Lewis County Sirens.com

Courtesy photo by Washington State Patrol

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Since many drivers are unaware the left lane is designed as a passing lane and traveling in it for an extended period of time can be against the law, troopers are focusing on left lane violators this week.

The emphasis patrol is statewide, according to the Washington State Patrol. The idea is to bring increased awareness.

Trooper Will Finn calls them left lane squatters.

State patrol Sgt. J. Paul Cagle shares the text of the law, for those who would like to avoid getting pulled over:

RCW 46.61.100(2): Upon all roadways having two or more lanes for traffic moving in the same direction, all vehicles shall be driven in the right hand lane then available for traffic, except for overtaking and passing another vehicle in the same direction, when traveling at a speed greater than the traffic flow, when moving left to allow traffic to merge or when preparing for a left turn at an intersection, exit or into a private road or driveway when such left turn is legally permitted.

Jeremy’s on the 500 block of Main Street in Chehalis is under new ownership now.

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – A restaurant manager accused of pocketing hundreds of dollars per shift from her Chehalis workplace has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of theft.

Mindy D. Nogues, 32, worked at Jeremy’s Farm to Table on Main Street from May into October of last year.

Owner Jeremy Wildhaber said he now he knows why he was experiencing such a cash crunch, for months.

“She was stealing $300 to $500 a day in September and October,” Wildhaber said on a recent day. “In October, she got us for $4,000.”

Altogether, he, his bookkeeper and police attribute more than $8,000 in losses to the now-former employee.

Nogues was arrested Jan. 19 in connection with a warrant issued on Dec. 31 and the following day allowed release on a $10,000 unsecured bond.

Lewis County prosecutors charged her with three counts of second-degree theft and 10 counts of identity theft.

Last week, she and her lawyer went before a judge in Lewis County Superior Court, where a request to postpone her trial was granted.

Lewis County Deputy Prosecutor Melissa Bohm said the trial was set for next month, but rescheduled to the week of May 16 because the defense is requesting more documents from Jeremy’s restaurant.

In hindsight, Wildhaber says, he thinks Nogues was testing various methods from the very beginning. He said that during her first two weeks of employment, he caught her failing to turn in the mandatory 5 percent of her tips for kitchen workers.

They talked about it, and he didn’t fire her, he said.

“I was really was desperate for help, and customers really liked her,” he said.

In fact, he said, she wasn’t the sort of person anyone would ever suspect of being dishonest that way. Everybody liked her and customers loved her, he said.

Charging documents summarizing the Chehalis Police Department investigation indicate Wildhaber and his bookkeeper concluded that Nogues had been using another manager’s code to approve various transactions.

The issue was brought to his attention by his bookkeeper, he said. The bookkeeper discovered that far more gift certificates were being spent at the business than had ever been issued.

Wildhaber told police one has to have a manager’s code to put a gift certificate into the system. He said it would be easy to take cash from a customer, but show they paid with a gift certificate.

The bookkeeper made a sheet illustrating the estimated losses from Nogue, according to court documents.

In their affidavit of probable cause, prosecutors wrote that in in May, Nogues took in only one gift certificate, yet for the month of October, she had 38 transactions involving gift certificates. The other seven employees that month combined took in only 39, according to charging documents.

Jeremy’s also found that while employees were supposed to staple the gift certificate to the particular receipt, Nogues had only done that three times leaving 35 unaccounted for. The system also showed she submitted gift certificates for odd amounts, amounts larger than their ledger showed they had sold.

A printout from the restaurant’s transactions showed Nogues in June took in $2,272.74 in cash sales and $271.66 in gift certificates.

In October, it was just the opposite ratio.

Nogues in October logged just $209.79 in cash sales while recording she took in $2,448.95 worth of gift certificates, according to the documents.

Wildhaber told police it would be impossible to work an entire month and take in that little cash.

She allegedly used other manager’s codes in attempts to cover up cash thefts in other ways as well, according to the documents.

For example, printouts for July through September showed Nogues had $1,753 in voided transactions while the next highest amount among other employees was $577.11.

Some voids supposedly done for her by another manager occurred when the other manager wasn’t working, according to the allegations.

Wildhaber said he confronted Nogues and reported the theft to police on Oct. 30.

Today, Wildhaber no longer owns the business. He said he wasn’t able to pay rent, and his landlord took it over. He’s cooking there and still doing a lot of work connected with the criminal case.

“It’s a big mess,” he said.

The thefts aren’t the only reason he couldn’t continue, but played a role, he said.

“It put me in a downward spiral, really fast,” he said.

Last Thursday, after the hearing in Lewis County Superior Court, Nogues and her lawyer, Jakob McGhie, said they had no comment on the allegations.

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Full disclosure: Jeremy’s restaurant had an advertising relationship in the past with Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – A 72-year-old Onalaska man overdue on a trip home from Arizona was found nearly unconscious laying on a remote road in southwestern Utah and is recovering from hypothermia.

Iron County Sheriff Mark Gower said he now knows the man had recently been diagnosed with Ahlzheimers and had been traveling from Congress, Arizona back to Washington.

It was about 8 a.m. on Wednesday when employees with the water conservation district came across a Jeep abandoned in the middle of the road, west of Cedar City, Utah, Gower said.

About a mile farther, they found him, unresponsive and cold, shirtless and shoeless, he said. Temperatures had dipped into the mid-20s that night, he said.

Deputies and then an ambulance responded and took him to an area hospital, he said.

“When they got him there, his core temperature was 82 degrees, which is very cold,” he said.

The sheriff didn’t release the man’s name, but said family has traveled to Utah to be with him.

“He is going to make it,” Gower said this afternoon.

The sheriff’s office tracked down his family from papers either on the patient or in his vehicle, he said. The family had been trying to track him by his bank card use, he said.

Gower said he wasn’t sure what if any agency took a missing person report.

“I guess he had a cell phone, but he was not answering,” he said.

Sheriff Gower said the thanks belong to the employees of the water district.

Gower said he’s been with the sheriff’s office over 25 years, and worked several similar cases.

“Most of the time they end more tragic than this,” he said. “We usually find them after it’s too late.”

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The Lewis County coroner today said he has positively identified the three children from Friday’s house fire on Ham Hill Road in Centralia.

He released their names: Benjamin D. Tower, 12; Madeline R. Tower, 10; and Samuel J. Tower, 7.

They were students at Washington Elementary School and Edison Elementary School in Centralia.

•••

While he doesn’t have any reason to think they died from anything other then the house fire, Coroner Warren McLeod said, it will be awhile before he can make the official determination on the cause of their deaths.

Autopsies have been performed but his conclusions can’t be made until after further studies as well as seeing the results of toxicology tests, according to McLeod.

It can take between eight and 14 weeks to get lab results back, according to the coroner’s office.

Authorities have said the youngsters were sleeping upstairs in the split-level home while their mother was sleeping on the main floor. She was among those who phoned 911 at about 12:45 a.m.

Efforts by the mother, by a police officer and by two firefighters to rescue them were unsuccessful because of the smoke, flames and intense heat.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

Centralia Police Department detective Sgt. Carl Buster said the process can sometimes take months.

Riverside Fire Authority Assistant Chief Rick Mack, who is also the lead investigator, has said they narrowed the origin down to the area of the living room, a few feet from the front door.

The tragedy follows by just over a year a nighttime residential fire in Winlock that claimed three lives.

The family had been sleeping in the two-story house on  Northeast First Street and when the father and two boys headed out the door, the mother and girls were right behind him, but didn’t make it outside.

Samantha Koehler, 31, and her two daughters Bethany Cuvreau, 4, and Tabitha Cuvreau, 2, died of smoke inhalation on February 26, 2015.

•••

For background, read “Heavy hearts as family loses three in Centralia house fire” from Friday March 4, 2016, here

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Six years after being locked up for life, former Centralia resident Thomas L. Pleasant wrote a letter to a judge in Lewis County asking for help.

He didn’t want help getting out, he just wanted a warrant quashed.

Pleasant said he robbed a church and its pastor and then two women, all in Cowlitz County. He took a plea on three armed robberies and second-degree assault and accepted the sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, he wrote.

Thomas L. Pleasant

“I have no appeals or any action of ever being released, and I am okay with this,” Pleasant wrote.

He explained that inmates in his position are allowed limited privileges and those with outstanding warrants must deal with them before some jobs and some education are made available to them.

He mentioned he owes some $10,000 in fines, that he’s sorry to his victims and that he has maybe 20 more years left to live.

“Drugs completely ruined my life,” Pleasant wrote.

“It’s a short amount of time to pay back what I can,” he stated. “I am humbly asking the honorable courts to quash my warrant so I may seek help in doing what I can to get right.”

The arrest warrant was issued in September 2008 from Lewis County, after he was apprehended for his Cowlitz County spree.

The charges: first-degree robbery and first-degree rape for the July 16, 2008 hold up at the Subway sandwich shop in Chehalis, in which he confessed to tying up the female worker with an electrical cord and putting her in a walk-in cooler. He denied sexually assaulting her.

Lewis County filed the charges, but never pursued them.

It appears from Pleasant’s court file his letter from August 2014 went unanswered. He sent a second letter this past September, making the same request.

He warned that his life would be in danger if he has to face a charge of rape, as in, a serious “beat down” or stabbing, especially from young inmates trying to gain a reputation, he wrote.

Lewis County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Will Halstead responded in December, by getting a judge to order Pleasant be transported from Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen to the Lewis County Jail.

Halstead said the case was revived because prosecutors are required to bring people back if they ask to have a warrant quashed.

Pleasant appeared before a judge finally a week and a half ago.

“We didn’t quash it,” Halstead said. “We’re going forward with the case.”

Pleasant pleaded not guilty last week in Lewis County Superior Court to first-degree robbery and first-degree rape. A trial date was set, but a review hearing was also scheduled for this Thursday.

The now-50-year-old is represented by Centralia attorney Don Blair.

“Mr. Blair was hoping we could resolve it right away,” Halstead said, acknowledging “resolve” means some sort of plea deal.
•••

For background, read “Chehalis case from 2008 sandwich shop robbery, rape revived” from Friday February 26, 2016, here

Centralia’s George Washington Park, South Pearl Street, Saturday March 5, 2016

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CENTRALIA – Individuals and families, children and grown ups alike came together at George Washington Park in Centralia last night to honor the local family that suffered nearly unimaginable tragedy the day before.

Despite the rain, candles continued to glow during prayers and songs for the survivors and the three children who lost their lives when their home caught fire on Ham Hill Road.

Several television news stations captured the gathering.

• “Hundreds gather for vigil to honor 3 kids who died in Centralia fire” from KOMOnews.com on Saturday March 5, 2016

• “Centralia remembers 3 kids who died in fire” from KOIN.com on Sunday March 6, 2016 at 6:11 a.m.

• “VIDEO: Community gathers to remember Centralia fire victims” from KIRO7.com on Saturday March 5, 2016 at 11:43 p.m.

• “Vigil honors three kids who died in Centralia house fire” from king5.com on Sunday March 6, 2016 at 9:54 a.m.

• “Family remembers three children killed in Centralia house fire” from q13fox.com on Saturday March 5, 2016
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For background, read “Heavy hearts as family loses three in Centralia house fire” from Lewis County Sirens.com on Friday March 4, 2016 at 6:14 p.m., here

•

Centralia’s George Washington Park, South Pearl Street, Saturday March 5, 2016

Fire Chief Mike Kytta speaks about the Ham Hill house fire at a press conference this afternoon, flanked by Centralia School District Superintendent Mark Davalos, left and Assistant Chief Rick Mack.

Updated at 7:47 p.m.

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CENTRALIA – The cause of the house fire that claimed the lives of three children in Centralia remains under investigation as untold numbers of individuals mourn their loss.

“It’s with heavy hearts we’re here before you today,” Riverside Fire Authority Assistant Chief Rick Mack said this afternoon to a gathering of news reporters.

Mack said the fire appeared to start not far from the front door.

“We have narrowed the origin down to the area of the living room,” he said. “We came to that conclusion based on fire patterns we observed.”

Mack said there are many things they need to look at, and probably the most important will be an interview with the sole survivor.

The windows and doors of the four-bedroom, split level home on Ham Hill Road are boarded up now.

Police Chief Carl Nielsen

The fire investigator indicated he did not know not what kind of heating system was employed at the residence. He does not yet know if there were smoke detectors, he said.

The kitchen stove was removed for examination, but Mack said he doesn’t know what if any role it may have played.

“Initially we did hear something on or about the stove glowing, so we took it into evidence,” he said.

The fire was reported by the mother at about 12:45 a.m. today. Lewis County 911 Communications stated it received multiple reports of smoke seen from a distance.

Authorities said the father lives elsewhere and the children’s bedrooms were upstairs.

Medics evaluated the mother for as long as three hours at the scene, Fire Chief Mike Kytta said.

“She told us she was asleep on the first level, and awakened to a sound, we don’t know what that was,” Mack said. “She tried to make access to the children on the upper level and was unable to because of smoke and heat.”

Centralia Police Department Chief Carl Nielsen this afternoon spoke on behalf of his department, the fire department and the school district.

“When units arrived on-scene, they found the house fully engulfed,” Nielsen said.

Three first responders made tremendous efforts to rescue the youngsters, according to Nielsen.

“Centralia Police Officer Phil Weismiller and RFA Capt.Terry Ternan and Engineer Rick Leboeuf climbed on roof and attempted to gain access to the children’s bedrooms,” he said. “Unfortunately the intense heat and flames prevented their heroic efforts from gaining entry.”

Weismiller’s hand was cut by glass from breaking a window, he said. The officer was treated at the hospital and is resting at home this afternoon, he said.

“The death of any child is significant in any community,” Nielsen said. “The loss of three in a community the size of Centralia is truly a tragedy.

“I have personally witnessed the outpouring of community support this morning and would ask people to take time out of our always busy schedules to think about the family of the victims of today’s tragedy and to make the time to appreciate and love your family members.”

Centralia School District Superintendent Mark Davalos confirmed the kids attend Centralia schools. He said they are in second grade, fourth grade and sixth grade.

The family requested their ages and names not be released.

“We want to extend our heartfelt sorrow to the family,” Davalos said. “I need to be strong for our staff and our community, but this is a huge loss.”

One attended Edison Elementary, two attended Washington Elementary.

Chief Kytta also responded to questions from news reporters this afternoon at the fire station on Harrison Avenue.

Along with smoke alarms and sleeping with bedroom doors closed, firefighters encourage folks to consider ahead of time at least two ways out of any room.

“Can you get out the window with a chain ladder, for example,” he said.

Nielsen said he doesn’t anticipate any more information being released until the investigation is concluded. He didn’t give a time line.

Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod expects autopsies to be conducted next week. He indicated he won’t be able to confirm and release the identities of the deceased until mid-week.

Chief Nielsen said he knows of three ways to donate to the family.

A family friend named Sandra Wing has set up a Go-Fund-Me account.

Donations can be made in person at the Centralia branch of Security State Bank and cards can be sent to P.O. Box 99 at Centralia Post Net at 1120 Harrison Avenue in Centralia.

A candlelight vigil is planned for 8 p.m. tomorrow in Washington Park which is located at Main and Pearl streets in Centralia.
•••

For background, read “Mother escapes, three children dead after Centralia house fire” from Friday March 4, 2016 at 9:51 a.m., here

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Flags are lowered at Washington Elementary School this afternoon, where two of the three children attended.