Banner Graphic, Volume 16, Number 114, Greencastle, Putnam County, 28 December 1985 — Page 3

state

People Express to buy Britt commuter airline based in Terre Haute

c. 1985 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK People Express Inc. Friday announced a binding agreement to acquire Britt Airways Inc., the nation’s third-largest commuter airline, with major hubs in Chicago and St. Louis. The terms were not given. The acquisition comes on the heels of People’s November takeover of Frontier Airlines, a major carrier based in Denver, which catapulted People from the nation’s 12th-largest airline in terms of passengers carried to No. 5. The purchase of Britt, which has 44 planes serving 29 cities and carried 1.2 million passengers in 1984, would allow People to better use Britt’s routes to feed its flights and enable it to become more competitive in such major markets as Chicago. With additional feed and landing slots, which are hard to come by, People could expand those operations. All the nation’s major airlines have made agreements to integrate one or more commuter airlines into their route systems. That way the larger carriers can be fed travelers from smaller markets. In return, most commuter lines are provided with gate space at the major airline’s terminals and their flights are listed in the larger carrier’s schedules. What is unusual about People’s move is that it is buying the carrier. People said it expects that Britt will feed and receive traffic both for People, which is based at Newark International Airport, and Frontier, which has its hub at

Robbery suspect surrenders after his accidental release

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) A robbery suspect police termed “potentially dangerous” after he was released from jail by accident turned himself in. Frank Welch, 25, was released by a judge Thursday as police were preparing paperwork on his case with a deputy prosecutor. Welch surrendered to sheriff’s police about 4:30 p.m. Friday and was held on $50,000 bond, said Sgt. Gene Tomey, an officer at the jail. ""'lomas W. Farlow, a Marion County deputy prosector in charge of felony screening, said his agency, the sheriff’s department and the court were all responsible for the error.

Injured man has trouble communicating

Identity of beating victim still a mystery

OTTUMWA, lowa (AP) After being beaten and left for dead in Indiana, “Tony” can neither speak nor write, but he keeps pointing to Ottumwa o: Marshalltown when asked where he lives and authorities hope someone will claim him. But police have had no luck so far and they’ve turned to the media for help. “We need to find out what happened,” said Capt. Neal Richard, of the Harrison County, Ind. Sheriff’s Department. “Someone’s out there either around here or out of the state by now who beat him and left him for dead.” The victim, an 18- to 20-year-old white man, has been hospitalized since he was found near death Nov. 5 along Interstate 64 near Corydon, Ind. Richard said the man suffered massive head injuries and a fractured skull in the assault. “He talks to me, but what he says doesn’t make sense,” he said. “It’s like talking to a 1-year-old kid. When he writes it’s like a 1 or 2 year old writing for the first time.” The man, nicknamed Tony by Richard and nurses at Humana Hospital in Louisville, Ky., where he is recovering from his injuries, has been shown maps of the United States and continues to point to Ottumwa when asked where he’s from, Richard said. When asked where his mother lives, Tony points to Mar-

New mother is blast victim

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) A Louisville woman who gave birth just hours after she was injured in an Indiana house explosion two weeks ago has died Pamela Lewis, 24, died Friday in Humana Hospital University from burns over 60 percent of her body. She was burned in a Dec. 12 explosion while visiting the home of her parents, Robert and Jessie Lewis in New Albany, Ind. She delivered a son by Caesarean section a few hours after the explosion. The

Stapleton International Airport in Denver. Robert McAdoo, the chief financial officer of People, said in a telephone interview from Britt’s headquarters in Terre Haute, Ind., that People had decided to buy the carrier because it has been very profitable and would strengthen People Express. “It was a good investment,” he added. He also said that Britt had long been feeding passengers to United and American at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago and it would have been difficult to enter into an arrangement with Britt without opposition from the two large carriers. He added that Britt, which has 75 departures daily from Chicago, will enable People to bring its low-cost fares to smaller cities served by the commuter, such as Peoria and Springfield, 111., and Jericho and Muncie, Ind. Such smaller markets are not big enough to justify adding non-stop flights by larger aircraft, he noted. He said People would add flights to Chicago and other markets eventually as a result of the acquisition. People now has 11 flights daily to O’Hare, and Frontier has four. Britt, which has operated for 17 years and has been consistently profitable, is a private company and thus the terms of the deal were not disclosed. Most of Britt’s fleet is made up of Beech 99’s and Fairchild Metros, both of which carry 19 passengers.

Welch and Charles J. Mitchell, 25, were arrested Monday as they sat in a car behind a fast-food restaurant in Lawrence wearing ski masks, police said. A third man, identified as 28-year-old Jimmy Roberts of Indianapolis, was killed after he fled and exchanged shots with police, authorities said. The restaurant was not robbed, but police held Welch and Mitchell on preliminary charges of armed robbery and possession of illegal weapons. Mitchell was held on $50,000 bond on charges of auto theft, violation of the 1935 Firearms Act and conspiracy to commit robbery.

shalltown, the captain said. Tony had only a plastic garbage bag containing a roll of toilet paper, two razors and shampoo when he was discovered along the roadway. “His blood pressure was 40 over nothing when he was found,” Richard said. “Another hour and he would have been dead. “The doctors don’t know if he’ll ever understand what’s happened. They say they can’t tell whether it’s permanent brain damage or temporary due to the skull fracture. “He doesn’t know his name but hopefully one day he’s going to blast out his name after seeing it in a book.” Richard contacted the police departments in Ottumwa and Marshalltown and sent them photocopied pictures of the beating victim. “We’ve been showing it around the high school, talking to the principals and stuff out there,” said Rick Koenigs, a detective in the Marshalltown Police Department. “We’ve talked to various people, businesses here, showing it to all the officers but we’ve had nothing substantial.” Hugh McElroy, chief of detectives in Ottumwa, said Tony’s fingerprints, which the FBI was unable to identify, will be run through records with the lowa Division of Criminal Investigation.

baby, who was not born premature, was hospitalized several days and is being cared for by family members. Four other victims, including three members of the Lewis family, are still hospitalized. Cause of the blast, which demolished the Lew's family’s two-story frame house, is still under investigation. Officials have said they suspect the explosion was touched off at a gas line that intersected a sewer pipe leading to the house.

Some Indiana public school corporations have curtailed field trips to Chicago because of that city's ordinance requiring every passenger on a school bus to wear a seat belt. The city law differs from that of the

Chicago seat belt law dampens some Hoosier schools’ field trips

VALPARAISO, Ind. (AP) Chicago’s new seat belt law and Indiana education reforms have restricted some local schoolchildren’s field trips. Kankakee Valley School Corp. is still sending children on field trips, but not to Illinois, said Superintendent Iran Flovd He cited Illinois’ seat belt law as the reason for prohibiting trips there. The Chicago ordinance on seat belts, which requires every passenger to be wearing one, applies to Illinois school buses and it appears to apply to Indiana buses as well. Rut the Indiana State Police, who inspect the local school buses, advise against putting the belts on the buses. The safety of bus seat belts is a hotly debated topic with conflicting research being cited from belt boosters and opponents. Under the Illinois state seat belt law, which went into effect this year, only the driver is required to weat a belt, according to the Illinois State Police. Indiana’s seat belt law, which takes effect mid-1987, states specifically that it applies only to front-seat passengers of buses. Duneland School Corp. is still sending its students on field trips, but Chicago is off limits until it becomes clear whether the city’s seat belt ordinance applies to Indiana buses. Valparaiso and some other districts are sending buses to Chicago and giving the drivers $25 so they can pay the fine if they are ticketed Assistant Superintendent Robert Sherer has told the school board the district has many trips to Chicago, and the Windy City is the destination for nearly all the district’s out-of-state field trips Valparaiso Superintendent R. James Risk said good field trips, well-planned and well-executed, are important for children. “We have never cut back on field trips,” he said ‘I would be very sad if we had to cut back on them.” Union Township School Corp. is also sending $25 with bus drivers, Superintendent Glenn Krueger said. Porter Township children are still being sent to Chicago, ac-

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“His face looked familiar to some of the investigators and to me. Three people were sure they knew him,” said McElroy. “We contacted those families and they said there was a likeness, but they couldn’t identify this man. We ran down several leads to no avail.” Police departments in both lowa cities released copies of Tony’s picture to local news media in hopes a reader or viewer would recognize the man and contact police. “We emphasize that this is not a criminal investigation” McElroy said. “He is a victim. We want to identify him so he can be returned to his family. Those responsible for the beatings are a different matter.” Tony is 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighs 140 to 150 lbs., has reddish brown hair, brown eyes arid missing front teeth due to advancing decay. His arms have three tatoos; one on the forearms says “Mom” and another is a pot-bellied devil with the words “Born to Lose” below it. McElroy said authorities were withholding description of the third tattoo to use for verification should someone claiming to know Tony comes forward. McElroy told Ottumwa reporters that asking for public assistance through them “is a last resort for us It is a very strange deal, very strange If you don’t pull it out, we will have to assume he is

State of Illinois, which requires only the driver to wear a seat belt. Many Indiana schools, including some in Putnam County, annually schedule a field trip to Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.

cording to Curt Casbon, the Porter Township School Corp.’s liaison with the company transporting the students. “We would obviously hope we aren’t subjected to a traffic citation” because the bus must be stopped for another reason before being cited for lack of seat belts, Casbon said. But Porter Township school officials don’t have to cross their fingers often. The district has only about one trip a month to Chicago and there are vans available for groups of 15 or less, Casbonsaid Portage Township Schools drivers are given $25 for their trips to Chicago. The money comes from student fees for a special evening bus route for students with after-school activities. Students pay 25 cents per ride for the late bus, Superintendent Donald Bivens said. The plight of Hoosier and suburbannChicago school districts has drawn the attention of Chicago politicians battling over the seat-belt ordinance. Some, including Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, have been trying to get the law changed. But there’s a stumbling block. Heading the City Council committee which wrote the ordinance is Alderman Edward Vrdolyak, the mayor’s archfoe. On Washington’s side of the battle are representatives of the city’s major museums. “It hasn’t hurt us much yet,” said Debbie Dennis, operations office manager for the Museum of Science and Industry, one of the city’s biggest magnets for schoolchildren. In November, 49 Indiana groups, with 3,708 people, toured the museum, she said. Museum officials hope the city will reword the ordinance to say Indiana buses aren’t affected by the law, she added At the Art Institute of Chicago, another big draw for tours, a major renovation has limited the number of groups allowed. Many requests for tours are being turned down, a spokesman said, so the seat belt ordinance hasn’t affected the number of tours there

December 28,1985, The Putnam County Banner Graphic

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