The Arizona Department of Transportation is reported icy conditions throughout much of the region Friday morning and the Navajo Police Department reported numerous crashes and slide-offs since Thursday night especially near the Arizona-New Mexico state line.
Some schools in the region were operating on delayed schedules Friday because of winter weather and road conditions.
A White Mountain Apache Tribal police officer Karl Eugene Leslie was arrested and charged with sexual abuse and kidnapping with the U-S Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona alleging that while working as an on-duty officer, he sexually abused three victims between 2020 and 2023, one of whom was a minor.
The driver of a motorhome who hit a group of cyclists on Lake Mary Road south of Flagstaff in 2023 faces five felony charges.
The judges who heard arguments related to the fate of Oak Flat, land sacred to White Mountain Apache tribal members, questioned why they were reviewing an issue that to them seemed settled.
Officials with the Coconino National Forest have closed Schultz Pass, Elden Lookout and Freidlein Prairie roads among several others for the winter season, and Schnebley Hill, Willard Springs and Kelly Canyon roads off Interstate 17 are also closed.
Congressman Eli Crane told a Prescott-based radio show the demonization of ICE was partially to blame for the shooting death of a Minneapolis woman, while Senator Ruben Gallego said ICE agents weren’t adequately trained, causing chaos in communities rather than enforcing immigration law.
Navajo tribal member Brandon Hyden pleaded guilty to shooting two people in a Tuba City parking lot last year and was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison this week for second-degree murder and assault with a dangerous weapon.
The Chino Valley Planning and Zoning Commission postponed approval for a new airport runway within Perkins Ranch after community opposition to the planned approximate fifty flights per day and three hundred flights per week once the airfield is built.
And Jerome’s community-based Gulch Radio KZRJ went off air at midnight on the final day of 2025 after the nonprofit, commercial-free station broadcast eclectic content for just over a decade.
Tune in every weekday at knau.org or wherever you get your podcasts.
Friday, January 9, 2926
