Banner Graphic, Volume 15, Number 364, Greencastle, Putnam County, 9 October 1985 — Page 3

Faith Assembly member convicted in son'sdeath from pneumonia

WARSAW, Ind. (AP) A woman who once belonged to a faith-healing religious sect faces a maximum sentence of more than eight years following her conviction in the death of her son from untreated pneumonia. A jury convicted Barbara Ann Irwin, 34, of Warsaw, on charges of reckless homicide and criminal recklessness Tuesday. Mrs. Irwin was found innocent of a charge of neglect of a dependent. Mrs. Irwin’s 5-weelfold son, Joseph, died Nov. 21 at her home.

Romance of the rails is newlywed Hoosiers' bliss

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Somewhere between Indianapolis and Chicago friends will toast newlyweds Ava and Robert F. Smith. They couldn’t know in advance exactly where because the wedding reception was aboard a private car hitched to Amtrak’s “Hoosier State” passenger train. Train buffs Ava Vogel and Smith scheduled their wedding vows on the back platform of the rail car at 7 a m. today, a half hour before the State left Union Station for Chicago. “Seven o’clock is a rather unorthodox hour for a wedding,” said the bride. “It’s an awful, awful time of day for me. I’m the worse person for early mornings. It will be memorable, if I can stay awake.” “I know that? It’s so unreasonable,” said Smith, the groom. The 86-foot-long, 1913 private railroad car owned by Indianapolis attorney David E. McClure was chosen the rolling wedding reception hall for Mr. and Mrs. Smith and 16 family members and friends. Ms. Vogel, deputy executive director of the Indiana Health Care

Marble Hill liquidation worth $2 million?

NEW WASHINGTON, Ind. (AP) - Public Service Indiana is holding its own version of an “everything-must-go” sale, auctioning off its inventory of equipment at the defunct Marble Hill nuclear power plant at 15 to 25 percent of its value. The auction, which began Tuesday and continues today and Thursday at the plant’s 900-acre site overlooking the Ohio River, could generate as much as $2 million from a stock of $6 million to $8 million, according to PSI officials. “Obviously, we have things we want to liquidate,” said the utility’s chief spokesman, Michael Goss. PSI invested an estimated $2.7 billion in

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She faces a maximum sentence of eight years for reckless homicide and a sixmonth jail term for criminal recklessness, a misdemeanor charge. Judge Robert Burner set sentencing for Nov. 7. Court-appointed defense attorney Max E. Reed said he didn’t know whether Mrs. Irwin would appeal. She was released without bond pending sentencing. Kosciusko County Prosecutor Michael Miner and Reed delivered brief closing statements before the jury of seven men and five women began their deliberations.

Association, and Smith, a former state Medicaid director, chose McClure to marry them. “He’s getting judge pro tern status for the day,” Ms. Vogel told Indianapolis News columnist David Mannweiler. “He can marry us anywhere within the boundaries of the state. “We were going to get married on the train on the way to Chicago, but we thought why not do it in the station before the train leaves, in front of our friends?” The couple had planned to elope to Las Vegas to be married, but changed their minds two weeks ago when McClure said he was hitching his private car to the Amtrak train. “This is a second marriage for both of us,” Ms. Vogel said, “so it won’t be a formal type of wedding. There is a stereo in the car we may use to play some music.” From Chicago, McClure is having his car hauled to Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Newport News, Va. The Smiths will ride along for the entire trip, as their honeymoon.

the twin-reactor plant before it halted construction Jan. 16, 1984, in the face of steeply climbing costs and safety problems. One reactor unit was 55 percent complete, the other just 35 percent. The bulk of that amount, $2 billion, went for items such as labor and administrative costs and will never be recovered Equipment totaled S7OO million, and the utility hopes to recover $75 million, Goss said. The equipment ranges from typewriters and desk sets to gantry cranes and structural steel, but does not include nuclear equipment, which is being marketed through direct sales. As a result, the auction is drawing general contractors,

During the trial, Mrs. Irwin testified she had been a member of Faith Assembly, a fundamentalist church whose members rely on prayer to heal illness and who shun doctors and conventional medical treatment. She said she left the church in July, but continues to believe that prayer can cure illness. In his closing argument, Miner reminded jurors that a pathologist. Dr. Patricia A. Newman of Muncie, had testified the child died of a pneumonia that could have been cured with readily available an-

state

IU Union Building fire routs guests

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - Dozens of people were forced to leave the Memorial Union Building at Indiana University early today when fire erupted in a third floor mechanical room, fire officials said. None of the guests or staff members in the union was injured, fire chief Larry Fleener said He said a firefighter was taken to Bloomington Hospital suffering smoke inhalation. The chief said an evacuation was ordered soon after the call came in at 12;01 a.m. Four fire trucks, including a snorkel unit, responded to the call, and firefightrers quickly had the blaze under control. The fire area was in the middle section of the union, away from the hotel section.

salvage specialists and small industrial shop operators looking hard for bargains. “I expect to save 75 percent (off a retail price) or I don’t expect to buy,” said Doug Polen, who runs a boiler repair shop in New Albany. “There’s a lot of that’s available and looks interesting. Hopefully, unless these people go crazy, I expect to save a lot.” The auction attracted an estimated 800 bidders from more than 20 states and overseas, organizers said. Chris Combs, a PSI spokeswoman, said the utility already has recovered $66 million of its investment.

tibiotics. “Her religious beliefs are not on trial. On the other hand, we cannot allow children to die senselessly in the name of religion,” Miner said. Mrs. Irwin testified she prayed over the sick baby and called her husband, Jeffrey, in Indianapolis, to ask that he pray when the infant’s condition worsened. Irwin was not charged. In his statements to jurors, Reed referred to a religious defense in state child neglect laws that allows a parent to

Fleener said 50 to 60 guests were taken across the street to Wildermuth Center, a physical education facility. Others stood outside the building watching firefighters, and some left to hunt other hotels, he said. Hotel guests included members of the Indiana Optometric Association, which is conducting its fall conference at IU this week. Fleener described the mechanical room as containing a large number of storage bins. The cause of the fire was not determined, and no damage estimate was available. Some guests said that as they left their rooms after a fire alarm sounded they did not smell smoke until they reached the lobby.

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Wednesday, Oct. 9,1985, The Putnam County Banner Graphic

use prayer instead of medicine in the legitimate practice of religious beliefs. "This is not a legitimate practice of a religious belief, because it does not conform to the standard of this community,” Miner claimed. Reed argued Mrs. Irwin’s lack of criminal intent while she prayed for the child meant that no crimes had been committed. And he disputed Miner’s claim that her faith-healing effort was not a legitimate religious practice The state Legislature deliberately granted protec-

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tion in child neglect cases to those whose religious beliefs prevent them from using medicines, he said. Reed said Mrs Irwin’s belief in faith healing had been strengthen by her own recovery from a shoulder injury sustained in a 1983 automobile accident. Since August 1984, courts in northern Indiana have convicted four couples who attend Faith Assembly in the deaths of children from treatable illnesses. The church was founded by the Rev. Hobart E. Freeman.

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