The Pittsburgh Press from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 16

B4 The Pittsburgh Press Wednesday, November 25, 1987 METRO NEWS METRO BRIEFS Dead prostitute ignored job-related fear Gasoline rise cial Services, which reimbursed them. Logan makes $23,520 a year, his wife, $20,234. They are also charged with one count each of criminal conspiracy and criminal attempt to defraud Equitable of an additional $3,779. They surrendered Nov. 17 to the district attorney's investigations unit.

A hearing is set for Dec. 16 before District Justice Jacob Pittsburgh-area motorists traveling over the holiday weekend will find gasoline prices between 1 1 and 21 cents higher than they were in the district at this time last year, according to West Penn AAA. Jay Pochapin, traffic reporter for the motor club, said average prices for gasoline sold at full-service pumps this weekend will be $1.07 for leaded, $1.1 1 for unleaded and $1.27 for premium unleaded. Prices at self-service pumps are averaging 94 cents for leaded, 96 cents for unleaded and $1.14 for premium unleaded. disappeared at or near truck stops in Austin-town, Ohio, while a fourth vanished while working a truck stop in Barkeyville, Venango County, and her body was found along 1-71.

State police in Bedford County said Miss Cole was working two truck stops in Breezewood, hopping from truck to truck. After Miss Cole's body was found at 5 p.m. Sunday, state police charged Derrick Owesby Mims, 24, of Akron, with promoting prostitution and corrupting the morals of a minor. He was ordered held on $50,000 bond, and police said additional charges might be filed. A 17-year-old Akron girl who had been working with Miss Cole also was taken into custody.

Bedford County Coroner Jack Geisel said Miss Cole died after her neckerchief was shoved down her throat. Miss Cole's killing ended a monthlong trek across the eastern United States, where, her sister and brother said, she had worked truck stops in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Virginia. During the travels, Miss Cole was accompanied by Mims and her 9-month-old daughter, Chavelle. Greg and Sharon Cole said Mims telephoned them from the Breezewood motel at which he and Lamonica had been staying and said Lamonica had not returned after going out By Dennis B. Roddy The Pittsburgh Press Lamonica Cole's brother and sister say they tried to talk her out of working as a truck-stop prostitute, knowing how afraid she'd become after bodies of other hookers were found along Ohio's Interstate highways.

"You got to get rid of fear on some things," Greg Cole remembered his sister, 19, explaining. On Sunday, Greg Cole found Lamonica's strangled body dumped over a hillside outside a truck stop in Breezewood, Bedford County. Police now are looking for connections between Lamonica Cole's killing and the slayings of four other prostitutes who disappeared from truck stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania between June 1985 and Feb. 8 this year. So far, however, nothing has emerged except the common pattern of a prostitute being slain while working a truck stop along an Interstate.

"We're looking at anything we can right now as far as a connection," said Roger Smith, a state trooper investigating the killing. The other victims, all Ohio women, were found either along or near 1-71 between Medina and Warren County, Ohio. Three of them about 3 a.m. Saturday. Trooper Smith said Mims and the women arrived in Breezewood on Friday, checked into a motel, and the women began soliciting truckers at the Gateway and Union 76 truck stops, the two major service plazas in town.

After driving the baby back to Sharon Cole's home in Akron, Mims drove Greg Cole and another brother, Kevin, to Breezewood, where Greg Cole said they began making a round of calls to police and hospitals. "We were driving around looking for her. We pulled up at the truck stop by this rail wall and looked over the embankment and saw her lying there," Greg Cole said. Greg Cole said he last heard from Lamonica Nov. 13, and said she told him she was calling from Mississippi.

"My sister was calling me saying she was out of town. She was calling me all the time. She would say they were just traveling," Sharon Cole said. Greg Cole said he first confronted his sister about her work after learning of it from an acquaintance. "You don't have to do this," Greg Cole said he told Lamonica.

"Why are you doing this? It's not right for you." Hotel fire A fire early today heavily damaged the Garrett Hotel inthe community of Garrett, Somerset County, about 12 miles south of Somerset. Firemen said five families had been living in the hotel but the last of them had moved out just yesterday. No one was injured in the fire. The owner of the hotel; who lived alone in the building, discovered the fire and ran to the volunteer fire company next door to sound the alarm. He escaped without injury.

The cause was not immediately determined. Safety hopes The state police hope the Thanksgiving holiday will be even safer than last year which broke a 15-year record for the lowest number of highway deaths. State police Commissioner Ronald Sharpe said nine persons were killed in Pennsylvania over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend last year. Teenager cleared of charges in dirt bike incident Strike ends Reply ordered When Patrolman Robert Tuite, who was suspended for 60 days for pointing a gun at the boy, conceded that a public street was not involved, Justice Lloyd replied: "Well, that ends that." Police had charged Keith with failure to have a driver's license and failure to register the bike. Although police said they had complaints that youths were riding on roadways in and around Hunter Field, they had no witnesses to testify they saw Keith using the bike on a road, Tuite said.

under a change of venue order, said Wilkinsburg officers should have filed charges under a borough ordinance. "I hope you have learned your lesson today and now know where, when and how you can ride this bike of yours," she told Keith. But the youth's father, William, and mother, Gencie, said later that their son has left Wilkinsburg because he believed he was being harassed in school and in the community. They said he has been receiving psychological therapy since the incident. In a related matter, Peterson, of 2515 Milligan Swissvale, a family friend of the Smiths, was fined $100 and ordered to pay $48.50 costs after being found guilty by Justice Lloyd of ment, stemming from an incident at the Wilkinsburg police station the night of Keith's arrest.

Tuite's partner, Michael Hopp, charged that Ms. Peterson came to the station with the boy's father, and she refused to leave when told that the officer could not discuss the case with anyone other than a family member. City Controller Tom Flaherty has been ordered to formally respond within 20 days to a motion filed by 13 of his former employees, who want Flaherty to follow a city Civil Service Commission decision Sept. 22 and reinstate them. Common Pleas Judge S.

Louis -Farino yesterday issued the order. By Robert Baird The Pittsburgh Press A former Wilkinsburg youth was found innocent today of disorderly conduct and motor vehicle violations that had touched off a gun-pointing incident that resulted in the suspension of a borough officer. William Keith Smith, 13, was cleared of the charges by Rankin District Justice Betty Lloyd, who took only a few minutes to decide that there was no testimony showing that the youth was riding the off-road dirt bike on a public roadway when he was arrested Sept. 13. Defense attorney Kenneth Steinberg had asked that the motor vehicle violations be dismissed because there was no public roadway involved.

Young Smith, who is now under the legal guardianship of an aunt in Penn Hills and attending school there, also was acquitted of disorderly conduct when Justice Lloyd ruled it was the wrong charge. Justice Lloyd, who heard the case TEDDY BEAR SHOW CELEBRATION BRING YOUR BEAR! ()' BEST DRESSED FUNNIEST OLDEST Reporter files complaint over city police actions dlak wno looKs most lixe its owner Live on stage Scooby's Magical Christmas with Yogi BEAR Scooby Doo and Jabber Jaws FRIDAY SATURDAY NOV. 27 28, 10AM-5 WILD 'N WOOLLY 2 PPG AT MARKET SQ. 642-7700 PLCASC CLIP AND MAIL WITH YOUR GIFT TODAY. A tentative contract agreement has put North Clarion School District's 874 students back in the classroom.

The pupils returned yesterday morning after district and teachers' union officials reached a tentative accord and ended a strike that began Nov. 4. School board action on the pact is expected at its Dec. 7 meeting. The 51-member union ratified the agreement over the weekend.

The agreement splits the difference between the $1,700 yearly raises offered by the district and the $2,300 sought by the teachers, said union President Terry Moore. Theft admission A Brentwood man has pleaded guilty to charges he operated a stolen-car ring in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. James W. Madden 34, pleaded guilty Monday to 10 counts of receiving stolen property and one count of criminal conspiracy during an appearance before Common Pleas Judge Floyd A. Rauschen-berger of Butler County, who ordered a pre-sentence investigation.

Madden was charged Feb. 12 as part of a continuing investigation of a major vehicle-theft operation. Madden is charged with paying $1,000 cash for each stolen vehicle and then selling them to individuals. Verdict awaited Two Common Pleas Court employees accused of bilking the county's insurance carrier of $8,963 will continue working pending the outcome of the charges. Robert Logan, 60, a general tipstaff in the court's Civil Division, and his wife, Stella, 46, an investigator in the Orphans' Court Division, are charged with theft by deception for allegedly submitting $8,963 in fictitious receipts from a Squirrel Hill pharmacy to Equitable Finan Pollution fine A Hill District service station owner was fined yesterday in connection with a gasoline leak from an underground storage tank that led to a neighborhood evacuation in the 2100 block of Centre Avenue in August.

Herbert Bean, who operates a Gulf station at 2 1 77 Centre was fined $223.50 in city Housing Court yesterday for two citations issued by the city's fire prevention bureau, including one for public en-dangerment and one for inaccurate record keeping in the use and control of a flammable liquid, a court clerk said. City officials evacuated about 1 00 residents of the neighborhood for several hours Aug. 31 after about 500 gallons of gasoline leaked into the basement of a vacant building adjacent to the service station. Guilty in death A Homewood man has been found guilty of third-degree murder this morning by Common Pleas Judge George Ross. Joseph Styles, 27, of Fletcher Way pleaded guilty to the general charge of murder Monday.

Ross 'I' I By Cindi Lash The Pittsburgh Press A suburban sports reporter has filed a complaint charging that Pittsburgh police hit him and arrested him for public intoxication without cause in Oakland after the Pitt-Penn State football game. Robert Lee Wolverton, 21, a part-time sportswriter for the Beaver County Times in Beaver, lodged the complaint yesterday with the Public Safety Office of Professional Responsibility. OPR investigators would not comment. Wolverton of Ellwood City said he and a Times co-worker covered the Pitt-Penn State football game Nov. 14 at Pitt Stadium.

He said they filed their stories at 12:30 a.m. Nov. 15, then walked to Zelda's Greenhouse at Forbes Avenue and Bouquet Street. While standing in line to get into the tavern, Wolverton said, a city officer approached him and said, "Let's go." Wolverton said he did not resist. He said the officer, whom he could not identify, then hit him with a nightstick and pushed him into a police wagon.

Wolverton was held in the Public Safety Building lockup Downtown until about 9 a.m., when he was released, City Court records show. A citation issued to Wolverton shows he was charged with public intoxication, but that the charge was dismissed by the magistrate. Police officials have said longstanding policy has been to release public intoxication suspects after they've had time to sober up, and that releasing them without fines or a preliminary hearing is tantamount to dropping charges. PLEaSEHELPUS AT THANKSGIVING traditional, home-cooked turkey dinners with all the trimmings for the homeless and destitute during this Thanksgiving season. $15.10 will serve 10 hungry people $30.20 will serve 20 hungry people $60.40 will serve 40 hungry people $151 will serve 100 hungry people $1,510 will serve 1,000 hungry people We will be serving a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

Please help (he needy share in the joy of Thanksgiving. Rush your tax-deductible gift lo: LIGHT OF LIFE RESCUE MISSION P.O. Box 6823. Dept. PT25E Pittsburgh, PA 15212 Location: 10 E.

North Avenue OUR 34TH YEAR OF SERVICE 111 I I heard testimony to set the degree of guilt, but delayed sentencing while awaiting a presentencing report. Styles was charged in the May 19 death of Kenneth D. Talley, 30, of 319 S. Highland East End. Styles told police he intended to rob Talley of money and cocaine.

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