09 Oct WCME Midcoast News 10-9
A POST-TRAGEDY SEARCH
The Navy is preparing to search the area where the El Faro sank off the coast of the Bahamas to look for the ship’s data recorder, but it won’t have much time, because in only about two weeks the recorder’s battery will run out. Searchers are hoping that the device will tell them how and why the ship went down. Four mariners from Maine are believed to have died including two Rockland residents–34-year-old Danielle Randolph and 23-year-old Dylan Mecklin.
Maine independent senator Angus King took to the senate floor to note that although we as a nation masterminded a massive response to the deaths of three thousand people in New York in September of 2001, and have reacted swiftly and decisively in other situations involving death, we are willing to tolerate thirty thousand gun deaths every year. King says he feels most responsibility for gun regulation lies at the state level but he also says the federal government can and should enact minimum enforcement standards.
46-year-old Daniel LaJoie Junior, a former Bowdoinham man who has admitted to downloading sexually explicit images and videos of children at his parents’ house in Oakland, has now pleaded guilty in federal court in Bangor. LaJoie now lives in Oakland and faces up to ten years in prison and a fine of up to a quarter million dollars. He’s been in federal custody since his arrest in April.