Eugene, Lane County | featured news

Worried about a possible assault weapons ban and other restrictions in the wake of the Connecticut school shooting, gun enthusiasts on Saturday flocked to a gun show in Eugene. A line more than three blocks long of mostly men waited for the doors to open at 9 a.m.

One man received minor injuries when a mattress fire spread to the rest of his house, completely destroying the structure. The man, who was not identified, was taken to Sacred Heart Medical Center at University District with unspecified injuries. No one else was injured.

The year’s end has brought Lane Transit District a major win in its five-year quest to extend the EmX bus rapid transit system to West Eugene. The Federal Transit Administration notified the agency before Christmas that if found no environmental road blocks to the project.

Police closed off streets near a downtown hospital Friday night after a man claiming to have a “suspicious device” walked into the emergency room lobby.

A Harrisburg man, Joseph Wilson Brumback, 26, was charged with theft this morning after Eugene police captured him and — with the help of a police K-9 — recovered a gun that had been reported stolen.

Papé Machinery has acquired the assets of Arrow Machinery located in Colfax and Pomeroy, Washington — the latest in a string of acquisitions by the Eugene-based Papé Group. Arrow is an authorized dealer for John Deere Agriculture and Turf equipment, as well as Honda, STIHL, and several other manufacturers.

Litigation over the ownership of the Murphy Company has been settled, the company said today. President and CEO John Murphy bought out the company’s other three shareholders, all family members, for an undisclosed sum.

A scientist who examined the dock that recently washed ashore on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula says it looks just like the one that came ashore on a central Oregon beach last summer, suggesting it also is a piece of tsunami debris from Japan.

Severely injured Lane County Sheriff’s Deputy Drew Wattier is back in Oregon, at a long-term care facility in Portland, but he is not awake although he has made “great progress” in recent days, the county said. His wife, Michelle, also injured in the Nov.

Oregon’s Dungeness crab season will officially start at 12:01 a.m. Monday, after a monthlong delay to allow the crabs to fill out more. Fishermen will begin setting their pots off the Oregon coast at 8 a.m. Friday.