High-speed chase, fatal shooting of armed robber is 2009’s top story

(More of these stories appears this week in the Ladysmith News print edition)



1. Bank robbery suspect shot after high speed chase, officers cleared

A suspect in an Exeland bank robbery was killed in an exchange of gunfire on Oct. 30 after leading law enforcement officers on a high-speed chase through two counties.



2. Hawkins detaches from Ladysmith schools

A Washburn County Circuit Court judge has upheld a recent decision by the state school district boundary appeal board, allowing the Hawkins area to detach from Ladysmith schools.

The ruling by Judge Eugene Harrington appears to finally put to rest years of strained relations between the residents of two communities in a divided school system.



3. Hospital Board asks county board to close nursing home due to financial losses

The board of trustees of Rusk County Memorial Hospital and Nursing Home voted unanimously at a special meeting this month to recommend to the Rusk County Board of Supervisors that the county close its nursing home “as soon as regulation, law and appropriate preparations would allow.”



4. Voters approve merging schools in Chetek, Weyerhaeuser

By almost a 6-1 margin in the Weyerhaeuser Area School District and more than a 2-1 margin in the Chetek School District, voters in a binding referendum in November overwhelmingly authorized merging into a single school district.

Weyerhaeuser school residents voted 536-yes, 92-no.

Chetek school residents voted 863-yes, 341-no.



5. Rusk County unemployment among highest in the state during 2009.

Rusk County had some of the highest unemployment among the 72 counties in the state for much of 2009.

For four months it ranked first in unemployment between January and April. The rate improved slightly during summer, but in November began to tick upward once again.



6. County Market/ACE Home Center get new owners after fears they could close

Gordy’s County Market officially announced Jan. 30 that it had purchased the Ladysmith County Market and Cornell Supervalu grocery stores. The sale of the ACE Home Center in Ladysmith was completed April 17.



7. Harry Rogers gets life sentence in Rob Pfeil murder

Harry “John” Rogers received a mandatory sentence of life in prison last February for the 1979 murder of Robert Pfeil, Jr.

In sentencing Rogers, Rusk County Circuit Court Judge Frederick Henderson called the murder inexcusable.

A jury from Douglas County deliberated about 40 minutes before finding Rogers guilty in December 2008 of first degree intentional homicide in the killing of Pfeil nearly 30 years ago.



8. Mount Senario Education Center reopens

The Mount Senario campus in Ladysmith is being re-invented.

It is being transformed into an educational learning center, where multiple colleges will provide on-site secondary education instruction. Its dormitory will house as many as 40 foreign exchange students, who will attend high school in the city. There is an art gallery just inside the main entrance. A children’s museum is coming. There is a dream of turning the former cafeteria into a public restaurant.



9. Study projects 22 percent population decrease for Ladysmith by 2030

A Wisconsin Department of Administration population study depicts a much smaller Ladysmith 20 years from now, projecting the city will lose about a quarter of its residents by 2030.

The Wisconsin Population 2035 study completed in the fall of 2008 by the state DOA projects Ladysmith will lose 22 percent of its population by 2030. As a result, the city’s population of 3,932 according to the 2000 U.S. Census will dip to a projected level of 3,071 over a 30-year period. The study cast forwards municipal populations statewide through 2030 and county populations through 2035.



10. Pair charged in thrill-killing of Radisson woman

The brutal murder of a 93-year-old Radisson woman as she slept at home is being called a “thrill-killing” with satanic overtones by Sawyer County law enforcement.

The Sawyer County Sheriff’s Department received a call from a health care worker on May 5 of a possibly deceased 93-year-old female. The woman was later identified as Irena Roszak, who lived alone in the Village of Radisson.