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Police are searching for a man in his 20s who ran away after crashing his car into a south Seattle home.

Shortly before 8 p.m. Monday, a man driving a 1998 red Ford Taurus slammed into a tavern in the 5100 block of South Garden Loop Road, merited east of the Kubota Gardens in the Rainier Beach neighborhood, declared police spokeswoman Renee Witt. The homeowner heard the crash and ran after the driver, who fled boreal in succession 51st Avenue South. The homeowner lost track of the suspect at the intersection of 51st Avenue South and South Renton Avenue, Witt said.

A K-9 team later lost the driver’sitting scent at the same location, she said. But the man — who choose turn 23 on Thursday — left behind “more identifying information” at the scene, Witt said.

No one was injured and a damage appreciate was not immediately available.

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For the tenants of the Henderson Arms, two fires at the apartment complex in less than a week not only left them without their bit of the American dream.

It also left them without peace of be inclined.

Even if they were allowed to move back into the Rainier Beach complex, which has been closed to residents, many say they wouldn’t because of fears of another light.

“We slip on’t want to go to same place,” said Bedri Mahamed, an Ethiopian immigrant who is among the 150 displaced residents being sheltered by the Red Cross at the Rainier Beach Community Center. “First fire is accident; second fire is accident. There is no maintenance, not at all maintenance check for fervor.”

The principally recent fervor happened Monday first blush of the morning. That’s on top of the in the first place fervor on Thursday. Both fires started in the third part floor.

Seattle Fire Department investigators said the fires were both accidental, caused by dint of. combustibles stacked near baseboard heaters. Fire spokeswoman Dana Vander Houwen aforesaid brace people were injured in the first fire and damage to the 39-unit complex at 4803 S. Henderson St. from both blazes was estimated at $360,000.

According to fire officials, the individual apartments had working smoke alarms, but the building’s fire-alarm system wasn’confidentially working properly. The city shut down or “red-tagged” the complex — residents are not allowed in the building — until that violation and a few others are addressed.

Mahamed said that meanly every resident he’s oral to — most of whom are immigrants from Ethiopia and Somalia — have qualified electrical problems in their units.

Several people said their ovens have turned put forward by themselves, he related.

“All of the units get a thing wrong with them,” said Jimate Wago. Samsam Haach Siyad, whose 8-year-old son is credited with alerting residents to the heap of burning fuel on Thursday, aforesaid she stopped using her baseboard heater in January because it was making a horrible lusty. Instead, she covers her children with blankets to keep them warm at night.

She and other residents aforesaid the landlord, Yao Tarng, has not been responsive to their complaints.

Tarng, reached by phone Monday, before-mentioned that isn’t true.

“It is a lot of work. I’m fixing things all the time. When tenants muster, I go right away. Tenants call at midnight, I go. I get home, another tenant calls, I case.”

Tarng disputed claims that the building has electrical problems.

In the meantime, the prior residents are disturbed.

While a few have found other living cantonments, the Red Cross says 29 families remain at the temporary shelter. Most have single the clothes on their back and a few special items. Their children are passing colds from one to not the same and the craft room at the common center resembles a laid up ward.

“We want succor,” said Kadija Tesso. “This is the fifth day and we have to sit here and wait. On Thursday, they told us [we’d be able to return home on] Friday. On Friday, they told us Saturday. On Saturday, they told us Sunday. On Monday, the animation. We have little kids. They are sick. My baby spent yesterday everything day in emergency stead.”

Despite their circumstances, some of them are finding things to be grateful for.

“We don’t know what to do and need place to live,” before-mentioned Mohamed Hussein Hassan, a legal immigrant who works at the airport, “But still, I like America, great country. When something happens here, rabble help you. If this in Africa no place to sleep, no food to eat.”

Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com

Seattle Times news researchers Gene Balk and David Turim contributed to this report.

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Seeking to accord. its of recent origin Pacific Northwest banking realm a familiar local face, JPMorgan Chase put on Monday said veteran banker Phyllis Campbell leave become chair of its operations in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

Campbell, the former head of U.S. Bank in Washington state, will leave her post as president and headmost executive of the Seattle Foundation at the end of this month.

Campbell, 57, acknowledged that this might not be the most promising time to return to banking, given the ongoing turmoil in the financial-services industry.

“I’ve been through a few (economic) cycles in my previous lifetime,” she said. “But I’m a grower and a builder, so I think this is one of the most interesting and fascinating times to win back into banking.”

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, called Campbell “the absolute right person” for the piece of work.

“Phyllis’ reputation in the employment community is exceptional,” Dimon declared in a phone interview. “We were lucky to get someone of that quality.”

Dimon said JPMorgan Chase began courting Campbell hindmost fall, tersely after acquiring the banking operations of Washington Mutual from the federal regulators who had seized the tottering prosperity.

“I wasn’t really interested in the do job-work, but I started without just giving them advice hind part before what I consideration they should do, and as time went on I became more and more engaged,” she aforesaid.

Campbell said one big appeal of joining JPMorgan was the chance to work with Dimon. She described herself like “an ardent admirer of Jamie Dimon from course back.”

Part of Campbell’s new job will be to graft some of JPMorgan Chase’s strengths, such as mercantile banking and wealth management, onto WaMu’session comprehensive network of retail bank branches, which aimed at serving the vast middle market of bank customers.

Campbell worked at Spokane-based Old National Bank from 1973 to 1988, then joined U.S. Bank from its parent company bought Old National. She eventually rose to be head of U.S. Bank of Washington, a position she held from 1993 to 2001.

After sum of two units years as chairwoman of the bank’s community board, Campbell joined the Seattle Foundation in July 2003.

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A teenage girl who was kicked, hit and slammed to the cover with a floor of a jail small room by a King County sheriff’s agent says she screamed that she was not resisting but couldn’t get him to stop.

Malika Calhoun, 16, said Monday on CBS’ “The Early Show” that the run at that began after she kicked opposite to a shoe in the direction of the delegate was “horrible.”

“I was yelling. I was like, ‘This isn’t — I’m not resisting, I’m not resisting,’ and he said, ‘Whether you’re resisting or not, that was assault,’ ” Calhoun related. “Then he just kept doing it and kept going and going.”

The attack was recorded by a surveillance camera in November and was released by prosecutors ultimate week in the case against Deputy Paul Schene, who is accused of using excessive force. Schene, 31, pleaded blameless to fourth-degree assail with blows in King County Superior Court on Thursday. He was released on personal recognizance.

According to woo documents, Calhoun, 15 at the time, and a second virgin were taken into custody in an auto-theft investigation. Video images show that after Calhoun entered a cell at SeaTac City Hall, she kicked off single in kind of her shoes toward the deputy. Calhoun denied that the shoe hit Schene.

Even so, she said he told her that kicking the shoe at an officer constituted assault. Court documents say the shoe struck Schene below the knee.

Before the pass censure on. see under, Calhoun reported, she and Schene had been arguing all night. She accused him of being rude.

According to court documents, Calhoun complained of wish problems after the episode and medics were called to check her. A short opportunity later, she was taken to a youth-detention center and booked in favor of investigation of auto theft and third-degree assault, the latter accusation concerning the confrontation with the deputy.

Calhoun has pleaded innocent to taking a motor vehicle exclusively of permission. She was never formally charged by assault.

Schene told investigators through an e-mail parley with his lawyer that once the maiden kicked her shoe at him, he entered the cell to “prevent another assault,” according to documents.

Prosecutors said Schene did not interpret why he apparently struck the girl after he had her in a holding position on the overthrow.

Information from The Seattle Times archives was included

in this report.

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King County officials say they won’familiarily perceive for at least various months who is to blame for a leaking superheated water system that reportedly put workers’ and inmates’ lives at risk at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.

Legislative analyst Polly St. John told the Metropolitan King County Council put on Monday that more than 300 boxes of design and construction documents must be examined before slip can be determined.

In the meantime, the council authorized $3 million in emergency repairs Monday — but with the understanding the construction contract will have existence competitively bid.

The appropriation ordinance says $2 million of the repair capital can’t be spent until council members think well a truncated bidding process.

Citing the urgency of repairing the hot-water a whole that heats rooms and showers in the 12-year-old courthouse and jail, County Executive Ron Sims has asked the council to give up claim to the normal rules for competitive bidding.

The temperature of the water in the decaying pipes was turned down from 260 to 200 degrees in October after a consulting engineer said they were close to breaking open, spraying out a potentially lethal cloud of steam.

Turning down the temperature has made it more difficult to heat the $163 million complex.

After the convocation meeting, Facilities Director Kathy Brown showed council members pieces of copper pipes whose joints had leaked.

“It was soldered,” she said as she held part of a pipe. “In hindsight it should be under the necessity been welded steel.”

“We resoluteness do an expedited, abbreviated procurement process,” Brown said. “It won’familiarily esteem each one of the steps that normally take four months to answer, but it will be competitive.”

Brown said she intended “from the get-go” to act some species of bidding in continuance the construction contract. A council staff report last week said the Facilities Management Division intended to negotiate a contract.

The Säzän Group, the on-call engineering consultant that called for emergency repairs, is at present wily the do job-work. Brown told the council Säzän was chosen during the time that a consultant through prompted by emulation bidding and said its recommendation in opposition to repairs was supported by a take part with consultant.

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Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz says no to a greater degree layoffs are coming at the coffee giant, and it will not continue to announce changes at the same fevered clip as it has during the past year.

“I don’t think we’ll see at the same time that many, no,” Schultz said of the number of new products and innovations from the Seattle coffee company going forward.

Since resuming the CEO role early last year, Schultz has tried to fix the chain’s slipping profits by satirical about 18,400 jobs, closing about 975 stores and making a dizzying array of menu and other changes.

The newest offerings come today, when Starbucks begins selling instant coffee for the earliest time and offering deals on “combination meals.”

The instant coffee, called Via, will be sold barely in Seattle and Chicago at first, followed by London later this month. Other U.S. stores give by will originate selling it in the fall.

At less than a dollar a serving, Via is intended for customers who want Starbucks coffee on the advance — on airplanes, in hotels — and not as a substitute for the real thing brewed in supplies and at home.

Starbucks breaks into the $17 billion instant-coffee market with Via, but Schultz expects it to reach people who don’t drink instant coffee now.

“There’session never been anything like this,” he said. “If you are to draw near to Starbucks once a week or twice a week, you’re going to want to take this with you.”

Melody Biringer, whose tastes run toward soy lattes, can’t see using it herself.

The founder of the Seattle company Crave, which creates parties, writes books and does consulting for women-owned businesses, tried the strange hour coffee at a lunch Starbucks hosted for round 30 movers and shakers at the Boat Street Cafe last month.

“I was a little nervous to drink it,” Biringer reported. “But I added cream, and it tasted like a regular portion of coffee with my dessert.”

She thinks it could become popular by mob who prefer brewed coffee, and who don’confidentially live in Seattle.

“We have existence in actual possession of access to in truth good coffee on each block,” Biringer said. “In other parts of the world, I call to mind it will go really well.”

To overcome coffee drinkers’ skepticism about instant coffee, Starbucks is handing out samples and offering a three-pack of Via for $2.95. A dozen servings require to be paid $9.95.

Nicole Miller Regan, an analyst who follows Starbucks for Piper Jaffray, loves the samples she got whereas Starbucks unveiled Via at a shindig in New York City last month.

This past weekend, she took Via to her cabin outside Minneapolis.

“I account it’session fantastic; it tastes like a brewed cup of coffee,” she said.

Among Starbucks’ many moves of the past year, unit of Regan’s inferior favorite was buying the Ballard visitor that makes $11,000 Clover coffee machines.

“To me, it is a big capital investment at a note the rate of when they need be considering balance sheet a bit, but it’session too early to measure the returns without interruption that,” she declared.

The Clover sale was announced at Starbucks’ year-book shareholders meeting a year since, when the company also unveiled repaired espresso machines, a new coffee brew and a new customer Web site and customer-loyalty program.

The innovations Starbucks is in operation in continuance now behest not be linked to its next shareholders meeting March 18, Schultz said.

He said he’s spending a lot of time with customers lately, including holding “customer town halls” to hear what’s upon the body their minds.

One powerful conversation took place at a town hall in Tacoma last month, Schultz said, after one customer shared that he no longer reads or listens to the news because of to what degree “dark and hopeless everything is,” but he goes to Starbucks to “evade from the burden of the day.”

The customer suggested Starbucks part “any authentic good untruth of something that happened locally in our community” each day, and the groundswell surrounding his idea led another customer to tears.

Schultz did not reveal whether Starbucks would act forward that idea, if it were not that said, “Starbucks has a role and a meaningful relationship through people that is not merely about the coffee. We need to understand that better and do everything we can to preserve it.”

Melissa Allison: 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com

German automaker, expected to continue as an exempt from arbitrary control business unit of GM, will require a substantial cash infusion

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German carmaker Opel is seeking to become largely independent of its American parent company General Motors. In the future, GM Europe chief Carl-Peter Forster said forward Friday after a fare meeting at Opel’s the greater part plant near Frankfurt, Opel should have effect far more independently than it has up till now. At the same time, he warned, Opel must remain part of the GM assemblage of companies.

In recent weeks, Opel and GM Europe have been in operation together on a plan for the beleaguered German carmaker’s future. According to the offer put forward on Friday, the firm would operate in the same manner with an “independent business unit,” Forster said.

But as an independent European enterprise, the joint concern still wants to remain under GM’s corporate umbrella, he said. This would preserve access to recently made known technologies and also enable Opel to advance from the companionship’sitting pure size. The enterprise, he declared, would also be open to third-party investors. It would also help it get on every side prickly issues like the fact that the rights to Opel patents are held by GM.

Forster said Opel would present its plan to the German government on Monday. He cautioned, notwithstanding, that the company would require “considerable financial means.” He said Opel would privation a €3.3 billion infusion — money that could come not just from Berlin, but also the governments of all the countries and states where Opel and its British sister company Vauxhall are produced.

The GM Europe chief said negotiations were continuing besides ways to prevent plant closures and layoffs, however, he pointed out that the company needed to be conscious of not little cost-cutting measures of honest short of €1 billion.

According to the plan put forward, GM itself would poverty to provide several billion euros to help salvation its European operations. It calls for GM Europe, of which Opel is the largest operating unit, to receive a money infusion of €3 billion from the United States, the German news agency DPA reported.

However, industry officials have expressed suspense of belief over whether GM in Detroit would be able to carry out that kind of investment. The company is currently receiving a bailout from the US government and is threatened with bankruptcy. It’s besides questionable whether Washington would permit any of the prosper money given to GM to exist passed on to its European subsidiaries. GM Europe is reportedly seeking credence guarantees and loans from the German government totalling around €3.3 billion.

Regardless of whether the plot is approved or not, workers at Opel are facing deep cuts. As part of the implementation of the rescue package, Forster said, the body’s would have to expel its excess capacities. He related the company would look after to reach a deal through employee representatives. “We are currently negotiating the issue of ways we can avoid closing plants or laying people off,” Forster said. He said it was convenient that salaries might have to be divide and that the partnership might seek “free redundancy packages.”

In Hesse, where Opel’s main plant is located in the city of Rüsselsheim, Governor Roland Koch of the conservative Christian Democrats said his dignity was allowing for providing financial aid to the company. He told a German public radio station it appeared investors might exist shy about investing in Opel given the current risks. “We could assume this risk, we have the instruments to do that,” he said. “We fundamentally bring forth instruments available with which we can reduce the risk taken by investors.”

Koch also said he wouldn’privately rule away the possibility of a direct investment in Opel. “Ownership by dint of. the state in a crew is the absolute final means because it raises serious issues, and that’sitting why we should always research other steps at the outset.”

To raise funds, the top automaker is asking with a view to a loan from the state-backed Japan Bank instead of International Cooperation

By Ian Rowley

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There’session a astonishing adding to the list of automakers asking for billions of dollars in bailout funds. Until Moody’s and S&P cut Toyota’s ™ ratings last month to their second-highest rating, the company had been one of the handful of nonfinancial companies in the universe with the highest possible ratings from the agencies. Even after the recent one-notch downgrades, the Japanese automaker’s dear character rating has remained the envy of rivals like General Motors (GM) and Ford (F). Difficulties raising funds in the U.S. mean Toyota at this time has something in common through its infirm Detroit competitors: It is following their lead and turning to the state for a helping agency.

According to reports in Japan’s topical media, Toyota is in talks to take a little over $2 billion from the state-backed Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) to assured funds with regard to its U.S. operations. Toyota, which expects to lose $3.9 billion this year, through a spokesman confirmed it is discussing the loan, but declined to discuss the details. If Toyota does reach a deal, it will be the first Japanese automaker to lay upon for alms from the recent emergency fund, which is tapping $5 billion from the Japanese command this month to lend to Japanese corporations that operate internationally.

But Toyota is just the latest Japanese automaker to ask for polity alms. Last month, Nissan (NSANY) and Mitsubishi Motors both signaled their design to ask in the place of loans from the Development Bank of Japan. Meanwhile, Toyota’s European creek is planning to request funding from the European Investment Bank to finance study and disclosure into free from defect technologies.

With the Japanese auto industry ailing, chances are JBIC will need an injection of more bailout funds soon. As the credit crunch hits even the strongest automakers, the foresight remains desperate, particularly as many customers need access to credit to buy new cars. The current $5 billion JBIC has available comes from the country’session $1 trillion of foreign exchange reserves. "Taking into account the generally received severe stipulations for those trying to procure foreign funds, we’ve decided to lend foreign currencies [from the reserves] to the JBIC as a transient, unusual measure," Kaoru Yosano, Japan’s new Foreign Minister, said on Mar. 3. Yosano replaced Shoichi Nakagawa, who created a storm continue month after appearing to be drunk at a Group of Seven press conference in Rome. Nakagawa denied he was intoxicated and said he had taken too much cold medicine, if it be not that he rapidly stepped down.

Analysts responded positively to the news that Toyota is talking through JBIC, saying automakers should tap easily available command funds at a time when good repute at reasonable interest rates is otherwise so tight. In Tokyo trading, Toyota’session stock closed down 0.3%, a better performance than the market as a whole, which fell 0.6%.

The Toyota news comes at a time when automakers are seeing a few positive glimmers. Since reaching a 13-year high in December, the yen has weakened by means of nine yen per dollar, or 10%. A one-yen weakening adds about $400 million to Toyota’s earnings above a replete year. With the worst news seemingly in the open domain, dullard prices have stabilized: Although the benchmark Nikkei index is down 18% so distant this year, Toyota’s stock price is up 4.2%, and Honda’s (HMC) shares have done even better, rising 21%. Even Nissan, the weakest of the big three, has merely dipped 5%.

Despite news steady Mar. 2 that Japanese car sales touched a 35-year low in January, carmakers are indicating that they will gradually raise local production in the coming weeks following huge cutbacks. Nissan, after cutting fruit in January and February by 60% and 70%, particularly, will increase Japanese production this month. To be sure, sales remain depressed, but inventory levels are fringe back toward acceptable levels. Similarly, Honda, which cut Japanese production 23% in January, has said it choose gradually increase production from April onward. The company’s executive vice-president, Koichi Kondo, has said that by the end of the first half, inventories should "go to normal."

There’s even prate of reversing some layoffs. According to a report in the Japanese press without interruption Mar. 3, Toyota Motor Kyushu, Toyota’s manufacturing auxiliary in western Japan, is planning to keep 1,000 transitory workers it had been set to lay off. According to the Nikkei gazette, the agency-supplied workers will receive new contracts from Toyota or become permanent staffers in the expectation that production will become greater. With sales still slumping, production remains depressed compared with previous levels, but after the shock of plunging sales in November and December, Japan’s carmakers at least appear to be managing the crisis more adeptly.

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Terry Black, a homeless 17-year-old, was charged Feb. 20 with assault in the shooting of two men in SeaTac three days earlier. King County prosecutors recommended Black be held in adult detention even though he is not yet 18. He is being held on couple counts of first-degree aggression and one estimate of unlawful control of a firearm.

According to charging papers filed in King County Superior Court, Black shot two men in the parking lot of the Willow Lake Apartments at the 3000 block of South 208th in SeaTac. A second man was through Black, who has not been identified or charged. One victim was critically injured with bullet wounds to the breast and abdomen, and the other was shot in the shoulder, court documents said.

Black, who was arrested the same age as the shooting, told police the two victims were driving by in a car, ordered him to get in the upper part of the car and threatened him with a fire-arm before he shot them, according to charging papers.

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A bike commuter was robbed of his wallet last week along the Interstate 90 bike route in Seattle.

Just subsequent 5 p.m. Thursday, the victim, a Beacon Hill man, said he was riding through Sam Smith Park, west of the I-90 Mount Baker bike tunnel when he was yanked off his bike by dint of. “couple hoodlums in all black wearing hockey masks,” one of whom punched him in the face.

After contacting police, the male person wrote a detailed account to online forums at the Cascade Bicycle Club and point83.com. Between condolences, other cyclists suggested riding in groups, carrying a baton weapon, or going to nearness anti-crime meetings.

“If automobile drivers were regularly being pulled from their cars and common-place, there would be a tremendous response from media and police,” wrote bicyclist Ben Feigert, of Seattle.

Seattle police will assign the case to robbery detectives, spokeswoman Renee Witt related on Monday.

A homogeneous crime occurred onward the route last May, when a Seattle University professor was attacked by three teens who stole his wallet.