Briefly

Fire on Big Bend Road damages garage

Cape Girardeau firefighters responded to a garage fire at 1338 Big Bend Road at about 11 p.m. Thursday. The garage was a 16-by-25-foot unattached single-car garage with about 30 percent of the interior involved, according to a news release issued by the fire department Friday. The report said the structure sustained moderate damage with extensive damage to its contents. The fire is still under investigation, and its cause is undetermined at this time.

Group homes had 1,500 fire violations

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Missouri's residential care facilities have been hit with more than 1,500 fire safety violations in the past four years, with state inspectors finding problems year after year at many of those homes. About two-thirds of the state's roughly 635 licensed residential care facilities had been cited for at least one fire safety violation from 2003 through mid-December 2006, according to an Associated Press analysis of inspection citations provided by the Department of Health and Senior Services. The AP requested the database figures under the state's open records law following a Nov. 27 fire that killed 11 people at the Anderson Guest House for the mentally ill and disabled. State regulators have since shut down all four facilities run by Joplin River of Life Ministries Inc.

Woman's son, two others charged in killing

ST. LOUIS -- At first, it looked like Rita Oberhart-Servais was killed during a burglary at her south St. Louis home. Now, authorities believe the 57-year-old woman's own son and his fiancee hired a friend to kill her. Money was the suspected motive. Patrick Oberhart, 21, fiancee Katherine Lindsey, 32, and their friend, Jimmie Lee Tate Jr., 22, were charged Thursday with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and armed criminal action. None of the three had previous criminal records. Oberhart-Servais was shot in the forehead Dec. 27 as she stepped onto her front porch. Investigators think the suspects wanted the killing to look like a burglary, so they broke a rear window of the house. But detectives found only one previous residential burglary in the neighborhood in recent months.

-- From staff, wire reports