Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page. It is also available as plain text as well as XML.

State and National News - — .■ ■ : ....._ . ..... ! . ' _]... __ Police to reopen Washington frat death case by Ray Rivera Knight-Ridder~Tribune SEATTLE - At the urging of the city's Asian-American community, Mayor Paul Schell has asked the Seattle Police De partment to reopen the disputed suicide case of a University of Washington stu dent found hanging in his fraternity house last month. Seattle police confirmed they have re-opened the case but referred all ques tions to the King County Medical Ex aminer's Office. The mayor has also instructed his staff to look at any cross-cultural issues that may have led to communication break1 downs between police and medical in vestigators and the family of Peter Nguyen f„!l_I_L' A—.L ivuunuig iuj uwu i. Members of the Zeta Psi fraternity said they found Nguyen's body suspend ed by the cable of a pull-down weight machine in their basement workout room June 5. After an initial investigation, the Med ical Examiner's Office ruled the death a suicide, saying the body bore no signs of a struggle. Homicide detectives were never called to the scene. According to official reports, Nguyen had completed an 8:30 a.m. final exam and returned to his fraternity house in the 4700 block of 21st Avenue Northeast. Fellow fraternity members reported see ing him around the house as late as 1 p.m., according to a police report. His body was found at 9:30 p.m. The time of death was reported as noon, give or take three hours. Nguyen's family has been critical of the investigation. The 19-year-old sophomore did not leave a suicide note and showed no indication of depres sion, family members said. A handwrit ing expert hired by the family to review Nguyen's journals concluded that he was •an unlikely candidate for suicide. The family also questions whether Nguyen, at 5-foot-8 and 150 pounds, could have pulled down the 200 pounds locked in the weight machine to wrap the cable around his neck without assistance. Fraternity members pulled down the body before police and medical investi cratnr.Iasnn Rerman arrived at the scene Neither Berman nor police discov ered small drops of blood later found by the family on Nguyen's pillow. Contrary to Berman's initial report that blood found in Nguyen's mouth came from a cut on his tongue, meaning he may have bitten down on it while hanging himself, a re port by the family's private investigator says initial autopsy findings indicate the bleeding came from a cut inside the up per lip. Nguyen was wearing dental braces, indicating the “abrasion certainly could have come from a struggle, even though the report states there were no facial injuries,” the private investigator wrote. In a July 20 letter to Schell from the Asian Pacific Islander Coalition of King County, coalition chairwoman Diane Narasaki said the Asian community was outraged by the quality of the investiga tion and the treatment the family received from police and the Medical Examiner's Office. “The family has tried repeatedly to get the police to respond to their con cerns that Peter's death must be investi gated as a homicide rather than a suicide,” Narasaki wrote. “The police officer who is handling the case tells them that they will not do anything unless the family has enough evidence or the results of the autopsy proves that his death was not a suicide.” In her letter, Narasaki noted that staff ill uie lyicuicdi cxainniei i wince iuiu uie family it could take up to 30 days for re sults to come back After30 days, she said, results still have not been made available. Coalition members have questioned whether language or cultural issues might have caused police and medical examin ers to treat the Vietnamese Nguyen family differently. Chief medical investigator Jerry Wfeb ster referred questions to the mayor's office. However, in the past, he has said he has full confidence in Berman's initial in vestigation. “The mayor is veiy deeply concerned about what happened and wants to take a look at the questions and the concerns that are being raised to be sure that the family receives the responsiveness they deserve,” said Trang Tu, special assis tant to the mayor. Tu said, however, that the mayor be lieves police acted appropriately at the time of the incident. Any police investigation launched now would appear to face several hur Not only did homicide detectives not review the scene, but what would seem to be a key piece of evidence - the weight machine - is gone. A spokesman for Zeta Psi fraternity said house members threw the machine into a rented trash bin a week after Nguyen's death, during annual cleaning before the summer break. “The guys in the house didn't want it around any more, and they asked me if I could get rid of it,” said Zeta Psi Alum ni president John Sheppard. “I contact ed the Seattle Police Department, and they said the case was closed and we could dispose of it.” Sheppard said the fraternity welcomes the investigation. “We will assist the police in any way possible,” he said. “There is no evidence showing that any of our fraternity mem bers or any of Peter's close friends could have committed.this (alleged) crime, so if there is someone outside the fraterni ty who did this, we want to find out.” Iowa professor becomes angry over onstage cigarette smoking by Claire Zulkey College Press Exchange Some audiences may be offended by nudity on stage, others by foul lan guage, but Marc Linder, a law professor at the University of Iowa, is enflamed by another issue: smoking. A few weeks ago, the professor com plained to the Associated Press after an Iowa Summer Repertory Theatre per formance of Edward Albee’s “A Delicate Balance.” In the production, actors briefly smoked a cigar and cigarettes during three scenes. However, this is not a new battle for Linder, who filed a formal complaint with the local fire marshal and the Universi ty last fall, also regarding onstage smok ing. However, the fire marshal had no problem with it, and the university ruled that it was acceptable, as long as the smok ing contributed artistically to the perfor mance. Linder says that the situation is be ing controlled by “petty autocrats,” since he has found school officials who have sided with him, yet nothing has been done to control the situation. “This is a situation that literally af fects thousands of people,” Linder said, referring to audience members. The professor does not agree with the reasoning that smoking was part of a char actersrole. “Just because you are being artistic does not mean that you are privileged to violate the law,” he said. On July 17, Linder published a long letter entitled “To Allow Theater Smok ing is Illegal and Unhealthy,” making his case. “The [theater chairmen] who are in spired by a macho the-show-must-go-on attitude, regardless of the health effects on themselves, are incompetent to make a decision as to whether carcinogens should be discharged at captive audiences (in a theater in which onstage smoking immediately blankets the entire audience area,)” he wrote in the letter. He also described the responsibility of the University of Iowa to discourage smoking itself, as well as to ban smoking in public areas. So far, Linder does not seem to be gamering much support. In a scathing reply in a July 19 col umn, student newspaper columnist Beau Elliot discredited the notion of danger ous secondhand smoke. “In a world beset with AIDS bowl ing through the sub-Saharan Africa pop ulation like 10 million unleashed trains, the good professor has managed to pin point the major problem facing us: actors on UI stages will pull out a cigarette and, get this, have the audacity to light up and smoke,” Elliot wrote. Write for m e 0amtcock this fall! We need writers for all sections. Call us at 777-7726, or come by Russell House 333. State Briefs ■ Myrtle Beach hauls off decaying seaweed after complaints Myrtle Beach (AP) - Officials here are looking for solutions to a stinky problem - decaying seaweed that has washed up on beaches. The city of Myrtle Beach and Hor ry.County from locals and tourists about the ap pearance and smell of the seaweed by hauling it off the beach. The county has dumped some of the seaweed in the county landfill and buried some along the beach in trench es. But it keeps washing ashore. "We had the beach perfectly clean the other day," said Joe Clardy, director of Horry County Environ mental Services. "The next day it was covered." ■ Accident kills wife of former NFL player Charleston (AP) - The wife of for mer Atlanta Falcons player James "Jumpy" Geathers was killed, and their three children injured, in a one-car ac cident near Andrews. Debie Geathers, 41, was killed in stantly Sunday morning after being thrown from her car, authorities said. The accident happened at about 6 a.m. on U.S. Highway 521, as Geathers and her children, Jeremy, Jasmine and Jarvis, were returning from Myrtle Beach. The cause of the accident was un der investigation, but Geathers might have fallen asleep, said Georgetown County Coroner Kenny Johnson. A state Highway Patrol spokesman said no one in the car was wearing a seat belt. ■ Missing Rock Hill teen presumed drowned Rock Hill (AP)-A 17-year-old boy is missing and presumed drowned af ter he slipped underwater while swim ming in the Catawba River, authorities said. The teen, whose name has not been released, was fishing Sunday evening with his 17-year-old cousin at a park when he disappeared, said Cotton How ell, York County Emergency Manage ment director. The river flows swiftly in that area and has sandbars and deep holes, How ell said. "It goes ankle deep to 12 feet in one step," he said.