Citizen Prince George S .JBL .JffiL imLtfJ m-L_______s .uMJL. Tuesday, December 31, 1985 MAJOR CAMPAIGN AGAINST DRINKING DRIVERS If you’re planning to drive tonight, check your licence plate before you go and make sure you have your driver’s licence, registration and insurance papers with you. In addition to looking for impaired drivers on New Year’s Eve, RCMP at the flying roadblocks which will be set up throughout Prince George will also be checking for expired licence plates and will ask to see your driver’s licence and registration and insurance papers. A spokesman for the RCMP says the licence plates are being checked because many local licence plates expire at midnight Dec. 31. Driving with an expired licence will result in a $300 fine and your car will be impounded, he said. The stepped-up campaign against drunk driving here is part of a nation-wide drive to ensure New Year’s revellers will have an eye on the clock and their minds on their blood alcohol levels as the final minutes of 1985 tick away. Police spot-checks, tougher laws and advertisements aimed at attaching a strong social stigma to inebriated drivers have prompted many drinking establishments and FREE BUSES - PAGE 3 service clubs across Canada to offer safer ways home after the traditional night of heavy drinking. However, the crackdown has not put a damper on celebrations planned in most communities or the fancy price-tags attached to many of them. From Vancouver to St. John’s, Nfld., couples who want to usher in 'Flying' roadblocks set tonight RCMP Corporal Gary Rodgers will he part of Prince George detachment’s New Year’s Eve patrol. VANCOUVER (CP) — They played together as children and were close friends as adults, but today 18-year-old Bradley Joseph Mufford is in police custody, charged with first-degree murder in the death of Danny Rode. Rode’s body was found Monday in a pile of hay in an abandoned Langley barn. He had been shot to death. It’s a double shock for the Mufford family, which is worried about the murder charge against one of its own and also grieving the loss of Rode, 25, a good family friend and an employee at the family’s Langley plastic company. “They were very good friends. They grew up together and were very close,” William Mufford. president of Cameo Plastic Products Ltd. and father of the accused, said Monday. Just one day earlier he was quoted in a newspaper report as being critical of police for not making headway in solving the mystery of Rode’s disappearance. The family and police have been co-operating fully throughout the investigation of Rode’s disappearance Dec. 19, he said. “Police have really been working hard on this one,” he said. “They have advised us not to say anything about the case.” Vernon RCMP said Mufford was arrested at 11 p.m. Monday in a taxi in Vernon. Mufford was expected to be tlown to Langley later today to appear in court. Langley RCMP Staff Sgt. Don Brown said Langley police went to the barn about 4 a.m. Monday after they received a tip that Rode’s body was hidden inside. Mufford last saw Rode about noon on Dec. 19 when the dead man, an equipment operator at Cameo Plastics, left work bound for a lunch appointment with a friend. Later that afternoon the person Rode was supposed to meet called Mufford to say that Rode hadn’t shown up. The next day, Rode’s wife, Vicki, reported her husband missing to police, just hours before they found his new Honda Prelude abandoned. Mulford said in an earlier interview that Rode was “a good man and a hard-working employee," who had been with the company since he was 14 and was really looking forward to a February business trip back east that he was being sent on. He said Monday that his son, Bradley, who worked as a farm hand in Langley for Hugh Mufford, often helped out at the plastics company and worked closely with Rode. There are 300 of us1 bJiieti n ROME (AP) — A man charged with taking part in the Rome airport massacre told investigators he belongs to a Libyan-backed group of 300 commandos that also plans attacks against Paris and Madrid, a Rome newspaper reported today. “We have the support of Khadafy and maybe Syria,” the Rome daily II Tempo quoted Mohammad Sarham as telling investigators. Col. Moammar Khadafy is the leader of Libya. Authorities say Sarham is the only survivor of four terrorists who attacked Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport last Friday. Almost simultaneously. three terrorists attacked an airport in Vienna, where one gunman was killed and two were captured. Sarham, who was wounded and is being held in a military hospital, was quoted by II Tempo as saying: “There are 300 of us, all devoted to suicide actions. When I left Lebanon, preparations were being made for two other attacks like ours at the airports of Madrid and Paris.” The Libyan Embassy in Rome has denied that the North African country was involved. Meanwhile, Italian and Austrian officials compared theories today about the attacks in which a total of 18 people, including the four terrorists, died and nearly 120 were wounded. OTTAWA (CP) — Two armored-car guards were shot and wounded this morning during a holdup involving three armed men who escaped after the shooting. Ottawa police blocked ail exits from the city, but Police Supt. Mike Carney declined to speculate whether the suspects managed to get out. It was not known how much money, if any, was taken in the holdup. Kerry Marshall, a spokesman for Ottawa Civic Hospital, said one of the two guards was in surgery for at least one abdominal wound. He was listed in serious condition. REFINERY ISSUE Blais-Grenier resigns OTTAWA (CP) — Minister of State for Transport Suzanne Blais-Grenier has resigned from cabinet after publicly opposing federal policy on the closure of a Montreal oil refinery, the prime minister’s office said today. Blais-Grenier, demoted last August from her previous job as environment minister, ended her brief but controversial stint in cabinet after protesting Ottawa’s decision to allow the closure of a Gulf Canada Ltd. refinery in Montreal. She and three other Montreal-area Conservative MPs confronted the government in the last few No Citizen Wednesday The Citizen will not publish a paper Wednesday as management and staff join the community in celebrating New Year’s Day. Regular publication resumes Thursday. To all our readers, a sincere wish for a Happy New Year. days over the measure that has threatened 450 jobs in the city. However, the prime minister’s office did not indicate in a brief statement if her departure from cabinet is a direct result of the protest. The statement said Mulroney accepted Blais-Grenier’s resignation today. Blais-Grenier got off to a bad start in her former environment portfolio when critics accused her of mishandling cabinet-directed budget cuts in environmental services. She also prompted widespread criticism after suggesting she was open to the idea of allowing mining in national parks. Mulroney gave her a junior spot as minister of state for transport, but only a few months later she was again in hot water over disclosures about expensive trips she took to Europe. Blais-Grenier told reporters Monday her cabinet colleagues were too hasty in approving the sale of a Gulf Canada Montreal refinery to Ultramar Canada Ltd., a British controlled firm that plans to close the plant. Earlier story, page 5 1986 in grand style can still spend $250 or more for a night of wining, dining and dancing, topped off with a glass of bubbly at the stroke of midnight. In Ottawa, what organizers hope will become another kind of New Year’s tradition is being launched. Ottawa residents are invited to skate along the world’s longest ice rink — the Rideau Canal — to a mammoth outdoor party on Parliament Hill, featuring a light show, fireworks and a live band. . The campaign to discourage drunk driving has spawned a variety of programs to keep those who have made a toast or two too many from sliding behind the wheels of their cars. The efforts include free public transit or taxi rides, cut-price hotel rooms, rides home with volunteers and designated-driver programs, in which one person in a group gets free non-alcoholic beverages all night. The Barrister’s Pub in downtown St. John’s will have a designated-driver plan at its $165-per-couple bash. Ryan Duffy’s, in Halifax, will pick up customers attending its six-course, $39.95 New Year’s Eve steak and seafood feast, then drive them to their next destination. The Delta Brunswick Hotel in Saint John, N.B., has a designated-driver program for bar patrons. However, couples who pay $80 for the hotel’s gala ball must find their own way home, as will those at two $100-a-couple bashes in Charlottetown. In Montreal — where billboards proclaim in blood-red script “alcohol at the wheel is criminal” — a taxi company is offering freu ridos within city limits and area transit commissions will provide free service all evening. Volunteers also will drive inebriated revellers home in Quebec City. In Toronto, transit service won’t be free, as it has been on some past New Year’s Eves, but service will be extended to the wee hours of the morning. Toronto, once again, boasts some of Canada’s highest-priced New Year’s fetes, including a $250-per-couple, nine-course dinner-dance with Howard Cable’s orchestra at the Royal York Hotel and a $260, 11-course feast with guitar-trio accompaniment at the Four Seasons Hotel. The city and a local television station are sponsoring a bash at the skating rink in Nathan Phillips Square, in front of Toronto City Hall. The televised, frozen festivities will star country-rock singer Ronnie Hawkins, a steel band, pipe band, break dancers and Polish singers. The highlight in London, Ont., is the return of Guy Lombardo’s Royal Canadians to the city where they began playing “the sweetest music this side of heaven” in 1914. ■ A Jasper Street couple would like to thank the schnook who undecorated the tree outside their home recently, disappearing with their Christmas lights. “It must take a lot of skill and determination (to stand outside unscrewing 100 bulbs),” they wrote. “Thanks for dulling our Christmas and our block, making it less bright. P.S. You left a couple behind.” Family party Miss Prince George Italian Club, Brenda Storti, 17, was busy earlier today helping club members decorate the Civic Centre for their New Year’s Eve party. All tickets have been sold for what promises to be a good night for the 300 people expected to attend the family dinner and dance which, in traditional Italian style, will be attended by everyone from small children to grandparents. Citizen photo by Lisa Murdoch HIT-AND-RUN charges under the provincial Motor Vehicles Act have been put on hold after a judge ruled a section of the act contravenes the Charter of Rights. Page THE TEAM of the year was the Toronto Blue Jays, says a year-end poll of sportswriters and broadcasters. Page LIVE AID, Bryan Adams and Corey Hart were the biggest newsmakers in the Canadian music industry in 1985. Page “I like a man who knows where he's going.” Index Ann Landers............10 Bridge..................16 Business.......... ......9 City, B.C...............3.7 Classified ............14-16 Comics .................18 Crossword..............15 Editorial.................4 Entertainment.......18-19 Family .................10 Horoscopes.............16 International.............2 Movies..................18 National .................5 Sports................11-13 Television ..............16 All alone Page 13 Sadrack says Cloudy skies and snowflurries are expected throughout the area today, New Year’s Day and Thursday. The temperature overnight is expected to drop to near -5. rising to near -1 on New Year’s Day and Thursday. Monday’s high was -2, the overnight low was -4. there was a trace of snow and no recorded sunshine. A year ago today the high was -28. the overnight low was -41, Details page 7 there was a trace of snow and 3.1 hours of sunshine. Sunset today is at 3:58 p.m. and sunrise New Year’s Day is at 8:29 a.m. Sunset Wednesday is at 3:59 p.m.