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sconded parole. Instead of stopping, the suspect floored it, police said. City officers backed off quickly, officials say, because the man was driving erratically and putting other motorists at risk.
• But soon after, Lincoln County deputies took over the pursuit, which ended in Marion, a small town of fewer than 1,000 residents about an hour from Sioux Falls.
• The deputies lost track of the man and had called off the search. Police received a phone call at 9 a.m. from the suspect's mother, saying he was hiding out in his grandmother's home.
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• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- South Dakota's largest city is finishing the year with the second-largest building-permit valuations in its history, thanks to a Christmas Eve building permit issued for the events center under construction in Sioux Falls.
• Chief Building Official Ron Bell says in a news release that the city approved a $63 million permit for the structural steel and enclosure package for the center. It was requested by Mortenson Construction on Monday.
• Its approval brings the city's total construction valuation to more than $489 million -- still short of the 2007 record of $523 record, but 68 percent ahead of last year's figure.
• The tally refers to the permitted amount of valuation for all commercial and residential new buildings, additions, repairs, remodels and renovation projects.
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• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- Their faces contorted in anguish, the parents of three children killed in a weekend fire in Sioux Falls said they'd barely had time to jump from a window to save themselves from the flames.
• Firefighters discovered the children, ages 6 to 16, in a second-story room after the fast-moving blaze tore through the house early Saturday.
• David White, the children's stepfather, struggled during a Sunday night candlelight vigil outside the remains of the burned home.
• "To have to look at the charred mess behind and know how much loss of love is inside there behind this fence," he told the Argus Leader.
• The parents awoke about 8 a.m. Saturday to smoke coming from under their bedroom door. Rhiannon White, the children's mother, said she had little time to do anything but jump from the home's second level. After she landed, she lay on the ground praying her children would jump to safety as well.

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