Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 1

Feign "7-; LScsio Have the PC police taken Imitation isn't flattering in Companies divide on who NFL says Taylor can return all our freedoms? today's design circles "ivstiT keeps frequent-flier points after year drug suspension Accent, 1E Hcmsstylo, 10F High 66. Low 45. Business, 10A Sports, 1D rff imnTanMiR" IvJhnttat iroe wee. AND Metro 1 i 1 1 i 1 1 i i i 14 I I 1 1 I The drivers from death A careless moment brings terror and an endless feeling of remorse i Josephine Popowski, with photos taken over the years of her husband, Stanley, who wasHdlled last year by a hit-and-run driver, Chad Pisarski. She says she's satisfied with Pisarski's punishment.

"I just feel this young man didn't go out with the intention of doing what he did," she says. deaths, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Statistics were not available for Michigan, but some incidents lodge in the memory: The case of a former General Motors Corp. engineer who served 50 days in jail after killing a Pontiac woman in a 1985 hit-and-run. The still unsolved death of a 19-year-old student jogger struck down by a car in April at a busy intersection in Ann Arbor.

Friday, a Plymouth man was bound over to stand trial in the hit-and-run death of a 14-year-old Canton See HIT-AND-RUN, Page 6A By Nancy Ann Jeffrey Free Press Staff Writer One moment, he saw the old man on the bicycle. The next, a body came crashing through his windshield. "There's a dead man laying on my lap," Chad Edward Pisarski thought. But he did not stop. He kept going for a quarter-mile before he pulled over and dragged the man off the car.

Then he drove away. Eight months ago, Pisarski, who was then 18, stood before a Detroit judge and pleaded guilty to negligent homicide in the hit-and-run death of 75-year-old Stanley Popowski, a retired baker who took a bike ride once killed him. He wouldn't have died if it wasn't for me." Across the nation about 23,000 pedestrians and 11,000 bicyclists were injured or killed in hit-and-run accidents in 1990. Nearly one of every five pedestrians injured or killed in a traffic accident in 1989 was a victim of a hit-and-run driver. Last year, 1,809 men, women and children were killed in hit-and-run or twice a day to stay limber.

Since February, Pisarski has lived on a tether, an electronic monitor attached to his ankle. He is under house arrest except when he is at work or school. Pisarski tells himself his case was an accident, but knows he was wrong to run. He feels like a murderer. "It might as well have been a murder," said Pisarski, a stocky man with a baby face and blond hair.

"I PATRICIA BECK Detroit Free Press IT Yileiic escalate i i Yiig slavia 1 1 1 IPTV. i isolate the towns of Vukovar, Osijek and Vinkovci. Radio Belgrade said 300 tanks and armored vehicles were moving through Vukovar's suburbs and the army was tightening its grip on the town. A local official in Vinkovci s.iid about 70 tanks and armored vehicles were deployed in the village of Mir-kovci on the town's outskirts. A Croatian official reached in Vukovar said tanks had surrounded the town.

"They are trying to drive a wedge between Vinkovci and Vukovar. They have also come from the north and they are firing across the river at us," he said. Fighting also raged in the Adriatic port of Split, where a battle was under way at an army heliport. More than 500 people have been See YUGOSLAVIA, Page 9A Reuters and Associated Press ZAGREB, Yugoslavia The Yugoslav army launched a three-pronged attack on breakaway Croatia on Friday and violence spilled into the neighboring republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina, as the undeclared civil war appeared to escalate dangerously. Yugoslav President Stipe Mesic, a Croat, said the generals were out of control.

He urged federal troops "to go over to the side of the people and to the side of the legally elected leadership" of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Large columns of federal reservists and volunteers were on the move in Bosnia, the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug reported, and people in some Muslim areas blocked roads to keep federal troops from passing, news reports said. About 700 tanks, armored vehicles and trucks and thousands of troops smashed into eastern Croatia early in the day in an apparent attempt to 'V A Super mom Visits Above: Mary Thomas, mother of Detroit Piston Isiah Thomas, hugs children Friday at St. Ambrose Academy in Detroit after giving them a pep talk. The children found out how strict the superstar's mom was while raising nine children in a tough Chicago neighborhood.

After Isiah shoplifted, "I whipped him so bad I don't think he knew his name for awhile." Right: Pupils sing to their visitor. Story, Page 3A. -ik pK Pan 1 Cop decoy busts johns despite fair warning JOHN LUKEDetroit Free Press LF '1 Council vote speeds Grand Prix to Belle Isle events from downtown to Belle Isle, sources involved in negotiations between Championship Auto Racing Teams and Detroit Renaissance, which promotes the race, told the Free Press: Next year's event will be moved ahead one week, to June 7, immediately after the May 24 Indianapolis 500 on the Indy-car schedule. ABC has won television broadcast rights from CBS, which carried the last nine Detroit races after ABC broadcast the inaugural Detroit race in 1982. Valvoline Oil, whose three-year contract as primary Grand Prix sponsor expired with last June's event, will continue in that role.

CART's 24-member board of directors-car owners will formally approve the Belle Isle site within two weeks. Detroit Renaissance, which requested the move, said the cost of running the circuit downtown had made the race a perennial money-loser. Racers also complained that the downtown track was too bumpy. The council vote to shift the race to 250 acres on the western end of Belle See Grand Prix, Page 6A By Steve Crowe And William Kleinknecht Free Press Staff Writers The Detroit Grand Prix on Friday secured its island retreat for next year, clearing the way for other race arrangements to be finalized within a few weeks. With the 8-0 vote of the Detroit City Council to move the Indy-car PAULINE LUBENSDetroit Free Press Signs on the Hazel Park side of 8 Mile Road warn off potential clients, but some aren't reading.

as an officer, Sadow said. Black students isolated to excel in math, sciences By Robin Fornoff Free Press Staff Writer Men who get busted for trying to pick up prostitutes along 8 Mile Road in Hazel Park can't say they weren't warned. More than a dozen signs identify the 2-mile stretch as a "Decoy Area" but 35 men have been arrested in the seven months since an undercover policewoman began working it, posing as a hooker. "I'd put up billboard-size signs if 1 thought it would drum some sense into the people who do stop," said Hazel Park Police Chief Albert Sa-dow, who had the signs put up to deter would-be johns. The sting, dubbed Operation Big John, focuses on male customers "because we feel they're 50 percent of the problem, if not more," said Sadow.

He said the decoy usually works the area only once or twice a month, "just enough to keep everybody honest." To avoid an entrapment claim that could ruin an arrest, the policewoman waits to be approached. But she doesn't have to identify herself "That's a misconception a lot of people have," he said. Indeed, each of five men arrest- ed last Wednesday, the most recent Big John sweep, asked the decoy if she was a cop. "Yeah," she told them. "And I I do this part time." The arrests are for accosting I and soliciting, a misdemeanor pun- ishable by a $500 fine and one year in prison.

Victims of Big John also must post a $500 bond and their rare ar Detroit: News Accent 1E Bridge 6E Comics 6E Contact 2E Crossword 7E DearAbby 2E Dr. Donohue 2E Editorials 8E Homestyle 1F Horoscope 6E Movies 2E Outside interests 14F Recordings 17F TV listings 4E 118th Year, Number 30 Cop'ight, 1991, The Detroit News. Inc 4frcc Stress Business 10A Classified Index 1B Comics, Crossword 12D Death Notices 14D Doonesbury 12D Editorials 8A Horoscope 1B Jumble "IB Lottery numbers 2A Names Faces 2A Obituaries 14D Sports 1D Stock Markets 11 A Weather 130 Volume 161, Number 139 1991. Detroit Free Press The class at the Ann Arbor school is one of the less well known innovations designed to raise the academic achievement of African-American students in public schools. Unlike experiments in Detroit, however, the class is segregated by race, not gender.

The goal, however, is similar: to increase academic achievement with heavy doses of black history and culture, and by destroying the self-defeating notion that blacks are not supposed to excel See CLASS, Page 9A By Brenda j. Gilchrist Free Press Education Writer The 19 students in room 5214 at Huron High School fell silent and looked puzzled when asked if there was anything different about their class. A few muffled "no's" filtered through the classroom as the students began looking around to make sure they hadn't missed something obvious. Some moments of silence passed and Tumeshia Hassel, 13, raised her hand: "The only thing I can notice is that it's all black. Sadow said there are plans to increase Big John's range, with new and even larger signs north of 8 Mile along John R.

"These signs need to be taken literally," he said..