Lewis County Sirens.com

Mary and Anthony Foxworth plead not guilty today in child mistreatment case in Lewis County Superior Court.

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The Centralia parents of a 16-year-old boy discovered so malnourished he weighed less than 60 pounds pleaded not guilty today to first-degree criminal mistreatment.

Mary G. Foxworth, 42, and Anthony S. Foxworth, 44, went before a judge this afternoon in Lewis County Superior Court.

They were accompanied by court appointed lawyers.

Judge Richard Brosey asked them each if they had any questions and then asked how did they plead.

“Not guilty,” each responded separately.

Charges against the couple were filed Dec. 12 and they were summonsed to appear in court last Friday. Both were allowed to remain free on $10,000 unsecured bonds pending trial and ordered to return today for their arraignment.

The available details about the case are five pages of the affidavit regarding probable cause.

The Centralia Police Department began investigating after the Foxworths took their son to the doctor almost a year ago, on Jan. 19, 2016.

The investigation found the boy had not been enrolled in school since 2011 and had not seen a doctor since 2007.

He has a younger brother and sister who are enrolled in school, appeared healthy and presented little concern, Lewis County Deputy Prosecutor Melissa Bohm wrote in charging documents. Investigators found numerous medical contacts for his siblings over the years, she wrote.

The charging documents offer some of the following information and allegations:

Mary Foxworth contacted Northwest Pediatrics on Jan. 19, 2016 near closing time, saying her son had not been eating or drinking for about three weeks and had abdominal pain.

Medical providers said the boy was whiter than a sheet of paper, looked acutely ill and didn’t talk but only grunted. The doctor estimated his age at  11 or 12. The medical assistant described him as skin and bones, said she had never seen anyone in his condition before or since and she was nauseous from looking at him.

The teen was sent to Providence Centralia Hospital for a diagnosis and they transferred him to Mary Bridge Childrens’ Hospital in Tacoma.

He weighed 54 pounds, was missing patches of hair, could not stand on his own and could not open his mouth wide enough to allow a doctor to check his throat.

He was wearing pull-ups and his skeletal age was determined to be that of a 13-year-old child.

The doctor there wrote in a report “at best, this is neglect, but maybe also physical abuse.”

The boy suffered from severe malnutrition, severe constipation and anemia. He was seen by a dentist and needed 24 of his teeth to be treated, including one that had to be pulled and two that would require root canals.

The charging documents don’t indicate when the boy was put in foster care, but note that as of a date unspecified, he had grown more than three inches and gained 39 pounds. His specific height is not mentioned.

Police detectives interviewed the parents.

Anthony Foxworth said the family regularly ate healthy meals together, regularly bathed and that all his children saw a dentist at least once a year.

He attributed the long hospitalization to the boy’s grandfather – who resided with them – being mean to him.

Separately, Mary Foxworth told detectives the children did not regularly see a dentist or routinely eat three good meals a day.

She indicated she thought he was starving himself because he was depressed. Mary Foxworth admitted she didn’t know when he began to lose weight because she was too wrapped up in her own depression.

The mother admitted to making poor choices, being so sorry for failing him and wrote a letter to her son indicating the same, writing she hoped he would be able to forgive her.

Bohm wrote in charging documents that multiple medical professionals indicated the teen’s condition was the direct result of the neglect, if not abuse, suffered at the hands of the defendants, over a matter of years.

The boy’s foster parents have reported they began a “book of firsts” to track things the teen had not done before, such as learning to push a broom, make a sandwich and go to a movie theater.

The Foxworths when contacted earlier this week declined to comment about the allegations.

Charging documents don’t note if the boy had any pre-existing condition or disease. Mary Foxworth’s lawyer, Jacob Clark, this afternoon outside the courtroom, said that wasn’t something he was able to comment upon.

Their trial is scheduled for the week of March 20. first-degree criminal mistreatment has a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and/or a $20,000 fine.

The packed courtroom breaks into applause after Andrew Toynbee is sworn in as Lewis County Superior Court judge.

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Newly sworn in Lewis County Superior Court Judge Andrew Toynbee vowed to work hard, be diligent and be prepared as he faced his peers, friends, family and co-workers old and new today.

“I’ll treat everyone with respect, regardless of who they are,” he said.

The Adna resident was sworn into his new role by outgoing Lewis County Superior Court Judge Nelson Hunt this afternoon.

“This is a very pleasurable moment for me, because I know we’ve got a great judge coming,” Hunt said.

Hunt told the gathered crowd he’d hired Toynbee back in the 1990s for his first job, in the Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office when Hunt was the elected prosecutor.

The swearing in ceremony was held in department one, which Hunt has presided over since after he was first elected in 2004.

The benches were nearly full, extra chairs were brought in and the front row of the jury box held sitting judges from Lewis County, Thurston County and the Washington State Court of Appeals.

Toynbee ran unopposed for the seat in November and leaves behind his workplace, the Thurston County Prosecutor’s Office.

Thurston County Prosecutor Jon Tunheim spoke today as well, praising Toynbee’s style as calm and gentle, calling him a genuinely authentic person.

“I can’t imagine a person who is better suited for this position,” Tunheim said.

After he was sworn in, presented with his robe and gavel, Toynbee took his seat at the bench, his voice sometimes breaking as he expressed gratitude for those who’ve helped him along the way.

Honesty, integrity, authenticity and humility were some of the traits he said he’s learned more about from others.

“I thank you all for helping prepare me for this position,” he said.

Lewis County Superior Court Judge Richard Brosey is retiring this week as well. Judge-Elect Joely O’Rourke will be sworn in on Monday.

Toynbee and O’Rourke are joining Judge James Lawler and Commissioner Tracy Mitchell in Lewis County Superior Court.

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Lewis County Superior Court Judge Nelson Hunt, left, swears in Andrew Toynbee.

The underside of the vehicle at Reynolds Avenue and Lum Road. / Courtesy photo by Riverside Fire Authority

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Two people were hurt in a suspected DUI crash in which a speeding vehicle flipped onto its side into trees in Centralia just before 1 o’clock this morning.

Firefighters and police responding to the corner of Reynolds Avenue and Lum Road found that witnesses broke a window and removed the passenger to safety, according to authorities.

“The driver was extricated from the vehicle utilizing heavy rescue equipment,” Riverside Fire Authority Capt. Casey McCarthy wrote in a brief summary of the incident.

They were assisted by members of Lewis County Fire District 6, the Washington State Patrol and the Centralia Police Department, according to McCarthy.

Witnesses observed the vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed before the crash, according to police. Both occupants were transported with possible serious injuries to Providence Centralia Hospital, according to McCarthy.

The driver, 25-year-old Michael J. Spillman, of Centralia, was processed for driving under the influence before being transported to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, according to the Centralia Police Department.

View of bullet hole looking forward from front seat of Mazda hatchback. / Courtesy photo by Washington State Patrol

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – It’s been a year since a driver on Interstate 5 fired a handgun at least once, sending a bullet through the rear window of the car ahead of him, busting a hole through the top left corner of its rearview mirror and then piercing the windshield.

“It came really close, really close, to the driver,” Washington State Patrol Trooper Will Finn said.

The shooter has yet to be identified and law enforcement is once again reaching out to the public for information, in hopes of making an arrest.

“Even sometimes it’s the littlest things people tell us that can help us crack the case,” Finn said.

It happened around 11 a.m. on December 30, 2015, a Wednesday, during a road rage incident and chase that took place southbound in the 13-mile stretch north of Chehalis.

The victim driver escaped injury. The rear window of his silverish-gray four-door Mazda hatchback was shattered when he pulled into the parking lot at the Lewis County Law and Justice Center in Chehalis to call 911.

Finn said they only got a couple of calls at the time and since, have followed up on one anonymous tip about who the shooter might be. It wasn’t him, he said.

The crime lab tested the glass and confirmed gunshot residue, he said.

The shooter was driving a black, mid 2000s base-model Jeep Cherokee with non-tinted windows and Washington license plates. He is believed to have exited the freeway somewhere between milepost 80 and milepost 76.

Its driver was described as a white male in his 60s to 70s with gray hair and a gray or white beard.  He had a passenger described as a white female in her 80s, wearing a red shirt with an oxygen tube in her nose.

The encounter actually began in south Thurston County around milepost 93 or the Scatter Creek Rest Area. Finn said the victim, a  25-year-old man from Spanaway, was driving in the fast lane and when he came up on the Jeep, got “brake checked.”

“The victim admitted to partaking in behavior, brake checks back and forth,” Finn said. “But the other driver took it to a whole other level.”

They were traveling in and out of traffic at speeds of 85 to 90 mph, Finn said at the time.

Anyone with any information about the driver or the passenger, or if they witnessed it, we’d like them to call in, Finn said.

“As police officers, we don’t like cold cases, things to go unsolved,” he said.

Detective Jen Ortiz can be reached at 360-449-7948.
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For background, read “Interstate 5 shooter remains at large” from Wednesday January 6, 2016, here

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The suspect Jeep looks like this one pictured.

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Rear window of Mazda hatchback was shattered.

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Officials at the White Pass Ski Area identified the man who lost his life in an avalanche as 31-year-old Adam M. Roberts, a native of East Lewis County.

“He grew up here, he’s from Randle, his family’s still in Randle,” White Pass General Manager Kevin McCarthy said. “He’s one of those, he loved skiing in the back country.”

Adam M. Roberts

A tribute from management there posted on their Facebook page early yesterday morning expresses condolences from the entire White Pass community.

“Adam, your love for skiing and the pure joy and exuberance with which you approached the mountains has influenced all of us. You will be so very missed,” they wrote.

Roberts and a friend on Tuesday were taking a run outside the boundaries of the groomed ski area and took separate paths, McCarthy said. The friend got to the bottom and waited and waited some more before hiking back up, McCarthy said.

The friend noticed some avalanche debris, but didn’t see any tracks leaving the area, he said. The friend went for help.

The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office said it happened around 3:45 p.m. They were notified about 6 p.m. that Roberts was located by the ski patrol beneath three feet or more of snow, Chief Deputy Dusty Breen said.

The White Pass Ski Area is at the summit of U.S. Highway 12 and straddles Lewis and Yakima counties.

Roberts had gone to school at Western Washington University in Bellingham and split his time between there and the White Pass area, and sometimes worked at Mount Baker, according to McCarthy.

He said he’s known Roberts since he was a kid.

He was someone who’d done a lot of mountaineering, taken trips others envied and very few could ski as well as him, McCarthy said.

“At times, he’d push the envelope, you might say,” he said. “What happened to him could have happened to any of us.”
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For background, read “News brief: Death on the slopes at White Pass” from Wednesday December 28, 2016, here

Attorney Adam Karp answers news reporters’ questions following hearing on Jay the cat.

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The untimely death of Jay the cat who suffered what prosecutors called cruel and terrible injuries at a north Centralia apartment complex this past spring drew two dozen spectators to a Chehalis courtroom today.

A Bellingham lawyer, on behalf of a Thurston County animal control officer, petitioned a judge in Lewis County District Court to allow for the issuance of a citizen criminal complaint.

Jay the cat

Lewis County prosecutors have called the death deplorable, inhumane, horrific and without justification, but contend they had insufficient evidence for criminal charges.

Attorney Adam Karp strongly disagrees.

Karp in his 19-page filing, with additional declarations from numerous witnesses, laid out a variety of potential criminal charges which could be pursued.

One of them was in connection with the man Centralia police arrested the night of April 28, but then let go.

Centralia police said Kyle B. Burke, 24, took a knife to the pet at the 100 block of Virginia Drive. The following day, Lewis County Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher said the cat may have suffered its injury at the hands of a child, at one point was dropped from a second-floor balcony and that possibly Burke was putting it out of its misery.

A retired Thurston County deputy and his wife went to the apartment complex and retrieved the dead pet that Centralia police had left behind, and took it to Erika Johnson, a former law enforcement officer and current senior animal control officer for Joint Animal Services in Thurston County.

Johnson had a veterinarian conduct a necropsy.

“Her opinion, of reasonable medical certainty, is Jay was alive before that penetrating injury,” Karp told the judge today. “This was not euthanasia.”

Meagher argued to Lewis County District Court Judge R.W. Buzzard the veterinarian could not pinpoint which injury caused the cat’s death.

“The state submits what’s going on here is they don’t like our charging decision,” Meagher said.

It would put the office in an ethical bind of they were made to prosecute a case they didn’t have faith in, he said.

“Who killed the cat?” Meagher asked rhetorically. “Nobody can answer that, even their expert.

“That’s why the state can’t charge the fellow, his friend, or even the little girl.”

Meagher said the strongest part of their case was to submit the 11-year-old girl to a voluntary diversion process. Witnesses said she squeezed Jay until his body made a “popping” sound and subsequently struck him in the head with a three pound rock, according to court documents.

Judge Buzzard took the final two minutes of a half hour hearing to say he took numerous pieces of information into consideration and would not allow the petition to proceed.

Karp said afterward he was underwhelmed, upset and concerned about the way animals are treated in the county, noting “lackluster treatment” by two branches of the government.

He plans to appeal Judge Buzzard’s decision, once the written findings are filed.

He immediately filed in Lewis County Superior Court a petition to impanel a grand jury to look at the case. He said it will take two of the Superior Court judges to decide if it can go forward.
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For background, read “Centralia police admit errors in cat cruelty investigation, taking a second look” from Wednesday May 18, 2016, here

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By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – A judge has found a Lewis County rape case must be dismissed because of intentional governmental misconduct by the sheriff’s deputy assisting the prosecutor during the trial.

The trial in Lewis County Superior Court began and then ended the same day last month in a mistrial.

Jordan T. White, 23, of Centralia, was facing a charge of second-degree rape for an alleged incident in 2014 at a rural Centralia home involving a young woman with whom he had somewhat of an intimate relationship.

Lewis County Superior Court Judge Nelson Hunt decided last week to dismiss the case. At issue was nonverbal communication in front of the jury by Lewis County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Justin Rodgers, who was seated at the prosecutor’s table for the trial. Rodgers investigated the case.

Defense attorney Shane O’Rourke and Lewis County Deputy Prosecutor Melissa Bohm each filed a proposed written order to document the judge’s decision. The two differed in how to characterize what occurred.

This week, the two lawyers and Judge Hunt spent almost an hour in a hearing discussing what the order should state. The document is called Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.

They agreed that Deputy Rodgers, while seated next to Bohm, dropped his pen onto the table at a particular point during the trial which drew the attention of members of the jury. He also had gestured to the alleged victim while she was on the witness stand.

“Deputy Rodgers engaged in intentional governmental misconduct by showing his disgust at the defendant’s version of events and communicating with the alleged victim through hand gestures during her testimony,” Hunt said of the wording he would adopt in the final document.

Judge Hunt went on to say that when the jury was sent out of the room and he questioned the deputy about his actions, the deputy was not immediately forthcoming in his answers.

The state has 30 days in which to decide if it will appeal the dismissal, according to Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer.

The mistrial occurred on Nov. 29. Follow up hearings were held on Dec. 14 and this past Wednesday.

The incident was reported in the spring of 2015 to the sheriff’s office and charges were filed late this summer. The alleged victim said she was heavily intoxicated and realized the next morning she had been anally penetrated, according to court documents. White told the deputy what they did was her idea, because she wanted to remain a virgin, according to the documents.

O’Rourke said his client has mixed feelings about the outcome of his case.

“I think a lot of people would expect relief, or jubilance,” he said. “It’s not like that.”

Their position on the case was White was wrongly charged and they had been prepared to go all the way to a verdict, O’Rourke said.

An attempt to seek comment from Deputy Rodgers through the sheriff’s office resulted in Chief Deputy Dusty Breen stating that neither they nor the deputy would comment. Breen said the sheriff’s office would review what occurred.
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For background, read “Rape case: Trial cut short in Lewis County Superior Court” from Wednesday November 30, 2016, here