Published: August 22, 2008 10:33 pm      

8-23 OKC news in brief

Woman killed in OKC home invasion

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma City police are looking for three people who shot and killed a woman and critically wounded a man in an apparent home invasion.

No names have been released but Sgt. Paco Balderrama said the woman was a Native American in her 30s and the man is Asian and the two were apparently roommates.

The man is hospitalized in critical condition.

Balderrama says it appears three gunmen entered the house near Dolese Youth Park in northwest Oklahoma City about 1 a.m. Friday.

Detectives say the three confronted the man and woman before shooting them.



Transportation chief tours OKC training center

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Beginning Sept. 2, air traffic controller trainees in Oklahoma City will be the first in the nation to use new state-of-the-art simulators that will improve air safety, U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said Friday.

Peters did not comment directly to concerns expressed by Congress members and others about air traffic controller shortages in some cities caused by retirements.

But when asked about staffing levels at Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, she said: “We wouldn’t operate a facility that wasn’t safely staffed with the right mix and training of controllers.”

Peters spoke briefly after touring the Federal Aviation Administration’s Monroney Aeronautical Center’s training laboratories. The center was named for former U.S. Sen. Mike Monroney, D-Okla.

FAA spokeswoman Laura J. Brown said in an e-mail that staffing at the Oklahoma City airport is 37 controllers, of which eight are in some form of training. “Their authorized range is 34 to 38, so they are well within that,” Brown said.

Shortages of controllers have been reported in Alaska and other parts of the country and are blamed in part on the upheaval in air traffic controlling in the early 1980s, when President Reagan fired 11,000 controllers. The large group of controllers hired after the firing are now reaching retirement age.

The FAA celebrated its 50th birthday Thursday with a ceremony at headquarters in Washington, D.C.