Bush administration picks Lawrence Livermore’s nuclear weapon design

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The Bush administration selected Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s design Friday for a new generation of atomic war-heads, advancing a plan to update the nation’s arsenal amid criti-cism from nuclear weapons op-ponents.

The Lawrence Livermore design beat one submitted by Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mex-ico because it can be built with more certainty in the absence of underground testing, the National Nuclear Security Administration said.

“Both teams developed bril-liant designs,” said Thomas P. D’Agostino, the acting ad-ministrator of the NNSA.

L e a p s i n c o m p u t e r modeling and experimental c a p a b i l i t i e s in probing the internal struc-ture of pluto-nium allowed scientists to draw up an es-sentially new weapon with-out test ing, s a i d B r u c e Goodwin, as-sociate direc-tor of defense and nuclear technologies at Lawrence Livermore.

As the program progresses over the next six years, Lawrence Livermore will work closely with production plants, assuming Con-gress will pay for it and that shut-tered manufacturing facilities are brought back to life.

If funded by Congress, the new warhead developed with engi-neering assistance from Sandia National Laboratories would be used on the Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile system.

Many of the warheads in the na-tion’s stockpile were designed and built 40 years ago, and their pluto-nium and other components are deteriorating in ways researchers do not fully understand.

The government spends billions of dollars each year tending to its aging stockpile.

Critics fear the project could send the wrong signal to the world at a time when the United States and its allies are trying to curb the spread of nuclear technology.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Ca-lif., said she was “100 percent op-posed” to the new program, even though the choice of Lawrence

Nuclear/A7

By KATHERINE ROSENBERGStaff Writer

VICTORVILLE — A man was shot and killed while on the dance floor at the Sand Bar early Friday morning while over 150 other patrons were present, authori-ties said.

Moments after the shooting, the gun-man opened fire in the parking lot, strik-ing a second victim, officials said. Al-

though two suspects were caught later in the day, no one is quite sure what series of events led up to the gunfire.

“I’m sure it was over a girl ... but we will never know for sure,” said Sgt. Le-land Boldt of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Detail.

Jacob Jackson, 24, of Phelan was the first victim who was shot in the chest inside the bar, said Cindy Beavers, spokeswoman

for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. As he lay on the dance floor wounded and bleeding, a second man began kicking and hitting him, she added.

ShootiNg/A7

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One million rounds of ammunition seized

At their week's end

Riverside County Sheriff's deputies and ATF agents removed several boxes of ammunition discovered at a home in Norco on Friday. Firefighters responding to a blaze at the Riverside County home Thursday found more than 1 million rounds of ammunition and a cache of firearms.

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Page edited by Justin D. Beckett

The Dow finishes its most frantic week since Sept. 11, 2001 by dropping another 120 points. Pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. helped keep the day afloat, but are economists worried that the bubble has finally burst?

Ready for flight

The Silverado girls basketball team heads to Long Beach on Saturday for the finals of the CIF-Southern Section Division III-A championship. Get the results first from the Press Dispatch on Sunday.

See page B7

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Coming Sunday

Bluffton University, a small Mennonite college in northern Ohio, mourned the loss of six players from its baseball team after a tragic accident Friday. The team bus plunged off a highway ramp early in the morning in Atlanta. For more, see page A3.

Bus crash claims Ohio baseball team

Photos by James Quigg / Staff Photographerthe Marquez family burns a candle for geraldine Marquez, left, after Marquez was killed in afghanistan. Family members said this photograph best captures her personality.

rita Manrique mourns the loss of her daughter geraldine Marquez. Marquez was killed in the bombing which targeted Vice President richard cheney.

Caught in the line

Suicide bomber targets Cheney, kills Victor Valley native instead

Her family, still living in Victorville, remembers Marquez as tough, proud to serve

“What worries me is that the minute you

begin to put more

sophisticated warheads on the existing

fleet, you are essentially creating a

new nuclear weapon.Dianne

FeinsteinD-Calif.

norCal city lands warhead contract

Pair caught in club shooting

Staff Photo by Katherine Rosenberga sheriff’s deputy escorts alex Watson, 28, of Victorville to a patrol car before transporting him into West Valley Detention center.

By MATTHEW C. DURKEEStaff Writer

The night before Geraldine Marquez died, she was celebrating her 31st birthday with friends at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

“She whined that the ice cream cake was too frozen, and in true Marquez fashion pulled out a knife that was at least eight inches long and went to work on that cake,” said Army Lt. Mark Biggs in an e-mail.

That was just her style. “She was the youngest but also the toughest and brav-

est,” said her brother, Alfredo Marquez of Victorville. She had four older sisters and one big brother. “She was the first to investigate sounds, defending her family.”

Geraldine treated everyone like family, and serving her country was just another example of her brave and giving nature.

Marquez/A4

aBC violations shut down CoconutsNew owner will remodel, open on St. Patrick’s Day as banquet facility

By KATHERINE ROSENBERGStaff Writer

V I C T O RV I L L E — C o c o n u t s closed its doors Friday afternoon, due in large part to 10 separate Alcoholic Beverage Control viola-tions — including serving “poi-sonous liquor” after bottles were found with insects in them, offi-cials said.

But being one to subscribe to the school of “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade,” new

co-owner Ronald Mather is taking it in stride and using the time to remodel the club that he recently purchased.

When the 15-day suspension is complete on March 17, Mather will re-open the facility as a banquet hall that focuses more on fine din-ing than clubbing.

Mather’s business, Civic Enter-tainment Inc., has yet to decide on a name for the renovated building, but it will be Coconuts no more.

Around noon Friday, Ed Harris, a senior investigator with Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) met with Mather to discuss the suspension

of his liquor license. Following a quick explanation of the terms, Harris posted a suspension notice on the front doors of the club.

“When it was owned by Coco-nuts we began an investigation stemming from July 2006 and found 10 counts that range from minors being in the club and inap-propriate management to selling contaminated alcohol that had ei-ther debris, bugs or insects in it,” Harris said. “Someone could drink it and possibly get ill.”

That investigation begun by

cocoNutS/A6

By RyAN AlESSIMcclatchy Newspapers

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — President Bush Friday night made a plea for Congress to fully fund his budget request for the U.S. troops fighting in Iraq, while praising Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for standing with him on the war and other policy issues.

“The troops of the United States have no stronger friend than Sen. Mitch McConnell of the state of Kentucky,” Bush said, sparking applause from the more than 650 people at the Seelbach Hilton’s ballroom. “I’m glad to have Mitch McConnell by my side.”

Bush was the main attraction at the high-dollar joint fundraiser for McConnell’s 2008 re-election and the National Republican Sen-atorial Committee.

The event, which cost at least $2,000 a ticket, raised a state Repub-lican record $2.1 million, McCon-nell told the crowd that included a who’s who of business leaders, lob-byists and state GOP officials such as Lt. Gov. Steve Pence and state Senate President David Williams.

Neither Gov. Ernie Fletcher nor

any members of his current cab-inet attended the event.

McConnell, the Senate Re-publican leader, has said that the event will be his only major fundraiser in Kentucky until af-ter the governor’s race.

During his 31-minute speech, Bush explained his decision after the 2006 elections to change course in Iraq. “I was unhappy with the

conditions on the ground last fall,” he said. “As opposed to leaving, we are going to send more people in there to reinforce the troops.”

He said the next test is whether the Democratic-led Congress will agree to provide the funding for the additional 21,500 soldiers.

“Soon Congress is going to have to make a decision that has real consequences, and that is

whether to fund our troops and give them the capability to per-form their mission,” he said. “They need the support of the United States Congress.”

Bush then briefly outlined sev-eral other goals for his final two years in office including continuing to provide funding for HIV/AIDS drugs in Africa, working a fix to relieve pressure on the Social Se-curity system and developing clean energy programs so Americans can run their “automobiles on ethanol made from switchgrass.”

“We’ve got a big agenda, and I think we’re going to get a lot of that accomplished,” Bush said.

Each time he mentioned an ini-tiative, the president made sure to praise McConnell for working with him. “One of the main rea-sons we’re going to get a lot ac-complished is because you sent a skillful legislator, a master of the United States Senate, to Washing-ton, D.C.,” he said.

McConnell later told the crowd that the divided leadership with the Republican White House and Democratic-controlled Congress of-fers a chance to accomplish “big things” because, at the very least,

the two parties can divide the credit and blame. “We ought to get Social Security fixed and we ought to fix immigration,” McConnell said. “It’s too early to predict wheth-er we’ll just play small ball or whether we’ll step up to the plate to do big things.”

Early signs point to Congress taking up immigration reforms first, McConnell told reporters, add-ing that he’s more optimistic about addressing Social Security than he was two months ago.

“This is the perfect time for them,” McConnell said of the Dem-ocrats, noting that after the 2008 election, they could hold the U.S. House, Senate and presidency. “By then, the problems are going to be two years’ worse.”

Meanwhile, at least one Demo-crat has begun making noise about challenging McConnell as he tries for his fifth six-year term.

Charlie Owen, a businessman and Democrat, issued a statement critical of both the president and McConnell’s continued support of Bush. “The president and Ken-tucky’s senior senator have led us into an ill-conceived and misman-aged war,” he said.

That’s what put her in Af-ghanistan when a suicide bomb-er claimed her life and 22 others Tuesday morning in an attempt to kill Vice President Dick Cheney.

“She cared a lot about help-ing people and wanted to make a difference,” said her sister Ana Kimball of Pearl, Miss. Growing up in Victorville, Geraldine had a brother-in-law in the Air Force stationed at George AFB, and it made an impression on her.

Geraldine served for eight years in the Air Force, rising to the rank of sergeant. She got out just af-ter the war in Iraq had started, and she became a contractor with Lockheed Martin, volunteering for work in places like Iraq, Qatar and Turkey.

She was on her third tour in Af-ghanistan, assisting with the ship-ment of supplies to the base.

“She was here to support a cause that she believed in,” said Lt. Biggs. “Soldiers are here be-cause they were ordered to be here. The Marquezes of this world are here because they choose to be here.”

Geraldine was guiding trucks into Bagram when the bomb went off. She was surrounded by Afghan children she had be-friended while working at the front gates of the base, and sever-al of them were also killed. They were hoping there was something on the trucks that Geraldine had ordered for them.

Geraldine was always ordering gifts for friends and family. Lt. Biggs called her “the queen of online shopping.”

When her mother, Rita Man-rique of Apple Valley, suffered a heart attack three weeks ear-lier, it pained Geraldine that she couldn’t be there. To make up for it, she paid for her sister Ana to fly out from Mississippi and be with their mom. She also sent her mom eight dozen roses.

Months earlier, Geraldine paid for her niece’s honeymoon to Cancun. The whole family went — on Geraldine’s dime.

When Alfredo’s son, a Victor Valley College student, had to get his car fixed, Geraldine paid the bill. She insisted on it. She always insisted on it.

“She wouldn’t even give you a choice,” Alfredo said.

The family had a saying about her that she had the body of a woman but the heart of a child.

Colleagues said she was always smiling, always joking, and she constantly e-mailed jokes to her family.

Her mother was trying to talk Geraldine into finding work clos-er to home, and the tireless adven-turer finally told her family she was considering “coming home” — to work on an oil rig.

Her sister Yuri Abraamyan of Valencia said death was not a con-cern for her.

“She would say, ‘I believe the Lord knows my last days. I want to keep doing everything I can to help others.’ ”

“I’m safe where I am,” she would assure her family. They don’t doubt it anymore.

Matthew c. Durkee may be reached at 951-6226 or mdurkee@vvdailypress.com.

PAGE A4 Daily Press, Victorville, Calif. fROM THE fRONT Saturday, March 3, 2007 Page edited by Justin D. Beckett

Suck-Jun Bang, M.D. is retiring from his practice as a pediatricphysician as of March 30, 2007.

His office, Mount Ville Pediatric, located at 15247 11th St., Suite #1000,Victorville, CA 92395 will be permanently closed on March 30, 2007.

Patients who need copies of medical records must pick them up at his officebefore March 30, 2007. Please call in advance of doing so.

AnuncioSuck-Jun Bang, M.D. se retira de su practica como pediatra el 30 de Marzo2007.

Su oficina, Mount Ville Pediatric, localizada en 15247 11th Street, Suite#1000, Victorville, CA 92395 sera cerrada permanentenente el 30 de Marzo2007.

Pacientes que necesiten copias del expediente medico, deveran recojerlo enla oficina antos del 30 de Marzo 2007. Porfavor llame antos de bacerio.

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Marquez: Worked as contractor in AfghanistanFroM A1

James Quigg / Staff PhotographerYuri abraamyan, alfred Marquez, ana Kimball and her husband James Kimball recall memories of abraamyan Marquez’s and ana Kimball’s sister geraldine Marquez.

James Quigg / Staff Photographerashley Kimball rests at her father, James Kimball’s side, while reflecting on the life of her aunt geraldine Marquez. Marquez’s family has gathered to mourn her death in a bombing in afghanistan.

Bush defends troop surge at recent fundraisers

GROZNY, Russia — The par-liament of Russia’s North Cau-casus republic of Chechnya Friday approved Ramzan Kady-rov as president of Chechnya.

The candidacy of acting Pres-ident Kadyrov was approved by 56 out of 58 Chechen members of the parliament.

Russian President Vladimir Putin nominated Kadyrov for the presidency Thursday.

In mid-February, Putin ac-cepted the resignation of Alu Alkhanov, ex-president of the troubled North Caucasus re-public, whose term was due to expire in 2008, and appointed him to the post of deputy jus-tice minister in the central gov-ernment. The move was widely seen as clearing the way for the ex-prime minister and acting president Kadyrov to become president.

Kadyrov thanked Putin for his nomination and said yester-day that if parliament approved his candidacy, he planned to make Chechnya the most peace-ful and prosperous region in Russia.

“If I have the trust, I will make every effort to continue the work my father and you started so that Chechens can live with dignity and in safety,” he said. Kadyrov also pledged to eradicate terrorism and Wah-habism in the republic.

Kadyrov, the son of the late President Akhmad Kadyrov, who had been in charge of his father’s security and is popular among Chechens, was unable to take up the post following his father’s assassination in May 2004, because at the time he had not yet reached the age of 30 — a pre-condition for presidential candidates set by the Chechen Constitution.

Alkhanov filled the position in the August 2004 election, in which he was the only candi-date backed by the Kremlin.

Kadyrov was appointed first deputy prime minister and pro-moted to the post of advisor to Putin’s envoy in the Southern Federal District several months later.

In November 2005, Kadyrov Jr. became acting prime min-ister and later prime minister of his home republic. In Octo-ber, he turned 30 and following Alkhanov’s resignation he was appointed acting president of Chechnya.

Russian troops have fought two wars against separatists in Chechnya since 1994. Mos-cow has declared an end to the active phase of the campaign and significantly scaled down its military presence in Chech-nya, but fighting and terrorist attacks still occur there, oc-casionally spilling over into neighboring regions.

For mer militants, the Kadyrovs switched sides and helped federal troops crush the insurgency. Kadyrov still has a private army, which helps maintain order, but has also been accused of kidnap-pings and other crimes by hu-man rights groups.

On the day when Putin nom-inated Kadyrov, Thomas Ham-marberg, a Council of Europe human rights commissioner, said at a human rights confer-ence following his three-day visit to Chechnya that pris-oners in the North Caucasus republic had told him they were regularly tortured and brutally treated.

Hammarberg called for measures to be taken to pun-ish those responsible, including surprise checks during interro-gations to prevent torture and forced confessions, which, he said, undermine the entire jus-tice system.

Chechen parliament approves president

By BRUCE JAPSENchicago tribune

CHICAGO — In response to serious new questions about remedies parents have relied on for decades, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday it would study the safety and effectiveness of over-the-counter cold medicines marketed for young children.

The agency’s move came in reaction to a petition by leading pediatricians and public health officials who on Thursday urged the FDA to restrict companies from marketing certain cold and cough medicines to children age 6 and younger, citing reports of deaths, heart arrhythmias and other dangerous events.

The agency said the review was called for, in part, because over-the-counter cough and cold medicines have only been stud-ied in adults with those findings on safety and efficacy “extrapo-lated” to children.

The government’s decision to study the efficacy of cough and cold medicines on children is certain to set off concerns among many parents. The FDA advised consumers in the in-terim to abide by the labels and consult with their own doctors about treatments.

The FDA’s move is the latest, and perhaps most serious, expres-sion of concern about over-the-counter cough and cold medicines. But skepticism has been building over the last decade, with some physicians wondering whether they should even be given to chil-dren at all. Some doctors question whether such medicines are all that effective in the first place.

“I just don’t recommend cough medicines for kids because I do not think they work very well,” said Dr. Elizabeth Powell, an emer-gency medicine physician at Chil-dren’s Memorial Hospital who has published data on injury preven-tion. “I know a lot of families are trying to get some relief so their kids can sleep but I think, because they are potentially toxic, and we really don’t think they work. Do they want to risk harm?”

Powell’s hospital routinely does not recommend over-the-counter cold or cough medicines because studies show they are not effec-tive, Julie Pesch, a hospital spokes-woman said.

Doctors, including the Ameri-can Academy of Pediatrics, have been concerned about the risks of cold and cough medicines for at least the last decade. In 1997, for example, the Academy warned about the risks of overdose poten-

tial and other risks with certain cough suppressants.

And last month, the U.S. Cen-ters for Disease Control and Prevention published a study of hospital emergency departments that found more than 1,500 chil-dren under age 2 were treated for “adverse events, including over-doses, associated with cough and cold medications.” The report identified three deaths.

The CDC study cited cough and cold medicines that contain nasal decongestants, antihistamines and cough suppressants, among other remedies. Such products are taken in the “millions” of dosages each week by children, but pediatricians also ques-tioned the effectiveness of such medicines including those out-lined in the CDC report.

“This is one of those things where the evidence accumulates to the point where then finally the general community of physicians and scientists says this needs an-other look,” said Dr. Wayne Snod-grass, who chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on drugs and signed the petition as part of his role as professor of pediatrics and pharmacology at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. “It’s like a lot of things. It would have been nice to have done this earlier.”

The FDA is expected to com-plete its review in the next sev-eral months, Dr. Charles Ganley, director of the agency’s office of nonprescription drug products, told reporters on a conference call Friday afternoon.

“This is something that we have been looking at from the middle of last year,” Ganley said. “If there are issues that need to be addressed, we would address them.”

The FDA said it would look at the safety and effectiveness of decongestants, antihistamines, cough suppressants and expecto-rants on children 6 and under.

“We have always followed the lead of the FDA for carrying new products or removing existing ones,” said Michael Polzin, a spokesman for pharmacy giant Walgreen Co. “We do not an-ticipate any action in the near term. As the FDA reportedly said, it is too early to predict whether a review would lead to new regulations.”

The Consumer Healthcare Products Association, which rep-resents the over-the-counter drug industry, said cough and cold rem-edies have a long history of safety “when used according to the la-bel,” the group’s president, Linda Suydam, said.

FDa to evaluate cold medicine for kids

John Fitzhugh / Sun HeraldPresident george Bush holds a personalized license plate given to him by Biloxi, Miss. Mayor a.J. holloway, right, on thursday, after meeting with South Mississippi community leaders at the Biloxi city hall.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — There were 501 guns in all, the government says — revolvers and pistols, Glocks and Rugers, a few rifles, too, a giant cache of firearms suitable for sport or self-protection.

Or felonies.Or terrorism.Five hundred one guns,

tied to one man — 35-year-old Mark Nelson, a former Colum-bus cop who masterminded a conspiracy that flooded the streets with weapons.

Nelson insists he didn’t knowingly do anything wrong. But prosecutors say he en-listed his family and others (including a drug dealer) to illegally acquire 501 guns, then directly — or indirectly — sold many of them.

And soon after — within days, in a few cases — some of these guns began turning up in the wrong hands and the wrong places:

A Raven Arms .25-caliber pis-tol used in a Brooklyn, N.Y., shooting. A Ruger 9 mm hand-gun found on a man charged with crack possession in Washington, D.C. A Smith & Wesson .40-caliber pistol re-covered in Youngstown, Ohio, in a car driven by a man inex-plicably wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a winter face mask — in May.

It’s all part of the shadowy world of gun trafficking, where lies, stealth and cold cash make it alarmingly easy for deadly weapons to be bought and sold — and surface days, months, even years later in crimes.

This is the story of how one trafficking case unfolded and how a handful of people, bo-gus paperwork, the lure of a profit and the constant de-mand for weapons combined for a black-market scheme that could haunt investigators for decades. More than 300 guns remain missing.

“They’re lost in the system,” says federal prosecutor Doug Squires. “The point is we don’t know where they are — and that’s the real danger.”

——At 5:59 a.m. on Aug. 13, 2005,

a young Somali man, Moham-med Dirie, was stopped as he crossed the Peace Bridge from Buffalo, N.Y., to Fort Erie, On-tario.

Duct-taped to his thigh: a 9 mm pistol.

Agents also found a second gun on his thigh and an am-munition clip and bullets in his socks. His companion had a gun tucked in his waistband.

The two were imprisoned for illegal gun possession, but that wasn’t the end of it; last sum-mer, they were among 18 people charged in an alleged terrorist bombing plot in Canada. The two were also accused of im-porting weapons and ammuni-tion.

The Taurus PT-111 pistol, au-thorities say, was traced back to Nelson’s group.

How Dirie bought the gun is a mystery.

But one fact is not: It was purchased within five days of his arrest at the border.

———When a federal judge re-

cently sentenced Nelson to the maximum 10 years in prison, he called the former officer’s behavior “a great risk to the public.”

In a voice choking with emo-tion, Nelson, told the judge he had “high respect for the law.” He portrayed himself as a man misunderstood and wronged.

Nelson claimed he was try-ing to sell guns as a business to supplement his police disability — he wasn’t working because of back problems sustained on the job. He said he was mis-led by a firearms dealer who continued to sell him weapons even though the man knew it was illegal.

Nelson also said the dealer

— who also pleaded guilty — told him to have others sign the legal paperwork for guns that would go to him. That’s known as a “straw purchase,” where an intermediary poses as the buyer for someone who can’t pass the background check.

Nelson, a police officer for almost eight years, couldn’t buy a gun himself because he was facing a charge in a road rage incident. So he enlisted others to claim they were the purchasers.

His wife, Phaedra, for in-stance, said she had bought 168 guns, his brother, Ricky, 83, ac-cording to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. His father-in-law and two other men bought the others. All seven have pleaded guilty.

As proof he didn’t hide his business, Nelson noted he bought and sold weapons to Columbus police officers, and when a customer traded in a gun and wouldn’t remove the bullets, he took it to detectives for a fingerprint check. Nel-son made those comments in a letter to the judge days before sentencing — written, he said, against his lawyer’s advice.

But federal agents paint a far more sinister picture.

They say Nelson traveled to Minnesota and Washington, D.C., to make deals and sold guns from his car trunk, hotel rooms and guns shows, where an undercover ATF informant bought 26 weapons — even though the informant told him he had a “lot of felonies” and planned to resell them to drug dealers.

“He had no regard for who the guns were going to,” says Wayne Dixie, the Columbus ATF chief. “He didn’t care be-cause it was a moneymaking scheme. Maybe there was some prestige, too. He’s known as the guy to go to for guns. ... ‘You need a quick firearm, you can come to me. I’m your man.’ ”

Agents also point out that when Nelson was arrested last summer, he seemed braced for trouble: He was wearing a bul-letproof vest.

———So far, law enforcement has

traced 51 guns.In Silver Spring, Md., a

.25-caliber pistol turned up out-side a high school. Witnesses said one student pointed the gun at another student’s head; the incident was believed connected to the Bloods street gang.

In Minneapolis, a 9 mm pistol was discovered under a trash can by police responding to a report that some young men were pointing guns at people.

In Columbus, a 9 mm pistol was involved in the death of a man in a domestic dispute.

In Newark, N.J., a .22-caliber Derringer ended up in a very strange spot: The Essex County jail property room. A ballistics

test was negative. Inmates and staff were interviewed. Cam-eras were checked. Nothing.

———Nelson’s weapons have sur-

faced in six states — New York, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, Maryland and Ohio — as well as Washington, D.C., and the Canadian border.

Ohio has been known to funnel illegal guns to the East Coast, partly because of its proximity to big cities such as New York and Washing-ton, where it’s difficult to buy weapons.

But gun trafficking knows

no geographic boundaries, says John Firman, director of re-search for the International As-sociation of Chiefs of Police. “It’s rampant. It’s a national problem ... and very often it goes unrecognized,” he says.

“It’s also a moveable feast. Gun traffickers aren’t stupid, they move on,” Firman adds. “The corridors of transporta-tion in this country are wide open. Nobody stops me at the border of Kansas and says, ‘Let me look in your trunk.’ ”

Many Southern states —

d e t e c t i v e s a t t h e S a n Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Victorville station under a grant from ABC that al-lows area agencies to proactive-ly focus on keeping on- and off-site businesses with liquor li-censes in compliance with state regulations. The Victorville station has been awarded the grant for three years in a row, said Detective James Wiebeld.

Wiebeld said that Club Oasis closed its doors in December as well after an ABC investi-gation found that business in violation. Management at Oa-sis, he said, decided to perma-nently shut down.

“I knew that (the former owner) had a pending investigation. So I am serving out her sentence. Actu-

ally, she is serving out the sentence, because we don’t take possession of the property until the suspen-sion is lifted,” Mather said.

Re m o d e l i n g w a s t a k i n g place Friday after noon, as laborers dismantled rough-ly half of the 100 foot bar. Mather said he wants to make room for more tables for ban-quets and dinners. And al-though the stage and dance floor are to remain, Mather envisions a different crowd and a different atmosphere.

“I don’t see that it will be a dance bar in the future,” he said.

Katherine rosenberg can be reached at 951-6276 or by e-mail at krosenberg@vvdailypress.com.

PAGE A6 Daily Press, Victorville, Calif. fROM THE fRONT Saturday, March 3, 2007 Page edited by Justin D. B eckett

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Staff Photo by Katherine Rosenberged harris, a senior investigator with alcoholic Beverage control writes the effective dates of a suspension notice posted just moments before on the exterior doors of coconuts. When the suspension is lifted on March 17, the club will re-open with a new name and will be run as a banquet hall.

Coconuts: Dismantled barFroM A1

Columbus bust reveals anatomy of gun trafficking

AP Photo / Kiichiro SatoWayne Dixie Jr., Bureau of alcohol, tobacco, Firearms and explosives (atF) agent, displays some of the guns that were retrieved from a 2005 gun trafficking case involving Mark Nelson, a former policeman, on display at the atF office in columbus, ohio, on Jan. 24.

guNS/A7

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Although he was rushed to Desert Valley Hospital, he died 50 minutes later, authorities said.

Just after midnight the alleged shooter, later identified as Alex Watson, 28, of Victorville, then made his way into the parking lot near the intersection of Green Tree Boulevard and Hesperia Road and again opened fire.

“For no apparent reason he shot the second victim. (It was) unprovoked,” Beavers said. “I believe he was shot in the groin area ... it’s a very serious injury.”

That victim was identified only as a 32-year-old man from Victorville. His condition was unknown late Friday night.

Detectives and deputies from the Victorville station arrived at the scene and immediately notified officials from the Homi-cide Detail. Within a few hours of the shooting, Victorville of-ficials had identified Watson as the shooter as well as Harold Parker, 29, of Apple Valley. He is believed to be the man who began kicking Jackson after he was shot, Beavers said.

The Victorville gang unit,

the High Desert Regional gang team and the Crime Impact team hit the streets, searching for the pair and contacting any-one who might know of their whereabouts.

Officials said that both Wat-son and Parker turned them-selves in at the Victorville sta-tion around 3:30 p.m. Friday. Friends and family members were tired of the continual po-lice presence that morning, and it is suggested the men felt com-pelled to surrender.

Both men were interviewed at the Victorville station and by 6:30 p.m. they were transported to West Valley Detention Center where Watson was to be booked on suspicion of murder and at-tempted murder.

Parker was to be booked on suspicion of assault with a dead-ly weapon and accessory to mur-der, Beavers said.

this story first broke in an e-mail news alert at 2:50 p.m. on Friday. Sign up for free breaking news bulletins at VVDailyPress.com. Katherine rosenberg can be reached at 951-6276 or by e-mail at krosenberg@vvdailypress.com.

Staff Photo by Katherine Rosenbergharold Parker, 29, of apple Valley is walked to a waiting squad car to be booked into West Valley Detention center. he was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and being an accessory to murder.

Shooting: Second victim said to have been shot unprovokedFroM A1

Livermore brings great pres-tige, and possibly jobs, to her home state.

“What worries me is that the minute you begin to put more sophisticated warheads on the existing fleet, you are essen-tially creating a new nuclear weapon. And it’s just a matter of time before other nations do the same thing,” Feinstein said.

The announcement comes at a time when the administration is engaged in delicate disarma-ment negotiations with North Korea, which reportedly pos-sesses several nuclear weapons, and Iran, which the administra-tion fears wants them.

Iran recently called on the United States to abandon its nu-clear weapons program.

Opponents of the program al-so question whether a next-gen-eration bomb can improve reli-ability and safety if it cannot be tested. Congress has financed the research on the condition that the redesigned weapon re-

duce the need for underground testing, which can leave residu-al radiation.

“Today is a sad day for global security,” said Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Val-ley CAREs, a Livermore-area watchdog group. “Our govern-ment is sending a signal that will increase international proliferation pressures and in-crease the nuclear danger.”

The administration’s Nuclear Weapons Council found several proposed features of the Los Alamos design “highly inno-vative” and said they could be integrated into the future war-head design.

Glenn Mara, principal associ-ate director for weapons pro-grams at Los Alamos, offered no examples but said Los Alamos will review the design and has expertise in the technology to trigger detonation.

Revamping the nation’s war-heads will nurture a new gener-ation of nuclear scientists and

engineers, Mara said.If approved by Congress, the

new weapon would be much larger than Cold War-era ones, though it would pack the same explosive power with fewer war-heads. The shift in priorities to a heavier warhead eliminates the need for beryllium, a tox-ic material prized for its light weight, Goodwin said.

The United States has not built a nuclear warhead since 1991. The government spends about $5 billion a year main-taining the weapons, and en-gineers have patched prob-lems by opening up warheads that were never meant to be opened. The accumulation of engineering tweaks meant the bombs have moved away from their original designs, with unknown effects.

T h e L i v e r m o r e a n d Los Alamos labs set aside bomb-designing more than a de-cade ago in favor of maintain-ing the current stockpile.

Nuclear: Much larger than Cold War-era weaponsFroM A1

where gun laws tend to be less stringent — also have long been regarded as part of an “iron pipe-line” feeding we a p o n s t o gangs and oth-er criminals in big cities in the North.

In Alabama l a s t y e a r, 1 1 p e o p l e were arrested — many in their 60s and 70s — and more than 700 guns were seized or purchased in un-dercover operations in flea mar-kets and a gun show. Two others were later charged. Investigators linked hundreds of guns they pre-viously sold to crimes, including a murder-for-hire scheme in New York and the attempted murder of a Chicago police officer.

A relatively small number of

people can cause enormous dam-age. About 1 percent of licensed dealers account for nearly 60 per-cent of all crime guns sold in this country, says Joe Vince, a former ATF agent who now runs a con-sulting firm.

Like so many businesses, traf-ficking is fueled by supply and demand: The more desperate the buyer, the higher the price. A drug dealer, gang member or another criminal in a city where gun laws are strict will fork over three, four, even five times the store price for an unused weapon.

“When they get a new gun from a box, they know it hasn’t been used in a crime so there’s no in-vestigative trail that can trip them up,” says Patrick Berarducci, a 30-year ATF veteran who recently retired to become police chief in Boardman, Ohio. “What they’re buying is not the gun. What they’re buying is the anonymity

that goes with it.”———

In Newark, N.J., a 9 mm pistol was found in a car along with a dead man and about four kilos of cocaine; another was found on two teens suspected in a cocaine-related robbery.

In Brooklyn, N.Y, a 7.62 mm rifle was recovered on a man car-rying 75 grams of marijuana. He was identified as a member of the Bloods street gang.

In New York City, a .38-caliber revolver turned up with cocaine, marijuana and fake IDs after po-lice stopped a car and two men tried to flee.

In Columbus, a 9 mm pistol was found along with suspected marijuana, crack, cocaine and drug paraphernalia after police approached a car that had been reported stolen and used Mace to subdue one man who tried to run away.

Guns: People in Alabama arested with 700 gunsFroM A6

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