News Digest
Edited by Michelle Gamer
Friday, April 12,1996 Page 2
Two Freemen
surrender
to agents
JORDAN, Mont. — Two of the Free
men sought on federal fraud charges sur
rendered Thursday, driving a pickup truck
out of the compound and turning them
selves in to the FBI.
U.S. Attorney Sherry Scheel Mattcucci
identified the two as Ebert W. Stanton, 23,
and Agnes B. Stanton, 52, both of Brusett,
a small cross-roads about 15 miles out
side the compound.
Their arrests leave at least 10 people
inside the compound who are wanted on
state or federal charges ranging from writ
ing bad checks and impersonating public
officials to threatening to kidnap and
murder a U.S. district judge.
“We are continuing our efforts to re
solve this situation peacefully,” said
Matteucci, who wouldn’t comment on
why the Stantons decided to surrender.
Reporters saw the pair taken away in
handcuffs from a road outside the
Freemen’s heavily armed compound,
which they call “Justus Township,” and
driven away in a government truck.
Federal agents blocked the road and
prevented the media from following them.
Their arraignment was scheduled in fed
eral court at Billings at 11 a.m. Friday.
Both Stantons are charged with con
spiracy, mail fraud and bank fraud in con
nection with the writing of at least $ 19.5
million in bogus checks and money or
ders between August 1994 and Decem
ber 1995.
Ebert Stanton is also charged with
armed robbery for taking $66,000 in
equipment from an ABC television crew
in October 1995. He also was charged
with threatening public officials.
Agnes Stanton, Ebert’s mother, is the
wife of William Stanton, who serving time
in prison after being convicted in Febru
ary 1995 of advocating violence to fur
ther political aims.
The standoff began March 25 after the
FBI arrested two Freemen leaders who
had left the compound. The Stantons are
the fourth and fifth people to leave the
wheat farm since.
Ebert Stanton’s wife, Val, and her 5
year-old daughter, Mariah, left the com
pound April 5. Neither of those arc
charged with crimes.
Matteucci said another woman, also
not wanted on charges, left the farm ear
lier. She said she did not know the
woman’s identity.
Local residents initially welcomed the
federal response to the anti-government
group, which has tested their patience by
blocking their attempts to buy land and
begin spring planting.
Although the Freemen have refrained
from violence, rancher K.L. Bliss says the
group has “hurt me plenty, and a lot of
other people, too.”
Bliss and other ranchers last year
bought foreclosed property that had been
owned by the Freemen. The militant
group, however, does not recognize state
property laws, keeping the ranchers from
getting the land or the financing needed
to pay for it.
Crash
Continued from Page 1
day morning in Half Moon Bay, Calif.,
and spent the night in Cheyenne. They
planned to arrive Friday in Falmouth,
Mass. *
The Cessna 177B owned by Reid
crashed about one mile north of the Chey
enne Municipal Airport, narrowly miss
inghouscs and cars. The tail section came
to a rest just 25 feet from a garage.
“I kept thinking, 'Please! Please get
some altitude!said Tom Johnson, a 15
year pilot who saw the plane fall. “It just
went right into the ground. I knew no one
survived. It would have been impossible.”
Johnson, whose office is about a half
block from the crash site, said he spotted
Child pilot led extraordinary life
Home-schooled 7-year-old took in world as classroom
PboCADbRU, Calif. — Jessica Dubroff
didn’t learn her three R’s from school books.
The 7-year-old girl and her 9-year-old
brother, Joshua, were home schooled, learning
reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic from life experi
ences.
When Jessica expressed an interest in flying
a year ago, her father asked her if she would
like to try a cross-country flight and she agreed.
On Thursday, Jessica, her father, Lloyd
Dubroff, and flight instructor Joe Reid were
killed as they took off in a rain and snow storm
in Cheyenne, Wyo. Jessica was trying to become
the youngest person to make the flight.
“Her baseball hat, her charisma — she was
7 years old going on 20,” said a choked-up Jack
McHugh, who delivered a bouquet of flowers
to the Half Moon Bay Airport near Pcscadero,
where the journey began Wednesday.
Jessica became hooked on flying after her
parents took her on an airplane ride for her sixth
birthday. She had taken four months of lessons
and had logged about 35 flight hours before the
cross-country trip.
“What it takes to get this flight scheduled
and done is much better than sitting in a class
room,” Jessica’s mother, Lisa Blair Hathaway,
said before the flight.
The 4-foot-2,55-pound pilot — who wore a
baseball cap that said “Women Fly” — sat in a
red booster seat and needed aluminum exten
sions to help her reach the rudder pedals.
Jessica’s upbringing in Pescadero, a coastal
town about 40 miles south of San Francisco,
was far from the video game. Power Ranger
filled lives of so many American children.
Jessica, Joshua and their 3-year-old sister,
Jasmine, lived with Hathaway. Their father lived
in nearby San Mateo with his current wife.
The world was literally the children’s class
room: At age 4, Jessica was already learning
about economics with her first job — a paper
route.
More recently, she took horseback riding
lessons in exchange for caring for the animals.
There was no TV in Hathaway’s home and
the children’s toys were the hammers, screw
drivers and saws that they used to build their
own furniture.
Hathaway and her children were vegetarians
and Jessica’s favorite foods were brown rice,
sushi and natural juices. Her only vice — french
fries.
In addition to flying, she played guitar, trum
pet and piano and read such books as the biog
AP
raphy of Harriet Tubman and Hillary Clinton’s
“It Takes A Village.”
Jessica even started life in a not-so-ordinary
way — she was bom under water without the
help of a doctor or midwife. The family lived in
Falmouth, Mass., before moving to California
three years ago.
Reid, president of the Half Moon Bay Pilots
Association, sat next to her in the Cessna 177B
Cardinal. The four-seater had two sets of con
trols in case Jessica needed assistance.
“Mentally, she grasps the concepts as well
as an adult,” Reid said a few weeks before take
off.
Forrest Storz, a flight instructor who worked
with Reid for many years, said Jessica was a
good pilot.
“She’s as capable of flying that airplane the
way it was equipped as anybody else,” he said.
“She was just another student who was enthused
and worked hard and did what she was told.”
Mob storms U.N. headquarters in Liberia
MONROVIA, Liberia — Mobs broke down
the gates at the U.N. headquarters and looters
jumped the walls of the U.S. Embassy com
pound on Thursday, as even African peacekeep
ers reportedly joined in the widespread plunder
of Liberia’s warring capital.
Relief workers warned that a dangerous scar
city of food, medicine and fuel, compounded
by a fifth straight day of fighting in Liberia’s
capital, will worsen matters for a population
already among the poorest in West Africa.
“The fighting and ongoing massive looting
of homes, market and shops has sparked off
widespread food shortages for civilians in the
city,” said Tarek El Guindi, director of the U.N.
World Food Program in Liberia. “A serious hu
manitarian crisis is likely to erupt if fighting
continues.”
“Lord, please help us out of this madness —
your children are dying,” lamented one
Monrovia resident, housewife Maima Jones.
Dozens of bodies, mostly those of young
men, lay by the roadside in downtown Monrovia
amid bumed-out vehicles and shops that have
been looted since the worst fighting in more than
three years broke out Saturday between rebels
and government troops.
U.N. officials, speaking on condition of ano
nymity, said West African peacekeepers are be
lieved to have joined in the looting of Monrovia,
virtually paralyzing the U.N. food distribution
system that feeds about 1.5 million people
throughout Liberia. More than 23,000 tons of
food is sitting in U.N. warehouses in Monrovia.
U.N. spokesman Sylvana Foa said commu
nications with the U.N. headquarters in
Monrovia were cut after mobs stormed the gates
Thursday morning. She said all staff members
were reported safe and holed up at the U.S.
Embassy compound.
Buildings used by UNICEF and the U.N.
Development Program were also looted, along
with the motor pool of the U.N. High Commis
sioner for Refugees, Foa said from New York.
Aid workers from Doctors Without Borders
said they had treated dozens of people for bul
let wounds and were running short of medical
supplies because sniper fire prevented them
from getting to the central hospital.
A senior defense official speaking from
Washington said that as a result of the unrest,
the number of U.S. military personnel working
to evacuate Americans and other foreigners was
increased from 600 to 900.
“The situation is very tenuous," U.S. Secre
tary of State Warren Christopher said.
Foa said reports from the U.N. mission in
Liberia spoke of a “frenzy of looting” and that
it appeared leaders of the warring factions had
lost control of their own fighters.
In Washington, State Department spokesman
Glyn Davies said a few looters had jumped the
wall at the 27-acre American compound where
up to 20,000 people have taken refuge, but were
quickly run off by U.S. Special Forces.
As of late Thursday, the U.S. military had
evacuated 712 people from the compound —
130 of them Americans, the rest citizens of at
least 35 other countries. An earlier evacuation
figure of 156 Americans was an error, based on
a mistaken number from a helicopter pilot, U.S.
officials said.
About 400 Americans remain in Liberia,
mostly because street fighting has prevented
many from getting to the embassy compound.
_
“A serious humanitarian crisis
is likely to erupt if fighting
continues. ”
TAREK EL GUINDI
Director of the U.N. World Food Program
in Liberia
Defense Secretary William Perry told report
ers at a Pentagon news conference that the
evacuation of U.S. citizens was going smoothly
despite the chaos.
As a result of the crisis — the third to result
in U.S. evacuations from Monrovia since 1990
— three U.S. ships carrying roughly 700 U.S.
Marines were ordered to Liberia.
“They were given the orders to move to the
coast this morning,” U.S. Army Maj. Lew Boone
said. “We’re talking about a steaming time of
seven to eight days.”
Boone identified the ships heading from the
Adriatic Sea as the USS Guam, USS Tortuga
and USS Portland and said they would provide
the helicopters with additional takeoff platforms
and medical facilities for evacuees.
Liberia’s only international airport has been
destroyed.
The 7-ycar-old war involving seven rebel
factions has killed more than 150,000 people
in the West African nation, a republic created in
1847 by freed American slaves. It has left at
least half the country’s 2.3 million people home
less.
the plane shortly after takeoff, and it ap
peared the pilot was trying to return to the
airport. He said the plane never got higher
than 400 feet.
“It stalled over my building, winged
over and went straight into the ground
like a dart,” he said.
Hours after the crash, the Federal Avia
tion Administration said it would review
rules that govern when a pilot can allow
an unlicensed passenger to fly the plane.
Children have to be at least 16 to fly
solo at the controls of an airplane. But
children of any age can fly alongside a
licensed pilot, who may let them operate
the controls if he or she feels it is safe.
Shortly before takeoff, Jessica told a
reporter for Cheyenne television station
KKTU that the one thing she thought
when flying was crashing. But she said
she did not woiry about it.
After landing in Cheyenne late
Wednesday, Jessica was excited. “It’s
been a long day,” she said. “I enjoyed it.
1 can’t wait until the next day.”
The plane took off at 8:25 a.m.—just
minutes after a thunderstorm hit the area,
accompanied by heavy rain, snow and
winds gusting to 32 mph.
Surface visibility was about five miles,
and the temperature was 3 8 degrees, “right
on the edge of icing being a problem,”
said Cheyenne Airport Manager Jerry
Olson.
The bodies were still strapped into the
plane when Police Chief John Powell
arrived, the first on the scene. He said he
couldn’t tell who had been operating the
plane.
Nefcwraskan
Editor J. Christopher Haln,
. M 472-1766
ManagmgEditor Doug Kouma
Assoc. News Editors Matt Waite
http://www.unl.edu/DailyNeb/
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