Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 1

Lifestyle Sports D93 marks 1st birthday; Doppler debate brews On the Air B9 Caravan Cub Bloomington (Girls) .59 Stephen Decatur 44 Clinton 51 Normal 83 Eisenhower .48 Something funny's going on at 36 West Story B6 pitches talent Stories B1 ,2 TODAY: Mostly sunny; not as cold. High of 28. TONIGHT: Partly cloudy. Low of 22. TOMORROW: Breezy, mild.

4030. DetailsA2 Ann Landers Bll Business A6 Classified Bli5) Comics BIO Movies B9 Obituaries Puzzles B1204 Television Bll Our 121st Year tssue 21 Two sections 1994 Friday, January 21, 1994 Decatur, Illinois 50 cents Home delivery: 35 cents IUl 0 mm VrcjjfcJi Lai Township feud heats up meeting Decatur teen pleads for mercy; judge condemns murder By RON INGRAM Staff Writer By REID MAGNEY Staff Writer the crime. Today it would have been Victor's birthday. It is my father's birthday, also. "We have a lot of anger and sadness.

Other than the mental turmoil it has caused our family as a whole, it is hard to find the words So many thoughts conflict. It is just sick, sick." Schaal admitted earlier that he did not know Shaw, 37, prior to shooting him. Shaw's father, Tommy Willis, was driving home about 2:30 a.m. after a trip to a convenience store to get coffee for his wife when he saw a body in MURDER night of Aug. 24," Schaal told Patton prior to being sentenced.

"I know I ruined a lot of lives. I'm sorry. I ask you to be merciful." But Patton said the evidence clearly showed Shaw's death was not an accidental shooting. "I believe this was a gang execution," Patton said. The sentence brought tears and wailing from both sides of the courtroom aisle: Schaal's fiancee and mother embraced and sobbed on one side while Shaw's family and friends wept on the other.

Shaw's sister, Deborah Willis, told Patton, "There are no words to express the stupidness of DECATUR Joshua Schaal of Decatur will spend at least 22 years in prison for the "execution" of Victor Shaw. Circuit Judge Jerry L. Patton sentenced Schaal, 18, to 45 years in prison on Thursday. With day-for-day good time plus other incentives, Schaal could be free in slightly less than half that time. Schaal pleaded guilty to a charge of first-degree murder in return for the state not seeking the death penalty and asking for a prison term of 20 to 45 years.

"I take full responsibility for my actions the Schasri 'I know I ruined a lot of lives. I'm sorry. I ask you to be the teen said to the judge prior to sentencing Continued on A5 ')( Parents charged with leaving kids Children spend 4 days in home without food if--. i i i 4 i r- i 18 1 1 5 DECATUR On one of his first days in office last year, Decatur Township Supervisor Duane Potter told Town Clerk Jean Friend to take down a poster of President Clinton and Vice President Gore hanging in Friend's private office. They haven't seen eye to eye since.

Their simmering power struggle boiled over during a township board meeting Thursday when Friend accused Potter of trying to take over her office and Potter said Friend was being "difficult" Potter ruled Friend out of order several times during Thursday's meeting, and Friend said Potter had "cussed" her on the phone. "You started the whole thing," Friend said. "I think we have a dictator here." "I have attempted to talk to Jean," Potter said. "She think's I'm trying to tell her what to do." "He has no supervisory authority over me," Friend said. "I'm an elected official and I answer to the electorates." A somewhat bewildered town board listened to the bickering and told Potter and Friend to learn to work together for the remaining three years of their terms.

The board also decided to wait a week before taking formal action to clarify the duties of each. The spark behind Thursday's dispute is a new computer system Potter installed to handle township accounting and payroll. Until this month, township finances were record by hand. Potter told Friend the computer could affect personnel not only by reducing labor but because the township's bookkeeper, Marion Taylor, is beyond normal retirement age and may not choose to learn the new system. Friend told Potter that Taylor and another worker, Dee Coventry, were her employees, and that she would make any personnel decisions.

Friend also sought an ally in George Miller, executive director of Township Officials of Illinois. But Miller said in a letter that neither Potter nor Friend can hire and fire workers or set salaries: that power rests with the town board. Miller also said Potter, as the township's chief executive officer and treasurer, is responsible for supervising the employees, not Friend. Part of the supervision confusion comes because Decatur Township government has two different office locations. Potter's is with the general assistance program at 666 N.

Water St. and Friend's is in the Macon County Building. Because of that, Friend said the clerk has historically supervised the workers in the clerk's office even when working on the town's books for the V. CHICAGO (AP) Behind the white lace curtains of a tidy South Side graystone police found three young children home alone, with nothing but potato flakes, ketchup and salad dressing in the refrigerator. Police say the parents walked out of the house Saturday.

They hadn't returned by Wednesday, when a neighbor finally called police to report the children, ages 4, 5, and 6, were on their own, said officer Brian Smith. A local merchant says he would have given the children the food they were trying to steal earlier this week, had he known. "You can't fault the kids," said store clerk Shellie Lee, 54, as he wrapped smoked turkey wings into crisp white refrigerator paper on Thursday. "On Monday, they came in the store 50 times a day trying to take something." The parents, Sandra Brandon, 26, and Elvie Holmes, 27, were charged with a misdemeanor count of child neglect, the Cook County State's Attorney's office said. Brandon denied the charges, ABANDONED Continued on A5 y.rti.,.; HeraW ReviewDennis Ma gee Spectators and driver Wayne Bryson, of Atwood, second from right, consider the close call and monumental mess created Thursday afternoon when a locomotive collided with a semi-truck and trailer filled with soybeans at the intersection of Fairies Parkway and Brush College Road.

Macon County sheriff's deputies said Bryson turned off Brush College onto Faries Parkway on a green light. But he failed to stop for flashing red lights at an Illinois Central Railroad crossing. His cab cleared the crossing but the rig's trailer was struck at 4:25 p.m. Bryson was ticketed by deputies for failing to yield to the slow-moving engine. themselves WASHINGTON (AP) More black Americans are beginning to step forward in the fight against poverty, crime, and unemployment among their own, the National Urban League said Thursday.

In its annual report, "The State of Black America," the league asked President Clinton to create an "environment of opportunity," featuring business development, jobs and anti-discrimination laws, to push the self-help effort along. But "we also know that we can not afford to wait for that environment to be created," said league President John E. Jacob. "Our challenge is to continue the mobilization of the African-American community around the concept of self-development to produce healthy, smart, productive, 21st-century citizens," he said. The National Urban League is one of the nation's oldest social service and civil rights organizations.

It focuses on creating social, educational and economic opportu nities for blacks. Its report echoes a growing cry among blacks to rely on themselves, not government, to end an atmosphere of hopelessness and lawlessness that has gripped many black communities in the past decade. Among self-help efforts to spring forth in the past year: Gun buy-back programs, offering cash, goods or services to those who turn in weapons. Meetings among street gang leaders to negotiate a truce. A campaign by professional athletes to promote sexual abstinence among teen-agers.

A growing number of antidrug patrols by residents of crime-plagued neighborhoods. Mentoring programs launched by churches or black professional groups. "Experience has taught us that when it comes to economic revita-lization and investment, charity always begins at home," wrote the Rev. W. Franklyn Richardson, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, N.Y.

"These communities are no worse off than the communities we grew up in in the 1940s and 1950s, when folks thought we were hopeless, too," Jacob said. "These communities have been allowed to deteriorate. We're saying they cannot be written off." The Urban League cited a potpourri of indicators that showed black Americans made slight gains financially during the 1980s, only to have those gains clipped by losses in other areas. nsmission law IDSfra Supreme Court upholds anti-A back en ice Tonya Harding, flanked by security guards, was back on the ice Thursday amid allegations that helped plot the attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan. "I fdt better today than I have in a few days," she said.

StsryBI rti if -j Sgl'JS t4. she is infected with the virus and yet engages in activities that could transmit it. Prosecutors don't have to prove a person actually infected the other person, and penalties can range from three to seven years in prison. Caretha Russell of Belleville and Timothy Lunsford of Charleston challenged the law in separate cases. Russell was charged with four counts of criminal transmission of HIV in December 1991.

Court records show she had sex with a man four times during a week in 1991. Lunsford was charged with criminal transmission and sexually assaulting a 19-year-old Mattoon woman. Lunsford's lawyer said his client is innocent. plicit so that a person of ordinary intelligence need not have to guess at its meaning or application." The justices reversed two lower court decisions dismissing charges of criminal transmission of the AIDS virus and the charges will be refiled against the individuals in the two cases. Defense lawyers have not yet decided if they will appeal the case to the U.S.

Supreme Court. The law says that if a person has HIV, the virus mat causes AIDS, they cannot engage in intimate contact, trade drug needles or donate blood or organs. State prosecutors can charge someone with a felony if that person knows he or SPRINGFIELD AP) The Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a state law barring people with HIV from engaging in conduct that could spread AIDS, which opponents of the law said could include breast feeding or bearing children. Defense lawyers said the ruling gives prosecutors carte blanche to police citizens' sexual activities, but the state says the law is designed to protect people from contracting the deadly disease. The high court said the defense lawyers' arguments "are without merit." "Vagueness, like beauty, may be in the eye of the beholder," Justice James Heiple wrote for the court.

"We however read the statute as being sufficiently clear and ex Associated Press.