From Amazon to Diane Keaton: Tucson's 10 most popular stories in 2018
From the opening of an Amazon warehouse to Diane Keaton buying an Old Pueblo home, below are the Arizona Daily Star's 10 most widely-read stories from 2018.
Risks to Lake Mead, Colorado River intensifying greatly, federal officials say
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In this 2015 file photo a riverboat glides through Lake Mead on the Colorado River at Hoover Dam near Boulder City, Nev.
TEMPE — The risks of Lake Mead dropping to catastrophically low levels have ramped up dramatically, say federal officials who came here in June to push for completion of a long-stalled drought plan for the Colorado River Basin.
At a presentation before hundreds of local and state officials, Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman and a top aide warned that the risks to the lake are unacceptable. They said it’s urgent that Arizona officials resolve their differences over the drought plan and get on board with six other Colorado River Basin states that are moving toward adopting one.
Since the seven states approved a set of guidelines for managing the river’s reservoirs in 2007, the risks of Lake Mead dropping to very low levels has increased by three to six times, the bureau officials said.
Read the full story here.
Tony Davis / Arizona Daily Star
Rich Rodriguez fired in what UA athletic director, president say is a difficult but 'right' decision
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Former UA coach Rich Rodriguez may soon be added to a Title IX lawsuit against the university.
Rich Rodriguez was fired on in the beginning of the year after a $7.5 million notice of claim was filed with the state Attorney General’s Office alleging that Arizona’s head football coach ran a hostile workplace and sexually harassed a former employee.
The UA announced Rodriguez’s firing in a news release around 8:30 p.m. University President Robert C. Robbins and athletic director Dave Heeke said they will “honor the separation terms” of the coach’s contract, after an internal investigation did not find enough evidence to fire him for cause. His buyout is about $6 million.
“While this is a difficult decision, it is the right decision,” they wrote. “And it is a decision that lives up to the core values of the University of Arizona.”
Read the full story here.
Arizona Daily Star
Arizona Wildcats football players gang-raped female students and staffers, amended lawsuit claims
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Old Main on the University of Arizona campus is an iconic spot for photos.
An amendment to a federal lawsuit filed against the University of Arizona claims that Wildcats football players gang-raped female students and support-staffers in the years leading up to former running back Orlando Bradford’s 2016 arrest for choking his girlfriend.
The lawsuit, originally filed by attorneys Lauren Groth, Kimberly Hult and David Shughart, claims that multiple UA employees knew that Bradford was abusive to women but failed to take action to stop him. Bradford was ultimately arrested in connection with 15 domestic violence-related offenses after two ex-girlfriends came forward to police to say that he’d repeatedly hit and choked them.
In 2017, Bradford was sentenced to five years in prison. He admitted in open court to choking each of the two women.
Read the full story here.
Caitlin Schmidt / Arizona Daily Star
Green Valley doctor: I was fired over op-ed about nurse practitioners
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Dr. Steve Maron, a pediatrician, says he doesn’t regret writing the article.
Pediatrician Dr. Steve Maron has a lot of respect for nurse practitioners and the work they do for patients, but he doesn’t think they should be replacements for physicians.
After expressing that opinion in a newspaper column titled “Are NPs the same as MDs?” Maron was fired from his job with the United Community Health Center’s Green Valley clinic for violating the organization’s “principle of mutual respect,” Maron said last week.
The issue of whether nurse practitioners (NPs) can stand in for doctors is an ongoing national debate, as nurse practitioners assume an increasingly prominent role in providing primary care. In 22 states, including Arizona, plus the District of Columbia, nurse practitioners are allowed to have “full practice authority,” meaning they are allowed to practice and prescribe on their own without a doctor’s supervision.
Read the full story here.
Stephanie Innes / Arizona Daily Star
Video shows explosion at border agent's gender-reveal party that sparked Arizona wildfire
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Still frames from a video used as evidence in the case against a Border Patrol agent show the target at a gender-reveal ceremony and the resulting explosion and fire that became the 47,000-acre Sawmill Fire, which cost $8.2 million to extinguish.
The Sawmill Fire is shown erupting from an exploding target — with blue smoke curling off the fire's fringes — in a video obtained by the Arizona Daily Star.
The 49-second video clearly shows the fire starting in yellow grassland near a stand of mesquite trees from the exploding target on state land in the Santa Rita Mountain foothills on April 23, 2017. Toward the end of the video, a male voice is heard saying "Start packing up!" twice.
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Tony Davis / Arizona Daily Star
Deputy US marshal shot and killed serving arrest warrant on Tucson's north side
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Tucson police officers stand by a police car with Ryan Schlesinger detained in the back seat after a shooting that killed Deputy U.S. Marshal Chase White. It had been 66 years since a deputy U.S. marshal was killed in the line of duty in Tucson.
A deputy U.S. marshal serving a felony arrest warrant was shot and killed in November outside a house on the city's north side, Tucson police Chief Chris Magnus said.
The man suspected of shooting the marshal was arrested after a standoff at the house. A federal complaint filed in court said he was wearing body armor and a ballistic helmet when he was taken into custody.
Magnus said the Marshals Service was serving an active felony arrest warrant against a man at the house when the suspect fired at them. Marshal Service personnel returned fire, but the suspect was not wounded.
Read the full story here.
Shaq Davis / Arizona Daily Star
Diane Keaton buys adobe in Tucson's Barrio Viejo for $1.5 million
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Oscar-winning actress Diane Keaton toured this four-bedroom adobe home in Barrio Viejo before buying it in April 2018.
The 1880s-era adobe building in Barrio Viejo was in bad shape when writer Kathe Lison set out to restore it four years ago. Her friends thought she was out of her mind, but Lison saw potential in the solidly built structure, despite its crumbling brown walls, lack of electricity and minimal plumbing.
“Most people looking at it did the numbers and went, ‘No way,’ ” said Lison, 46. “We looked at the numbers and said, ‘We love it, and we’re going to do it anyway.’ ”
She laughed. “How are you going to know in advance that Diane Keaton is going to show up and want to buy your house?”
Turns out that’s what happened: Lison and husband Chris Cokinos first heard Keaton, 72 — a prolific house-flipper in addition to being an Oscar-winning actress — was looking to buy in downtown Tucson about 18 months before they reached out to her last summer. Keaton came to tour the home in the spring, she said.
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Emily Bregel / Arizona Daily Star
Man charged in killing of Tucson girls has long, cross-country criminal record
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Christopher Matthew Clements
In March 2012, Christopher Matthew Clements was released from federal prison after his conviction for failure to register as a sex offender was overturned on a technicality.
Clements moved into a house two miles away from 6-year-old Isabel Celis’ midtown home, where she went missing less than a month later, in a shocking kidnapping case that struck Tucson at its core.
Five years later, in March 2017, her remains were recovered in a desert area following a tip that Tucson police remained tight-lipped about until Saturday morning, when they announced Clements’ indictment on kidnapping and first-degree murder charges.
It took federal, state and local authorities more than five years to connect Clements to Isabel’s death, and to the death of 13-year-old Maribel Gonzalez, whose body was discovered in June 2014 a few days after she disappeared after leaving her east-side home.
Read the full story here.
Caitlin Schmidt / Arizona Daily Star
Arizona Sen. John McCain's life in photographs
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This 1936 black-and-white file photo, provided by the McCain Presidential Campaign, shows Republican presidential hopeful, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the arms of his grandfather, John Sidney McCain, right, in the Panama Canal Zone. His father John Sidney McCain Jr. is at left.
Sen. John McCain, from his days at the U.S. Naval Academy through his final years as the Senior Senator from Arizona. John Sidney McCain III was born August 29, 1936 at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone. His father and grandfather were four-star admirals in the U.S. Navy.
McCain followed his namesakes and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958. He asked for combat duty in 1967 and was assigned to the USS Forrestal, then the USS Oriskany during Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing campaign of North Vietnam. He was shot down and spent more than five years in a Hanoi prison. He was released in 1973 and went through physical rehabilitation. He attended the National War College and was the Navy liason to the U.S. Senate. He retired from the Navy in 1981.
McCain was elected to U.S. House of Representatives (Arizona District 1) in 1982 and moved to the U.S. Senate in 1987, succeeding Sen. Barry Goldwater.
See more photos here.
Arizona Daily Star
Amazon to open giant warehouse in Tucson, plans to hire more than 1,500 people
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According to Amazon, the Tucson warehouse will fulfill customer orders around Southern Arizona and in neighboring states.
Amazon chose Tucson for a new fulfillment center with plans to hire more than 1,500 full-time employees.
The warehouse will handle customer returns, light assembly, 3-D printing and direct product pickup by customers from automated kiosks on the city’s southeast side.
“Throughout most of the year, the project is projected to have a maximum of approximately 1,500 employees working on-site at one time. During the peak shopping season (i.e., November through December) the project will have a maximum of 1,900 employees working on-site at one time,” project filings with the city of Tucson show.
Read the full story here.
Gabriela Rico / Arizona Daily Star
