MESA, Ariz.

Shooting rampage ends with 1 dead, suspect arrested

A gunman killed one person and wounded five others Wednesday in a rampage that included a motel shooting, a carjacking and a home invasion and ended with his arrest at an apartment in suburban Phoenix.

Mesa police identified the suspect as Ryan Giroux, who has served three stints in prison. He was taken into custody after officers spotted him on an apartment balcony and deployed a stun gun.

The incident started with an argument inside a room at a motel and spilled outside, leaving one man dead and two women wounded, a Mesa detective said.

The suspect then shot a man working at a nearby restaurant. That victim, an adult student at nearby East Valley Institute of Technology, was able to run across the street to emergency responders already at the motel, Flores said. The student has been treated and released from a hospital.

The suspect got away by carjacking a vehicle.

LOS ANGELES

Anti-fast food law doesn’t curb obesity, improve diets

A much-hailed law that restricted the opening of new stand-alone fast-food restaurants in one of the poorest sections of Los Angeles did not curb obesity or improve diets, a new study found.

City lawmakers passed the zoning ordinance in 2008 that limited the opening or expansion of fast-food outlets in a 32-square-mile area south of Interstate 10 that struggles with high obesity rates and other health problems.

The law, believed to be the first effort of its kind by a major city to improve public health, did not ban new eateries in strip malls.

The research by the Rand Corp. think tank found that obesity rates in South Los Angeles continued to rise after passage of the law.

“It had no meaningful effect,” Rand economist Roland Sturm said. “There’s no evidence that diets have improved more in South LA. Obesity and overweight rates have not fallen.”

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone

Efforts intensify to end deadly Ebola epidemic

Sierra Leone is planning another three-day, countrywide shutdown later this month to ferret out Ebola cases, remind people how to protect themselves from the disease and control its transmission.

The West Africa Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 10,000 people is declining but the disease has remained entrenched in parts of Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Liberia, the third country severely affected, currently has no Ebola cases.

In the drive to zero cases in Sierra Leone, the government will again ask residents to stay in their homes for three days, Alfred Palo Conteh. The shutdown is expected to take place March 27 through 29.

The government has done this before, and some experts said it was unexpectedly effective in providing information about to control the disease.

– From news service reports