Friday, September 28, 2012

** Funeral services held for South Carolina EMT killed Tuesday in tractor-trailer/ambulance crash

** Kentucky death row prisoner charged in paramedic’s 1991 death

UNITED STATES NEWS

**Funeral services were held Thursday for a South Carolina EMT killed Tuesday in an ambulance/tractor trailer crash. WSOC TV (September 27) said the commemoration for Chesterfield County resident Gale Rivers included dozens of emergency vehicles lining the route from the funeral home to the Ruby Crossroads Baptist Church. Rivers’ remains were transported to the service via a Sandihills Ambulance Service EMS unit. Rivers died Tuesday around 12:30 p.m. just after dropping off a patient at the Carolinas Medical Center Union. Following the impact with the tractor trailer, she was thrown from the ambulance. A second EMT remains in the hospital in stable condition.

** Justice may finally be in the offing for the family of a Denver, Colorado paramedic murdered in 1991. That is the word from the Associated Press (Brett Barrouquerre/September 27) which said Kentucky Governor Steve Bashear has signed a governor’s warrant to extradite prisoner Michael Dale St. Clair, 55, to New Mexico. St. Clair has been charged in the death of Timothy Keeling, 22. According to the news service, St. Clair, who was on the run from an Oklahoma prison at the time of the Keeling murder, allegedly abducted Keeling, shooting him to death in Clayton, New Mexico. A second escapee, Dennis Gene Reece, also participated. St. Clair, who had already been sentenced to four life sentences for another murder, is currently on Kentucky’s death row. Though Reece has admitted his involvement in Keeling’s death, St. Clair has not. Failing health, however, makes it unlikely he will survive to trial.