In the Nation

OAK PARK, Mich. - A teenager was arrested yesterday in connection with the fatal shooting of a suburban Detroit police officer who had stopped him for driving without a license, police said.

The Detroit teenager surrendered to police a few hours after shooting Oak Park Officer Mason Samborski, police said. Samborski, 28, stopped the 16-year-old driver of a Jeep Grand Cherokee during the early morning.

The officer put the teen in his squad car and drove him to a nearby apartment complex, apparently seeking an adult to take custody of him or someone who could establish his identity, Chief John McNeilance said.

A struggle occurred at the apartment and Samborski was shot once, the chief said. He wouldn't say whether the officer was shot with his own gun. A neighbor called police.

- AP

NEW YORK - A 15-year-old Bronx girl has been charged with two homicides including the death of a man whose dismembered body was found in a plastic bag. Sharell Butler was arraigned Saturday and charged as an adult with murder in the deaths of Christopher Umpierre, 24, on Dec. 19 and John Hopkins-Drago, 22, on Dec. 21.

A Bronx building superintendent found Hopkins-Drago's body stuffed in a garbage bag. The medical examiner's office said the cause of death was stab wounds to his head, torso and extremities. Prosecutors said Umpierre was shot in the chest during a home invasion robbery involving Butler and others.

Prosecutors do not believe that Butler was the shooter, but no one else had been charged in Umpierre's death as of yesterday, said Steven Reed, a spokesman for the District Attorney's Office. Butler, whose street name is "Lady Red," was arraigned in Bronx criminal court and was being held without bail.

- AP

MIAMI - A cruise ship at the center of a missing-person mystery returned to the Port of Miami yesterday morning, where FBI agents stood waiting. They launched an investigation into the disappearance of Jennifer Seitz, 36, who was a passenger aboard the Norwegian Pearl, officials said.

Surveillance footage from a ship camera shows a woman falling overboard at 8:08 p.m. Friday, Coast Guard officials said yesterday. Seitz's husband reported her missing as the vessel sailed about 15 miles east of Cancun, Mexico.

Despite an exhaustive search, the Coast Guard and the Mexican navy have been unable to find any trace of Seitz, officials said. Cruise ship staff alerted the Coast Guard that Seitz may have fallen overboard after they searched the 15-deck vessel.

- S. Florida Sun-Sentinel

The leader of the nation's

largest public utility promised yesterday to address health concerns near a major coal-ash spill last week at the Kingston Fossil Plant in eastern Tennessee. Tom Kilgore, who heads the Tennessee Valley Authority, told a group of 200 to 300 residents that the utility would pay to test wells for contamination and would start air-quality testing.