Lockdown

The bustling winter resort of Big Bear took on the appearance of a ghost town Thursday as surveillance aircraft buzzed overhead and police in tactical gear and carrying rifles patrolled mountain roads in convoys of SUVs, while others stood guard along major intersections. Even before authorities had confirmed that the torched pickup truck discovered on a quiet forest road belonged to suspected gunman Christopher Dorner, 33, officials had ordered an emergency lockdown of local businesses, homes and the town's popular ski resorts.

Moody Air Force Base in Georgia was locked down for about 90 minutes Wednesday while officials investigated a reported threat that turned out not to exist, an official said. Emergency personnel investigated and found there was no threat, a spokeswoman said by telephone. No details on the initial report were available. Moody, about nine miles northeast of Vladosta, Ga., is the home of the 23rd Wing of the Air Combat Command. The first report came in about 1:25 p.m. and the base went on lock down, the spokeswoman said.

Before Mike D'Antoni made his Lakers bench debut Tuesday night, he said that whatever happened against the Brooklyn Nets, he would have to take it sitting down because he was still in pain following recent knee-replacement surgery. By the third quarter of the Lakers' 95-90 victory at Staples Center, D'Antoni was up and barking at the officials several times. Apparently, what he was seeing on the court was more painful than what he was feeling in his knee. In the end, after Deron Williams missed a potential game-tying three-point shot and Kobe Bryant hit a pair of free throws with two-tenths of a second left, D'Antoni and the crowd were on their feet and smiling to celebrate the Lakers' ninth straight victory over the Nets (6-3)

A junior high school student in Stillwater, Okla., committed suicide at the school before classes began on Wednesday, police and school officials said. The student, who has not been named, died from a gunshot wound, Police Capt. Randy Dickerson told the Stillwater NewsPress. “It doesn't appear that anyone else was in danger or threatened,” he said. Supt. Ann Caine said counselors would be available for students, who were taken to a nearby shopping center after the shooting to wait for their parents.

A privately-run prison for low-security inmates in Mississippi remained locked down Monday while officials investigated what triggered a riot at the Adams County Correctional Center a day earlier. One guard died, and 16 employees were injured -- as were three inmates -- in the riot that began Sunday afternoon. The prison was back under control at 2:45 a.m. Monday, Emilee Beach, a prison spokeswoman said in a telephone interview Monday morning. The cause for the incident was not immediately known, Beach said.

FBI agents have arrived in Kodiak, Alaska, to investigate the fatal shootings of two U.S. Coast Guard members at a communications station, but a spokesman said there is no immediate evidence that the incident was a terrorist act. Investigators would not say Thursday evening whether a gunman was still at large on the remote island in southern Alaska, home to 13,000 people and the largest Coast Guard base in the U.S. “The investigation is...

Two people were killed and seven others wounded Thursday in a shooting at a psychiatric clinic in Pittsburgh , officials said. One of the dead is believed to be the gunman. Amy Dugas, a spokeswoman for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said in a phone interview that police had confirmed the number of dead. The seven people injured were being treated at the hospital, she said. Neither the conditions nor the identities of the injured were immediately available, she said.

There's an open secret about getting on the subway in Los Angeles — you don't really have to pay the fare. Turnstiles are unlocked, security is lax and commuters often hop over or pass through undetected. Citing millions of dollars in lost revenue, transportation officials have been wrestling with the issue for years. On Thursday, they made their most forceful push yet to lock the gates to anyone without a ticket at a swath of rail stations. The effort is the latest bid by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority to fix a disjointed regional ticketing network that allows some a free ride while creating problems for others who choose to pay. "There are a lot of people who have been avoiding their fares," said Zev Yaroslavsky, a county supervisor and Metro board member.

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles Virginia Tech, the site of a 2007 shooting rampage that left 33 people dead, faced a scare Thursday as authorities ordered a campus lockdown after three youths reported seeing a man carrying what they believed to be a gun concealed by a cloth. Alerts were issued. Classes were canceled. Students were urged to stay indoors. And for more than five hours, police from several law enforcement agencies scoured the campus, even releasing a composite sketch as they searched for the reported gunman.

Virginia Tech remained on lockdown Thursday afternoon while authorities released a sketch of the man who may have brought a weapon onto the campus where 33 people died in a shooting spree in 2007. The "campus alert remains in effect," officials of the Blacksburg, Va., school said in a posting on the school's website. "We recommend that students, employees, and others on campus remain secured indoors. Classes are canceled for remainder of the day. Students are asked not to come to campus.