to Regola or the family of Louis Farrell, the 14-year-old boy found shot to death with the senator's gun last July. Bacha and District Attorney John Peck don't know if the boy shot himself accidentally or on purpose or whether he was shot by someone else. In November, Peck announced an inquest would be held because investigators felt getting people to testify under oath might be the only way to determine how Farrell died.

MERCER, Pa. (AP) - A federal judge in Pittsburgh has refused to rule out a jury trial or the possibility of increased penalties against a company accused of improperly firing an employee because he was in the National Guard. The Justice Department filed the lawsuit against Newark Paperboard Products on behalf of Pennsylvania Army National Guard Major Michael McLaughlin in October 2004. McLaughlin, who was from Mercer, was killed in a January 2006 suicide bombing in Iraq, and his wife was named the plaintiff. McLaughlin was fired as manager of the company's Greenville plant in August 2001, following his return from a two-week military obligation. Newark denied he was fired because of his service, saying he had
a personality conflict with a major customer and the company feared losing the customer.