BISMARCK — The newest chairman of North Dakota’s Republican Party is from Dickinson.
Sen. Kelly Armstrong was unanimously elected by the party Saturday afternoon during a statewide GOP committee meeting at the Doublewood Inn.
Armstrong will serve a two-year term as he chairs the GOP’s executive committee. The position primarily takes the lead for Republican messaging and candidate recruitment in the state.
“I think I can bring some things to the table that help the Republican Party experience success in the future,” Armstrong said.
Former GOP Chairman Robert Harms announced to party officials Friday morning that he would not seek re-election to a second term.
Fargo artist Paul Ide began painting a mural that will grace the west wall of the old Dickinson Press building on Saturday afternoon in downtown Dickinson.
Building owner Eric Smallwood said he found Ide after searching for the best mural artist in North Dakota.
He wanted to add color to downtown Dickinson and to get rid of the drab gray brick wall that he said needed to be repainted anyway.
A couple embraces while looking at the remains of their rented trailer home early Saturday morning in south Dickinson. The couple lost two pets and most of their possessions in the fire, which happened directly behind the Paragon on Villard Street. (Dustin Monke / The Dickinson Press)
A young Dickinson couple is homeless after a late Friday night fire consumed the trailer home they were renting, as well as their two pets and most of their possessions.
“Absolutely everything they had, they lost right here,” Dickinson Fire Chief Bob Sivak said at the scene around 1:15 a.m. Saturday.
The couple, whose names were not provided, lost their Chihuahua dog and a cat in the fire. They were only able to salvage a handful of items left unaffected by the fire.
The trailer was only about 25 feet behind the Paragon bowling alley and sports club off Villard Street. The building was evacuated for a short time until the Dickinson Fire Department contained the blaze.
Sivak said the fire likely started in the front of the trailer, but that it’s difficult to determine the cause.
“There’s nothing to investigate. That’s how bad it is,” he said. “Wires are burned right down to the copper. The walls are down and everything. We could make a guess, but I don’t want to do that because I can’t prove that one way or another.”
Sivak said the couple did not have renter’s insurance, but that the American Red Cross was at the scene and was looking into ways to help them.
Investigators stand in an excavation site Friday on 40th Street in north Dickinson, where investigators are exhuming skeletal remains found late Thursday night. (Dustin Monke / The Dickinson Press)
Law enforcement agencies spent much of Friday exhuming the decomposed human remains of an unidentified “apparent construction worker,” discovered late Thursday at a worksite in north Dickinson.
The body was “relatively intact” and found in the crouched upright position near an underground utility pipeline, according to a statement sent at 8:35 p.m. Friday, according to statements from Dickinson Police Capt. Joe Cianni.
“A positive identification of the body was not possible at the scene due to the extent of the decomposition of the body and the deterioration of the related clothing,” Cianni’s statement read. “Nothing unusual or suspicious was unearthed during the exhumation.”
Phoebe Stubblefield, the forensic science program director at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, supervised the exhumation. The body will be transported to UND for Stubblefield’s forensic medical examination.
Law enforcement agencies began investigating the construction site at the corner of 40th Street East and Fourth Avenue East before 7 a.m. Friday morning, according to reports, as police taped off the area and officers stood watch around the perimeter. The exhumation didn’t wrap up until 7:26 p.m., according to Cianni’s statement.
The remains were discovered near an industrial park and directly east of the Integrated Production Services and Halliburton campuses on 40th Street. The area is north of Lincoln Meadows Apartments.
Multiple calls and messages left for Cianni were not returned.
A Veit Construction worker uses an excavator while tearing into Trinity High School’s east wing on Tuesday afternoon as part of demolition to remove the part of the building rendered unusable by the March 2014 fire. (Dustin Monke / The Dickinson Press)
Steel was ripped, bricks crumbled, dust flew and even chalkboards weren’t spared from the wrath of a construction excavator performing the final demolition project at Trinity High School on Tuesday afternoon.
“When I first came out here, I started crying,” said Dickinson Catholic Schools President Steve Glasser as he drove by to watch the demolition late in the afternoon. “It puts some closure to everything we’ve been through in the past 14 months. Now it’s real.”
Demolition of the structure began shortly after lunchtime, said Eugene Smith, project superintendent for JE Dunn Construction.
He said Veit Construction, which is a subcontractor on the job, began chipping away at the building and segregating iron, aluminum, sheet metal and concrete.
“They pull the concrete and recycle everything,” Smith said.
Dustin Monke 