Open Council Seat to Get New Member Quickly, More News Briefs

The Yakima City Council is expected to name a new council member by Jan. 21.
The city council is looking for a replacement for Sara Bristol who resigned her District 2 seat in December.
Jan. 16 has been set as the day council members will hear presentations from 13 applicants who want to be appointed to the city council to fill the open seat. After the presentations, the council will then narrow down the group to possibly the top five.
Finalists will be interviewed by council members on the 17th. The council is then expected to name a replacement that can be sworn in at the Jan. 21 meeting.
The Yakima Planning Commission is not issuing a decision on the proposed ban on pot sales in the city of Yakima yet.
On Wednesday the commission decided to hold off on the issue and further talk about it next Wednesday. The commission has set a 3:00 p.m. meeting at city hall.
The Yakima city council has set a Jan. 21 hearing to vote on the proposed ban.
The commission was expected to recommend the ban to the council but instead decided to further talk about the issue next week before making a final decision.
The Yakima Ag Expo is being held at the Sundome this week.
The Expo starts Thursday morning and ends Friday night. For growers it is the place to be with more than 150 vendors of both big and small equipment for the farm.
This is the fifth year the Ag Expo has been held in the Sundome.
Yakima Police Chief Dominic Rizzi says the officer-involved shooting investigation will not be passed to another agency.
Rizzi says he trusts his investigators to handle the case and pass it on to the county prosecutors office to determine if the shooting was justified. The officer involved in the shooting is on leave.
Rocendo Arias was killed after pointing an air pistol that the officer thought was a real gun.
A former private investigator accused of tampering with witnesses and then bribing and intimidating them will spend the next five months in prison.
On Monday, a Yakima County judge sentenced 38-year-old Stephanie Barnes on two counts of tampering with a witness.
She plead not guilty back in October for attempting to offer a car in exchange for altered testimony from a victim in a kidnapping case.
Barnes was also fined $10,000.
Yakima Police are searching for three men who robbed a Yakima jewelry store Friday night.
Officers say the men wearing dark clothing walked into Reyna's Joyeria at 1113 W. Lincoln Ave. at about 6:20 p.m. with handguns. Once inside they forced an employee to the ground, stole money and smashed display cases to grab jewelry.
The men ran out of the store and police are looking for information that could help lead to an arrest. Anyone with information is asked to call police at 575-6200.
Yakima police are investigating an officer-involved shooting that killed one man Saturday morning.
Police say that around 3:00 a.m. an officer was checking on a suspicious vehicle parked at the Classic Auto Wash at 907 E. Nob Hill Blvd. While talking with 23-year-old Rocendo Arias the officer shot him. Arias died at the scene.
Police have not said what led up to the shooting other then the officer was investigating a suspicious vehicle when the shooting happened.
The officer, who was not injured in the incident, has been with the Yakima Police Department for 14 months.

Filed Under: Crime, events

Categories: Yakima News