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Standish store owner won't face any charges
Steve Collins has denied any knowledge of the sign seeking bets on Obama's assassination, authorities say.

By JOHN RICHARDSON, Staff Writer
November 22, 2008

The owner of a Standish general store will not face any charges from local police or the Maine Attorney General's Office for a sign posted in the store earlier this month that asked customers to bet on the timing of an assassination of President-elect Barack Obama, county and state officials said Friday.

Oak Hill General Store owner Steve Collins denied any knowledge of the sign when a Cumberland County sheriff's deputy arrived to investigate a report of it on Nov. 7, Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion said Friday. The sign itself was nowhere to be found at that time, he said.

And, even if the sign had not been removed, posting it was not necessarily a crime, Dion said. ''It doesn't appear that it was constituting a criminal threat or a terrorizing incident,'' he said.

The sign invited customers to participate in an ''Osama Obama Shotgun Pool'' and wager $1 on the date of Obama's assassination, according to two journalists for The Associated Press who saw it while checking out a tip of its existence. At the bottom, the sign read: ''Let's hope someone wins.''

A description of the sign was included in an Associated Press national roundup of post-election incidents, many of them racially tinged, decrying the election of the nation's first black president. That story appeared Nov. 16, and has led to national attention and angry e-mails to town officials.

Dion attributed the sign to Collins in a statement to a Portland Press Herald reporter that was included in the AP story on Nov. 16. ''Whatever the intent of his expression was, we never located the evidence of it,'' Dion said at the time.

Dion had also suggested to Press Herald writers that Collins acknowledged the sign. But on Friday, Dion said those statements were based on body language and behavior, and that Collins did not accept responsibility.

''I think we have the liberty to connect a few dots here. It's unlikely somebody would walk in from the street and post the sign in the store,'' he said. ''At (the) least it's an expression that he provided space for in his store.''

Collins could not be reached Friday. He told his landlord last weekend that he was going hunting and the store has been closed all week, something customers said is not unusual at this time of year. He has yet to talk publicly about the incident, and it's unclear how much he knows about the flap created by the sign.

State lawmakers from the Standish area plan to introduce a legislative resolution condemning it and other post-election incidents around the state. The Standish Town Council, faced with angry e-mails from around the country, passed a resolution Thursday calling the alleged activity at the store reprehensible. And Friday evening, Gov. John Baldacci and other state and local leaders addressed the incident at an anti-hate rally at the University of Southern Maine campus in Portland.

The controversy began Friday, Nov. 7, when an unidentified man who described himself as a customer of the store called the Associated Press office in Portland to say he'd seen the sign. Reporter Jerry Harkavy and photographer Bob Bukaty went to the store that afternoon and saw the sign as described by the caller, Harkavy said.

A man behind the counter, the only other person in the store, kicked the journalists out when he found out who they were, Harkavy said. They did not get a photograph, although Harkavy wrote down a description of the sign.

Harkavy and Bukaty went to nearby Standish Town Hall to see if town officials had heard about the shotgun pool. The journalists described the sign to Town Manager Gordon Billington. He called the state Attorney General's Office and gave a written statement to the sheriff's department. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Harnett said he called the U.S. Secret Service to tell them about the sign and left it to police to investigate......................http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=223484&ac=PHnws