Results tagged “skagitcounty”

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar emailed us this morning about our nation's glacier problem. Ken's all, "Seattlest, can you do something?" And we'd love to, but we totally have plans for tonight. Otherwise we'd form an ice-cube brigade or something.

The MSNBC has a piece up today about how minors hunting sans supervision is legal in 21 states, with the jumping-off point being the case of young Tyler Kales, recently sentenced to thirty days in juvie for mistaking Skagit County hiker Pamela Almli for a bear and shooting her in the head, killing her instantly. So many things wrong with this story: the fact that the then-fourteen-year old was armed with only the supervision of his sixteen-year-old brother; that the two were out huntin' in the fog; and that hunting near hiking areas is a-okay and doesn't require any signage to that effect.

There has been several flavors of WTF news from all over today. You have your tragic WTF news, the duh WTF news, and the just truly head-scratching WTF news. Behold:

The 14-year-old (unsupervised-by-adults) hunter who shot and killed a local hiker after mistaking her for a bear will be charged with first degree manslaughter. The Skagit County Prosecutor's office points out that the boy broke no laws by hunting in the popular hiking area or for hunting without adult supervision, since there is no minimum age limit for hunting in Washington State...which still boggles our mind. Hopefully, the manslaughter charge will bring about conversation and change in regards to children hunting bears and gun control, and some part of this tragic fiasco could be redeemed for the positive.