NKY.COM
THE KENTUCKY ENQUIRER
MONDAY, APRIL 20, 2009
K
75 CENTS
Erpenbeck banker to be free
By Jim Hannah
Finnan completes prison sentence today
Bill Erpenbeck’s banker, John
Finnan, will complete his federal
sentence today.
He is scheduled to be released
from a halfway house in Orlando,
according to the Federal Bureau
of Prisons Web site.
Finnan pleaded guilty to three
felonies, including bank fraud
and theft by a bank officer, in Jan-
uary 2005, and was sentenced to
63 months.
As president and co-founder of
the now defunct Peoples Bank of
Northern Kentucky, Finnan
made excessive loans to Erpenbeck Co. without board knowledge and enticed other banks to
participate in Erpenbeck loans.
Finnan reported in March
[email protected]
John Finnan
pleaded
guilty to
three
felonies.
2005 to a minimum-security prison in Pensacola, a city on the
western edge of the Florida panhandle.
Finnan’s family lived not far
away in Gulf Breeze, Fla., where
his wife ran a gift shop, the Enquirer reported at the time.
Marc Menne, who served as
the bank’s executive vice presi-
dent, finished his federal sentence Feb. 12. He also pleaded
guilty in January 2005 of bank
fraud and theft by a bank officer
and was sentenced to 54 months.
He too made excessive loans to
the Erpenbeck Co. without
board knowledge and enticed
other banks to participate in Erpenbeck loans.
April 20, 1999: Columbine High students react
outside the school where 15 people died.
Worst school
attacks
The deadliest K-12 school
attack in U.S. history was in
1927 in Bath Township, Mich.
School board member Andrew
Kehoe, angry over an increase
in his property taxes, set off
explosives that killed 45 people, including many children
and himself, and wounded 58.
The worst recent attacks:
The Associated Press
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and
one teacher, injured 23 others
and then killed themselves at
Columbine High School
The Associated Press (top); The Enquirer/Patrick Reddy (above); The Enquirer/Malinda Hartong (below)
At Dixie Heights High School, Edgewood Police Officer Gary Linn is a fulltime resource officer. He has
an office in the school and walks the halls, handling problems.
Thomas Soloman, 15, shot
and injured six students at
Heritage High School.
March, 5, 2001,
Santee, Calif.
Charles Andrew Williams,
15, fired from a bathroom at
Santana High School, killing
two students and injuring 13.
March 21, 2005,
Red Lake, Minn.
Jeff Weise, 16, killed his
grandfather and another adult,
then went to school and killed
five students, a teacher, a security guard and himself.
Oct. 2, 2006,
Nickel Mines, Pa.
Carl Charles Roberts IV, 32,
killed five students, wounded
five others and then killed
himself at the one-room West
Nickel Mines Amish School.
WEATHER
High 57°
Low 41°
Windy with
rain
COMPLETE FORECAST: A2
Schools boost
their security,
psychology
By Krista Ramsey
[email protected]
When two teenagers walked into
Columbine High School 10 years
ago today armed with semiautomatic weapons and pipe bombs and
killed 12 students and a teacher,
then themselves, their plan was to
leave a legacy of horror.
While the massacre – the deadliest K-12 school shooting in U.S. history – was horrifying, it also proved
powerfully instructive. Columbine
fundamentally changed school security and influenced school design, emergency planning, communication – even the protocol first
responders follow when they arrive
on the scene of school violence.
Anti-bullying programs took on
3 sections, 169th year, No. 11
Advice ..........B10 Obituaries ...B2, 4
Business .........A9 Opinions .......A11
Comics ...........B9 Sports ............C1
Lotteries ..........A2 TV ................B10
Movies .........B11 Your Life .........B8
Legals ..........................................C7-9
Copyright, 2009, The Kentucky Enquirer
Portions of
today’s Enquirer
were printed on
recycled paper
Michael Snowden, director of the Hamilton County Emergency Management Agency, has school floor plans and other information.
Opinions, A11
lance and started practicing lockdowns as well as fire drills.
m Human goodness can shine in the
Kentucky passed legislation redarkest times. Krista Ramsey, A11
quiring schools to develop safety
plans shortly after the Columbine
shootings; Ohio followed suit in
new weight, as did safety hot lines 2006. Both states now also require
for students and families. Schools anti-bullying policies.
took better control of who entered
See COLUMBINE, Page A8
their buildings, improved surveil-
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad – Defending his brand of world politics, President
Barack Obama said Sunday that he
“strengthens our hand” by reaching out to
enemies of the United States and making
sure that the nation is a leader, not a lecturer,
of democracy.
Obama’s foreign doctrine emerged
across his four-day trip to Latin America. He
got a smile, handshakes and even a gift from
incendiary leftist leader Hugo Chavez of
Venezuela, and embraced overtures of new
relations from Cuban President Raul Castro.
Still, Obama made sure to inject some goit-slow caution and clear expectations for
U.S. foes as he capped his trip to the twinisland nation of Trinidad and Tobago with a
steamy outdoor news conference.
On Cuba, he said Castro should release
political prisoners, embrace democratic
freedoms and cut fees on the money that Cuban-Americans send back to their families.
Obama has lifted some restrictions on Cuba,
and Castro responded with a broad, conciliatory overture.
“The fact that you had Raul Castro say
he’s willing to have his government discuss
with ours not just issues of lifting the embargo, but issues of human rights, political prisoners, that’s a sign of progress,” Obama
said. “And so we’re going to explore and see
if we can make some further steps.”
Obama returned to Washington early
Sunday evening. But even before he got
back, Obama was facing condemnation from
some Republicans about how he dealt with
Chavez. “I think it was irresponsible for the
president to be seen kind of laughing and
joking with Hugo Chavez,” said Sen. John
Ensign, R-Nev.
The president brushed that aside, noting
that Venezuela has a defense budget about
one-six-hundredth the size of the United
States’ and owns the oil company Citgo.
“It’s unlikely that as a consequence of me
shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United
States,” Obama said.
m KENTUCKY LAGS IN COUNTING ILLNESSES
Food inspection varies by state
By Gardiner Harris
The New York Times
INDEX
Obama:
Engaging
makes US
stronger
By Ben Feller
April 20, 1999,
Littleton, Colo.
May 20, 1999,
Conyers, Ga.
See FINNAN, Page A8
m CHAVEZ CHAT CRITICIZED
m SCHOOL MASSACRE: 10 YEARS LATER
Columbine’s
impact lasts
Menne was ordered to serve
his time about 150 miles south of
Northern Kentucky, at the federal prison in Manchester, Ky., a
medium-security prison in the
mountains.
Menne’s family still resides in
Northern Kentucky.
Finnan and Menne requested
those prisons so they could be
closer to their families.
In just about every major
contaminated food scare,
Minnesotans become sick by
the dozens while few people
in Kentucky and other states
are counted among the ill.
Contaminated peanuts?
Forty-two Minnesotans were
reported sick compared with
three Kentuckians. Jalapeno
peppers last year? Thirty-one
in Minnesota and two in Kentucky became ill. But the different numbers arise because health officials in
Kentucky and many other
states fail to investigate many
complaints of food-related
sickness while those in Minnesota do so diligently.
Uncovering which foods
have been contaminated is
left to a patchwork of more
than 3,000 federal, state and
local health departments that
are, for the most part, poorly
financed, poorly trained and
disconnected, officials said.
If not for the Minnesota
Department of Health, the
Peanut Corp. of America
might still be selling salmonella-laced peanuts and Dole
might still be selling contaminated lettuce.
Epidemiologists
from
Minnesota pinpointed the
causes of food scares while
officials in other states were
3 Saints
Cabernet Sauvignon
Santa Ynez Valley 2005
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barely aware of sickness.
From 1990 to 2006, Minnesota health officials uncovered
548 food-related illness outbreaks, while those in Kentucky found 18, according to
an analysis of health records.
The surveillance system is
vital. One-quarter of the nation’s population is sickened
every year by contaminated
food, 300,000 are hospitalized
and 5,000 die.
“The longer it takes you to
nail an outbreak, the more
people are going to get sick,”
said Dr. David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods
at the Food and Drug Administration. “And if it’s a pathogen that causes death, the
more people are going to
die.”
With states cutting back,
disease surveillance is worsening, several officials said.
“Just $50 million spread
over the entire country would
make a huge difference,” said
Dr. Timothy Jones, the state
epidemiologist in Tennessee.
Even when county and
state health departments investigate, their methods often differ so greatly that federal officials have difficulty
uncovering patterns. That
leads to terrible delays.
“Everybody does things
differently, even within many
states,” Acheson said. “It’s a
huge challenge.”
Rating 87 “Even if a little ripe leaning and at
times seeming a bit softer than the classic Cabernet model
m BANK BAILOUTS
Feds may switch
loans into equity
to free capital
Obama administration officials say they’ve found a way
to shore up the nation’s
banking system without asking Congress for more money any time soon – converting the government’s
existing loans into bank
stock. While that would give
banks more available capital,
it also could make the government the largest shareholder in some of them. And
it would increase risk to taxpayers – there’s no telling
what the shares will be
worth when the government
sells them. NATION, A4
commends, this wine is very much on track as far as fairly deep
and well-defined fruit is concerned. It starts out as an open and
ripe wine and shows some fat early on, but it is buttressed by
plenty of tannin, and its finish is tough enough to commend at
least a half-dozen years in the cellar.” Dierberg
Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wine
Volume 32 Issue 10: August
Suggested retail $26.00.
COVINGTON:
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859-291-2550
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859-781-8105
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Both locations
This week’s wines:
Zinfandel/R Wines