The Times Herald-Record reports that a 34-year-old man, whose name has not yet been released, was shot in the wee hours of Monday morning and died en route to the hospital.

White shooter, black victim. Without more facts, it's impossible to say why authorities are suspecting a racial motive to yesterday's dramatic showdown at the Cooperstown police station, but that's what the AP implies.

It began when the white teen stepped out of a car with a .22-caliber rifle and began chasing three youths who had been walking through a park near the Hall of Fame Library, village police Chief Diana Nicols said.

Authorities are investigating whether the shooter was motivated by racial hatred, she said.

Just in case the impact of negative news on the local tourist economy is the first thing that springs to mind on learning that sixteen-year-olds are shooting each other in the police station, the AP story notes that the Baseball Hall of Fame stayed open throughout the incident.

The Daily Star yields a little more insight:

It sounds like a scene from an old Western: One teenager shoots another, then himself, in the Cooperstown police station.

Cooperstown Police Chief Diana T. Nicols said it all began when a car crashed into the iron gates just outside the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

From there, a 16 year-old male armed with a small-caliber rifle got out of the crashed vehicle and chased another 16 year-old teen from the corner of Main and Fair Street to the front of the Main Street Police Station. Police Chief Nicols said that the shooter had come out of the SUV that crashed into the gates.

The Daily Star has more:

In an incident involving two Cooperstown High School sophomores, Wesley Lippitt was shot and wounded in an arm this afternoon in the Cooperstown Police Station. The alleged shooter -- Anthony Pacherille – then shot himself in the chin outside the station, according to Cooperstown Police Chief Diana Nicols.

Verizon has officially announced that it won't be installing its high-speed fiber-optic cable network in most of upstate New York, or anywhere else it already isn't available. But that won't stop the company from advertising the service in areas where it can't be had, Verizon spokesman John Bonomo tells the Daily Freeman:

Bonomo said residents in areas where FiOS is not available should equate seeing Verizon advertisements to those for auto dealerships.
“We run those commercials in those areas or on those mediums that hit the most people,” he said. “Now granted, you are going to hit people who don’t have availability for it. It’s the same thing with a car commercial. ... They can say buy a Chevy, but I don’t have a Chevy dealership within 50 miles of me.”

Yesterday's Daily Freeman had the goods: a Freedom of Information Law request turned up a damning report from the state Commission on Corrections on the death of 22-year-old Richard Vandemark in the Ulster County jail last April. Vandemark hanged himself in the jail's medical unit, a day after his arrest on an assault charge.

The report says Sperath, who could not be reached for comment Tuesday, told sheriff’s office investigators in a sworn statement that he believed he had seen Vandemark sitting at his table writing when he performed his 6 p.m. round on April 8, 2009.

But, according to the report, when commission officials reviewed the infirmary’s housing area video, they found Sperath had not seen Vandemark for over a half hour before Vandemark was found in a three-bed medical unit “hanging in the shower area suspended from the curtain rod by a bed sheet ligature” at 6:16 p.m.