LORAIN — A Lorain woman was shot in the leg in the aftermath of a fight following the end of a birthday party early Sunday morning.

According to Lorain police, Keeva Long, 34, of Lorain, was flown to St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center in Toledo after the shooting, which occurred shortly before 1:50 a.m. on the 2900 block of Oakdale Avenue. She was not at the hospital Sunday night, according to St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center.

According to witnesses, the fight broke out after the party ended. As a red Oldsmobile Intrigue reportedly carrying four men was being backed out of the driveway, four shots were reportedly fired from the vehicle into the air. When the vehicle turned onto the street, two more shots rang out and Long was hit by one of them.

No arrests had been made Sunday night.

Air Force Staff Sgt. Jessica Switzer, Special to The Chronicle-Telegram

FAYETTEVILLE, W.Va. — For the son of a Wellington woman, the competition was a strenuous test of endurance, teamwork and skill that took him, and 215 other men and women representing all military services and the U.S. Coast Guard, through more than 50 miles of rugged West Virginia mountains and white-water rapids.

Army Spec. Joshua W. Clayton, son of Jennifer Dalton of Wellington, was one of those service members who traveled to this remote resort area to test his skills in a five-event outdoor competition called “Wilderness Challenge.”

Over a two-day period, competitors mountain-biked over a 13-mile uphill course, paddled seven-miles in a two-person combination kayak, canoe and raft called a “duckie,” ran a five-mile mountain trail, hiked 15 miles and raced whitewater rafts over 10 miles of rapids.

Clayton was part of an Army team from Washington, D.C., one of 54 teams to compete in this year’s challenge.

“I hadn’t signed up originally but I got told the day before the competition started that they needed another person for the team,” said Clayton, a research technician at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. “I thought it looked like a fun and challenging event, so I agreed to participate.”

Wilderness Challenge represents mostly physical challenges, but forces teams to work together. Each team was required to pass certain checkpoints together, some tying themselves together with bungee cords, and others circling back to the slowest person to make sure they finished together.

The competition, coordinated by the Navy Mid-Atlantic Region, Morale, Welfare and Recreation Department at Naval Weapons Station Yorktown for the last nine years, is a little different each year.

However, while the distances and routes change, core events have remained in place giving teams an idea of what to train for.

Some trained together before arriving and others chose their own training regimens.

“Since I found out at the last possible moment I didn’t have time to train specifically for the competition,” Clayton said. “Most of my training was my regular Army physical training.”

Fighting cold, wet elements, uphill runs, walks and bicycling, and racing river currents, the competitors and teams highlighted their strong points and shored up their weaknesses to become competitive during the race.

“The hardest part of the whole challenge was just getting up early enough in the morning to make it to the start of the events; I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep,” said Clayton, who has been in the Army for nearly four years. “The mountain biking event was one of the easier events for me. I like biking and had some experience I could use on the trail.”

Clayton and the other competitors in Wilderness Challenge received a special event coin commemorating the competition and walked away with the knowledge they put their endurance and willpower to the test.

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LORAIN — The Nord Center is getting more than a quarter of a million dollars in federal stimulus funding.

The mental health services organization was awarded $264,182.24 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds by the Ohio Rehabilitation Services Commission.

The funds are to assist with severe mental illness in Lorain, Huron, Erie and Sandusky counties with employment services.

Those services include career exploration, assessments, job placement and coaching, job skills training and benefits analysis. The areas of skill training are food services, clerical/computer and building trades/maintenance.

To find out more about the services, call (440) 204-4339.

The family of a local soldier visiting their son who had just returned home from Iraq found themselves under lockdown in base housing as the deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood unfolded Thursday.

Mark Ruic of Grafton Township was excited to be spending his birthday Thursday visiting his son, Spc. Jason Ruic, 26, who had just returned Monday from spending almost a year in Iraq. As his wife and daughter-in-law were in the kitchen making a turkey dinner to celebrate, and Jason had just returned from his daily work shift on the base, Ruic was watching TV and hanging out with his 2-year-old granddaughter, Beth.

Suddenly, everything went crazy.

“My wife heard what sounded like rapid gunfire, she called it machine-gun fire,” Mark Ruic said. He said Jason’s home was about a half-mile from where the shooting was.

Shortly after the gunfire began, Mark Ruic said the U.S. Army base’s lockdown sirens began to sound and their cell phones cut out. Ruic said loudspeakers announced to everyone to stay inside, and keep their windows and vents closed. He said his son called his sergeant to see if he needed to come in but was told to stay put and he would be called if he was needed.

“It was unclear what was going on, who was doing it, how many there were,” Mark Ruic said. “Things were very confusing.”

Meanwhile, patrol vehicles were out and Cobra helicopters were circling overhead.

Afterwards, Ruic said, things were a “nightmare mess” on the base. Traffic was backed up everywhere as schools canceled buses for the afternoon and parents had to go to the schools to pick up their children. Cars were being inspected before leaving Fort Hood, and no cars were allowed to enter.

Mark Ruic said his son knew the Soldiers Readiness Processing Center — the site of some of the shootings — well. It’s where soldier go to fill out paperwork before overseas deployments, he said.

The shootings also took place at the neighboring Howze Theater on the west side of the sprawling base.

Mark Ruic has spent a lot of time on military bases, between visiting Jason over his five-year Army career as well as his other son, Joseph, 23, a Marine sergeant currently serving in Afghanistan.

“This is definitely the strangest thing I’ve ever seen (on a base),” Ruic said.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com and Melissa Hebert at 329-7129 or mhebert@chroniclet.com.