New snag for body-building firefighter

A state retirement board has stopped processing the disability retirement application of Boston firefighter Albert Arroyo, who competed in a bodybuilding contest just weeks after he said he suffered a career-ending injury. Joseph Connarton, executive director of the state Public Employee Retirement Administration Commission, said yesterday that Boston officials asked his agency to hold up work on the application after finding out about Arroyo's bodybuilding activities. The Globe reported earlier this month that Arroyo placed eighth in the Pro Natural American Championships on May 3, six weeks after he reported slipping on a fire house staircase and injuring his back so severely that his doctor said he was "totally and permanently incapacitated" and should receive a disability pension. The Boston Retirement Board is reviewing Arroyo's application.

The Bush administration has given Massachusetts a third two-week extension on a critical Medicaid waiver that girds the state's new universal healthcare law. The waiver allows Massachusetts to bypass rules about spending its federal Medicaid money so that the state can fund the healthcare law. The current $385 million annual waiver was to expire June 30. The state Department of Health and Human Services announced yesterday that the new one will do so Aug. 11. The Legislature is currently debating a bill that would have employers pick up an additional $130 million in costs under the health plan. The House and Senate are slated to wrap up business for the year at midnight Thursday. (AP)

An argument at a Jamaica Plain bar led to the fatal shooting of a man later that night in 2005, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Hickman told a Suffolk Superior Court jury yesterday. Hickman said that Michael Etheridge was shot three times in his car after leaving the Old Stag Tavern. During opening statements, Hickman said that the suspect, Robert Lee Jones, had a problem with someone at the bar and an altercation ensued. Jones later drove up to where Etheridge and a friend were stopped at an intersection and, after a struggle, shot him three times, Hickman said. Jones left the Boston area in the weeks after the killing. He was apprehended after an extensive investigation.

Jury selection has begun in the trial of a New Hampshire man accused of killing his former lover's husband and another man at a Wakefield concrete company in 2006. Prosecutors say Sean Fitzpatrick shot Michael Zammitti, 39, because he wanted a relationship with Zammitti's wife. Chester Roberts, a handyman for Zammitti's company, was shot when he walked into the office after Zammitti had been shot. Jury selection began yesterday in Middlesex Superior Court. (AP)

An East Longmeadow man is accused of killing a woman crossing a Springfield street in a wheelchair while he was driving drunk. James Gauthier pleaded not guilty in district court yesterday to motor vehicle homicide and operating under the influence of alcohol, third offense. A judge set a $50,000 cash bail. A prosecutor said the 59-year-old woman's motorized wheelchair was knocked 140 feet by the impact with Gauthier's truck just after 7 p.m. Friday. Gauthier told police that the woman had come out of nowhere. But the prosecutor said a witness saw the woman get hit as she was almost across Roosevelt Avenue near Price Street. Authorities said the victim lived on Price Street, but they have not released her name. (AP)

A federal jury has rejected a lawsuit accusing a state trooper of using excessive force during a 2003 State Police raid on a Narragansett Indian smoke shop. Tribe member Adam Jennings sued Trooper Kenneth Jones for breaking his ankle during the raid July 14, 2003. But yesterday the jury rejected Jennings's claims that Jones had acted unreasonably and ruled in the trooper's favor after deliberating for just a few hours. (AP)