Western Wisconsin News Briefs: Appeals court says boy not liable for paintball accident

Talk about it

WAUSAU - A state appeals court says a 13-year-old northwest Wisconsin boy is not liable for injuring a 14-year-old friend during a paintball game.

Jett Houston took off his face-mask during a time-out, just before he was shot in the eye by his 13-year-old friend Alex Freese. It happened about four years ago in a wooded area in Polk County. Houston suffered a detached retina – and his family filed a lawsuit that accused Freese of being reckless and negligent. A circuit judge threw out the lawsuit. And the Third District Appeals Court in Wausau upheld that dismissal today. It said Freese did not know that a time-out was called when he hit Houston.

_______________________________________________________

A former special education teacher in Rice Lake has pleaded guilty to having sex with a pair of 17-year-old students. 31-year-old Andrea Ebert of Cameron was originally charged in Barron County with two felony counts of sexual assault by a school staffer. Today, she pleaded guilty to one of those counts – and the other was reduced to a misdemeanor of having intercourse with a child over 16. Ebert is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 6. Authorities said she had sexual contact about 2-to-3 times with each boy from last November through January. And she reportedly sent the youngsters nude photos of herself to their cell phones. Ebert resigned her post as a middle school special education teacher in May.

Tags: western wisconsin, news, wisconsin