Staff/Wire reports

A laid-off Cleveland police officer now working in Cincinnati got a Medal of Valor in his home city for stopping a rape last year.

Aric Pruitt is one of nine former Cleveland officers hired by Cincinnati in the first-ever lateral transfer program. The nine graduated from an abbreviated police academy last week. Pruitt works second shift in District 4. The Rotary Club of Cleveland gave the medal Thursday to Pruitt and his former partner. The officers responded to an apartment building and could hear a woman screaming for her life and begging God for help. They broke open the locked door and dragged the man off her.

Cancer Society gets $215,000

Two corporations have pledged $215,000 to help pay for the American Cancer Society's new Hope Lodge. The lodge is in

Avondale in a former mansion and school along Reading Road near the former Bethesda Oak Hospital. It will be a place for up to 23 out-of-town cancer patients and families to stay when seeking treatment in Cincinnati. Procter & Gamble has pledged $115,000 and Federated Department Stores Foundation has pledged $100,000 to help finish the project. The Hope Lodge is expected to open this year. Information: (513) 891-1600.

Judge rejects Sy Murray's suit

A Hamilton County judge has again thrown out a lawsuit by former Cincinnati City Manager Sylvester Murray against the city and a foundation for his work on race relations in 2001. Common Pleas Judge Patrick T. Dinkelacker said Murray's firm, Joshua Kim Associates of Cleveland, had simply re-filed his old claims against Mayor Charlie Luken and the Knowledge Works Foundation by adding the foundation's president, Chad P. Wick, as an individual defendant. Because Wick was acting as an officer of the foundation, Murray cannot bring the same suit twice, the judge said. Murray claimed the city and the foundation owed him $44,362 for work he did over and above his $100,000 contract.