Firecracker breaks apartment windows in Everett

Police officials are investigating a small explosion that blew out some windows of a first-floor apartment at a building on Hancock Street yesterday. Police said the damage was apparently caused by a powerful firecracker that was set off in a first-floor apartment at 132 Hancock St. The homeowner was not present and there was no fire and no injuries were reported, police said. Neighbors called police about 5 p.m. citing a loud noise that some said sounded like a gun shot. Police searched the perimeter for more than two hours.

Milton police are looking for a 38-year-old man who allegedly robbed a storage warehouse at gunpoint and tied up two employees, before making off with $500 to $600. Shaheed Dameqqah, who is also known as Henry Clark, was at large last night. He allegedly entered Extra Storage Space on Adams Street around 4:30 p.m. yesterday and ordered two female clerks to the ground, bound their mouths and legs with duct tape, before taking money from the cash register and one woman's wallet, Lieutenant Michael Collins said. Neither victim was hurt. Dameqqah, who has no known address, is wanted for armed robbery. Anyone with information is urged to contact Milton police at 617-698-3800.

A sex offender who raped a 6-year-old boy at a Cape Cod hotel while he was on probation for a prior conviction has been sentenced to seven to nine years in prison. John Cox was a registered sex offender when he assaulted the boy in the men's bathroom at the hotel pool in May 2006. The boy's family was visiting from Connecticut. Cox, 40, was arrested a year later when his DNA was matched on a national database. He pleaded guilty Friday. At the time of the rape, Cox was on probation for a rape in 1997, when he assaulted a young girl he lured into the boiler room of a Fitchburg community center. He got five years in prison and 10 years' probation in that case.

Donna Boston, the mother of a man believed to have been killed by Sheila LaBarre, is planning his memorial service. LaBarre has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the death of Michael Deloge, who disappeared nearly four years ago. LaBarre, who also is accused of killing a boyfriend whose remains were found on her Epping horse farm two years ago, essentially acknowledged last month that the state could prove her guilty of both killings, but she said she was not legally responsible because she was insane. LaBarre will have to prove insanity to avoid prison and be sent instead to a psychiatric ward. Her trial is set to begin May 5. (AP)

Despite the well publicized drop in real estate prices across the country, the cost of housing across the Green Mountain State is continuing its 15-year increase, according to a survey of 2007 real estate prices by a South Burlington firm. Home prices in Chittenden County were up slightly last year, while family income remained practically flat, making housing more expensive, said the report by the company Allen & Brooks. (AP)

The provost and senior vice chancellor of academic affairs at the University of Massachusetts at Boston is set to become the next president of Green Mountain College in Poultney. Paul Fonteyn, 61, will start in July. He directed UMass-Boston's reaccreditation process. Previously, he worked at San Francisco State University in California and Southwest Texas State University. Fonteyn will succeed John F. Brennan, who will retire in June. Green Mountain is an environmental liberal arts college with about 1,300 students. (AP)

The US Forest Service is increasing the amount of timber that can be harvested from Green Mountain National Forest each year by 20 percent. Officials call the increase a technical correction of an error made when maximum volumes were calculated for the forest's new long-term plan. The change will increase the maximum harvest from 16.4 million board feet to 19.7 million board feet. Forest Supervisor Meg Mitchell says there are no changes in the number of acres treated or which trees will be harvested. Ed Larson of the Vermont Forest Products Group calls the change a step in the right direction. (AP)

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