Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – A judge sent a former Chehalis official directly to jail today when he was sentenced for stealing cash from a city safe.

Jeffrey C. Shine, 41, was arrested and fired in April. The 16-year employee was the city’s building official, responsible for looking over construction sites and making sure code is followed.

Shine pleaded guilty today to second-degree burglary and third-degree theft.

Prosecutors say he admitted going into the community development building at night wearing gloves and stole about $750. An estimated $360 was money donated for the medically ailing daughter of Jeff and Angie Elder, a pair of police department employees. The burglary was discovered in mid-November; the bottoms were cut from locked money bags.

Lewis County Superior Court Judge Nelson Hunt was blunt when he sentenced the Longview resident this morning to two months in jail and two years of community custody.

“You cannot steal from the vulnerable and the citizens of Chehalis without there being great consequences,” Hunt said. “As you go down to the jail, what you should be thinking about is who it is that put you in this position.”

Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer had asked for three months incarceration, the top end of the standard sentencing range for the crime.

Defense attorney Kenneth Johnson requested “something comparable to a suspended sentence with no jail time.

Johnson spoke at length about the penalties his client has already endured.

His career is basically “down the drain, his good name is ruined and he’s embarrassed his family, Johnson said.

The family lost two-thirds of its income, his wife has a Montessori school in Longview that basically shuts down in the summer, and they are facing potential bankruptcy and the loss of their house, he said.

“It was a combination of a bad situation he got himself into and his depression which led to this crime,” Johnson said.

Johnson said Shine found himself the victim of a swindle after he made an $18,000 credit card purchase over the Internet of what he thought was gold but turned out to be worthless. The bills were coming due and he was afraid his wife would find out, according to  Johnson.

“This is a defendant the court is not likely to see back, he’s very embarrassed and wants to make it right,” he said.

The judge was unswayed by Johnson’s appeal and by Shine’s statement’s before the sentence was announced.

Shine called it a stupid decision.

“I destroyed my job, I’m just severely embarrassed,” he told the judge. “I just can’t explain how remorseful I am.”

Johnson said his client had even offered to pay the city back, but they declined.

This news story was updated at 7:40 p.m. on Thursday June 9, 2011

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The 24-year-old woman shot in Napavine told police Javier Jimenez Villalavazo was calling her and her family a snitch before firing several rounds at her as she got back inside a car outside an apartment complex.

Eloisa Cruz-Garcia was struck twice in her right leg and didn’t know she was injured until after driving away, according to court documents in the case.

Javier Jimenez Villalavazo

Villalavazo, 22, was apprehended in the Lacey area last night and booked into the Lewis County Jail.

The shooting apparently occurred early Monday morning; it was initially believed to have happened on Sunday night, according to authorities.

Lewis County sheriff’s detectives, assisted by Thurston County and police officers from Centralia, Lacey, Tumwater and Olympia, made the arrest around 7 p.m. yesterday, according to the sheriff’s office.

A tip led them to a house which they surrounded, according to a sheriff’s office news release. Villalavazo tried to run, but was quickly stopped by a police dog, according to the news release.

The suspect, who is also known as “The Joker”, is being held for first-degree assault with a firearm.

He was scheduled to appear before a Lewis County Superior Court judge this afternoon.

The incident came to the attention of law enforcement early Monday morning from the emergency room at Providence Centralia Hospital.

Centralia police detective Pat Beall contacted the victim there and was originally told the shooting happened in Centralia, but further investigation showed the scene was inside Napavine city limits, according to court documents.

Sheriff’s detectives have assisted in the investigation for Napavine, a two-officer agency.

Charging documents offer the following details:

The woman, Cruz-Garcia, got a ride to the Park Place Apartments on the 100 block of Haywire Road in Napavine from a man named Carlos Apantiipan-Castrejon.

Apantiipan-Castrejon told a sheriff’s deputy he didn’t know why they wanted to go there. Also in his white Ford Crown Victoria were Cruz-Garcia’s 2-year-old child, her brother Brian Cruz and his friend.

When they arrived, Villalavazo came up to the passenger side of the car and began talking to her; at first she got out of the car, she said.

Apantiipan-Castrejon told a deputy it was fairly dark, he couldn’t see the man, and he didn’t know what they talked about because they were speaking English.

Cruz-Garcia said Villalavazo – who she has known from high school and used to be her brother’s friend – was calling her and her family a snitch, she said.

“She said she opened the passenger door and returned to the vehicle, and this is when Javier fired several shots from a firearm at here,” the documents state.

The shooter then ran away to Haywire Road.

She didn’t realize she was hit until Apantiipan-Castrejon drove them away. They didn’t know what to do, so he took them back to her apartment in Centralia. She went to the hospital to be treated, and was released by morning.

One of the bullets penetrated her right calf, and the other entered her upper right thigh and passed through to her left thigh.

Sheriff’s detectives later learned a woman called Napavine police at 12:25 a.m. on Monday and reported hearing three gunshots at 105 Haywire Road, and a voice shouting, “Your dead kid” before hearing a vehicle speed off.

Napavine Police Department’s Officer-in-charge Silas Elwood said he learned of the shooting about 6 o’clock to 7 o’clock on Monday morning.

Napavine Officer Noel Shields was actually in the area and heard the shots, Elwood said today.

“He heard it coming from a different direction, which is pretty common,” Elwood said.

Shields was joined by sheriff’s deputies trying to find the source, but didn’t.

“Like I said, it was a pretty dynamic incident, nobody hung around, they just took off,” Elwood said.

Court documents go on to describe the detective’s examination of the apartment parking lot and Crown Victoria – which by Monday morning had returned and was parked in the same spot where it reportedly had been hours earlier.

Detectives observed three shell casings on the ground and two “impact points’ consistent with bullets on the front passenger door of the car as well as one on the front passenger fender.

Sheriff’s detective Bruce Kimsey stated the projectiles did not travel through the car’s door.

Kimsey stated they also found suspected blood on the front passenger seat and on the ground, along with white paint chips.

Nothing in the documents indicate what Villalavazo thought Cruz-Garcia or her family “snitched” about.

Villalavazo is held on $100,000 bail. He is set to go before Judge Nelson Hunt at 4:15 p.m.

Update: The judge increased bail to $150,000. Villalavazo was scheduled to make his plea next Thursday.

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Read related stories:

• “News brief: Law enforcement searching for Napavine shooting suspect” from Monday June 6, 2011 at 3:39 p.m., here

• “News brief: Four booked as detectives seek suspected Napavine shooter” from Wednesday June 8, 2011 at 7:28 p.m., here

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Lewis County commissioners have drafted an ordinance to increase the local sales tax to fund drug court and other measures to reduce substance abuse and help keep mentally ill individuals stable and are asking for community feedback before voting on the measure.

A public hearing on the matter is set for June 20 during the regular 10 a.m. board of commissioners meeting.

Judge Nelson Hunt was told last fall the county budget could only pay for drug court one more year and has garnered support for a tax increase of one-tenth of one cent.

County Commissioner Bill Schulte said they have received about 500 letters in favor of the idea and only two or three opposed to it.

He spoke about the benefits of investing money up front to keep some people out of the jail.

“It looks like it could be cheaper,” Schulte said. “So dollar-wise, it looks like it’s starting to make sense.”

Supporters have said the increase would amount to about $20 per household per year.

Commissioner Ron Averill says there just isn’t enough money in the regular county budget, even though he considers it an investment that would reduce costs overall.

Both men said nine local city councils have endorsed the idea, with only three individual members opposed. (Judge Hunt later noted it was only eight of the nine municipalities in the county; Vader opposed the idea.)

The third county commissioner, Lee Grose, was unavailable for comment yesterday.

Sales tax in most of Lewis County, as in many places around the state is 7.7 percent. It varies in cities and counties as each tacks on portions of pennies to fund local initiatives.

Sales tax in Chehalis and Centralia is 7.9 percent.

It is as low as 7 percent in Skamania County and as high as 9.5 percent in much of King County.

Members of the public will get an opportunity to ask questions and share their opinion on the proposed ordinance at the hearing before a vote is taken by the commissioners.
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CORRECTION: Eight of the nine municipalities in Lewis County endorsed the sales tax idea; not all nine as two of the county commissioners said.

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Read background here

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – A judge found yesterday the 25-year-old Centralia woman accused of decapitating her premature newborn is competent for further proceedings in the case.

Laura Lynn Hickey

Laura Lynn Hickey was arrested in early March after police found the deceased baby in a Tupperware container under the kitchen sink of her trailer home.

Prosecutors allege Hickey – who was about halfway through her pregnancy – used a serrated knife to cut off the infant’s head as it was trying to take a breath after she unexpectedly delivered it into a toilet.

She said she didn’t think it was going to live and she didn’t want it to suffer, according to charging documents.

Hickey pleaded not guilty yesterday to first-degree murder.

She has been jailed since March 9, the arraignment put on hold while she underwent psychological evaluations at Western State Hospital.

Doctors were asked to look into issues of competency, insanity and diminished capacity.

Lewis County Superior Court Judge Nelson Hunt’s finding yesterday of competency is related to her ability to understand the proceedings and assist in her own defense.

His decision made it possible to move forward, with yesterday’s arraignment and the scheduling of a trial for next February.

Hickey lived in a fifth-wheel trailer at the Peppertree Motor Inn and RV Park in Centralia and has no income or assets, according to the attorney who represented her for her first court appearance.

She reportedly told police she used methamphetamine two days before the incident and had been awake since then. The state had previously taken three of her children out of her home.

Charging documents indicate an emergency room doctor estimated Hickey was about 21 weeks along in her pregnancy when he examined her after what she initially said was a miscarriage.

Her court-appointed lawyer, Kenneth Johnson, has said whether a fetus at that stage of development can survive outside its mother’s womb is an issue that will come up in this case.

Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer contends the autopsy indicated the fetus was born alive and was viable.

Hickey remains in the Lewis County Jail, held on $1 million bail.

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Read “Mental evaluation ordered for Centralia mother charged with killing baby” from Thursday March 17, 2011, here

Read “Mother charged with killing newborn, held on $1 million bail” from Friday March 11, 2011, here

Read “Centralia woman accused of decapitating her newborn” from Wednesday March 9, 2011, here

Read “News brief: “Remains” found under sink after apparent miscarriage to be examined by coroner” from Wednesday March 2, 2011, here

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS –  Steven Grant Williams admitted he left a handprint-shaped bruise on the butt of his girlfriend’s 7-year-old boy, and switched to using a belt because he thought it wouldn’t leave marks.

Steven Grant Williams

He described the bruises on the child’s elbows and elsewhere from when he held the boy’s head under the shower, trying to teach him to wash his own hair.

The boy would thrash around, “spaz out” and get so combative, sometimes Williams would simply let go, and the child would fall in the tub.

He knew it would hurt, Williams acknowledged, but he didn’t know what else to do during the shower sessions. The child smelled like feces, he said.

“I was concerned if I tried to hold on to him the same way, he could break his shoulder,” Williams said.

The Chehalis man and the child’s mother told the jury the first-grader didn’t know his alphabet, didn’t know his numbers and didn’t know how to clean himself. Since she was working and Williams wasn’t, Williams tried to teach him those things, during a two to three week visit last summer.

When the boy was returned to his paternal grandmother, who he lived with, she saw his bruises and took him directly to the hospital. A responding officer contacted Chehalis police and reported the 7-year-old boy’s body was covered in bruises.

After Williams’ arrest last August, Chehalis’s deputy police chief called it one of the most extensive child abuse cases he’d seen in his career.

The youngster’s two black eyes were so swollen, he had to open his eyes wide just to see, a social worker told the jury.

A bruise on his cheek: “He said that was when he got smacked silly,” the social worker said.

Williams told the jury the black eyes appeared about four days before the child left.

He didn’t know how it happened. One theory was it may have been a bug bite, or maybe an allergy, or he fell out of bed and hit the lamp, the mother Sarra Dennis said.

She saw it when she returned home from work one morning from a night shift at a casino.

“Most of his head was swelling, the top of it,” Dennis said.

The explanations came during a jury trial last week in Lewis County Superior Court.

Williams, now 40, was charged with assault of a child in the second-degree.

The jury learned that Williams didn’t know until almost the end of the visit that the child took baths, not showers.

“Did you ever think of giving (the child) a bath?” Deputy Prosecutor Colin Hayes asked him.

“No, not until this was all over with,” Williams answered.

It took the jury just 90 minutes late Friday afternoon to find the National Guardsman guilty as charged.

When he returns to the courtroom at the end of the month, Williams faces a standard sentencing range of two and a half to three and a half years, Hayes said today.

But because the jury found aggravating factors, he could potentially be sentenced to as long as 10 years, Hayes said.

No credible explanation for the injuries on the boy’s face and head were uncovered during the three-day trial, according to Hayes.

“We’ll never know all the things he did to that kid,” Hayes said. “I suspect there was a lot more going on.”

Williams is scheduled to be sentenced at 9 a.m. on June 27.

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Read “Chehalis National Guardsman charged with assault of 7-year-old boy” from Saturday Aug. 21, 2010, here

Read “Chehalis National Guardsman pleads not guilty to assaulting child” from Friday Aug. 27, 2010, here

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

A man on the run from the law and charges dating back to an August 2006 drive-by shooting in Centralia was located in El Salvador and is expected to be returned to Lewis County, the Centralia Police Department announced today.

Colbert A. Salmeron, now 24, was arrested the airport in Houston, Texas, by U.S. marshals shortly after he arrived in the country, according to a news release.

Centralia police detectives and the Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office were notified on Sunday Salmeron was in custody, Centralia Officer Chris Fitzgerald said. She wasn’t sure if his arrest occurred on Sunday or before.

Salmeron was arrested about a month after the incident on the 500 block of North Tower Avenue but was released on bail and failed to show up for court in May 2007.

The shooting was believed to be gang-related. Salmeron, a Centralia resident, was associated with the Little Valley Lokotes, Fitzgerald said. Nobody was injured.

In the following months, Centralia police dealt with at least a half dozen gang related shootings, of cars, homes and people. The most high profile case was in the summer of 2007 when somebody in a vehicle sprayed gunfire along an entire city block in downtown Centralia.

In that case, a Centralia teenager, Guadalupe Solis-Diaz Jr., was convicted of several counts of first-degree assault and sentenced to more than 90 years in prison.

For the past four years, detectives working with confidential sources and other law enforcement agencies have been working to track Salmeron down and concluded he was in El Salvador, according to Fitzgerald.

A tip following a February airing of the case on America’s Most Wanted in February revealed Salmeron was staying with a relative in the Central American country, Fitzgerald said.

According to Fitzgerald: U.S. Marshals contacted El Salvadoran authorities and advised Salmeron was wanted for a drive-by shooting. They determined he was a U.S. citizen and deported him.

U.S. Deputy marshals were waiting for him when he arrived at the Houston International Airport.

Salmeron was identified as the primary suspect shortly after the Aug. 26, 2006 incident.

That evening, several individuals were standing around a pickup truck parked in a lot of a fitness center when a red Ford Mustang drove by, slowed and someone inside it fired several shots that hit two vehicles and shattered the window of a nearby building. No persons were hit.

A warrant for Salmeron’s arrest was issued and in September 2006 he was located in Inglewood, California. He was being harbored by a family member there, according to Fitzgerald.

He was extradited back to Washington and appeared before Lewis County Superior Court judge, but was released on bail and not seen again, until now.

Fitzgerald said arrangements are being made to bring Salmeron to Lewis County. He is charged with four counts of first-degree assault and one count of drive-by shooting.

Lily Rowland, right, and her husband of 52 years, Billy Rowland Sr., paused for a snapshot earlier this year. / Courtesy photo

This news story was updated at 5:20 p.m. on Wednesday May 25, 2011

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Troopers say they are looking for a van with damage on its right side in connection with the hit and run that left a Chehalis woman dead on Interstate 5 near Chehalis over the weekend.

The vehicle will possibly be missing – or have damage to – its right-side mirror and missing the front passenger side amber-colored marking light, according to the Washington State Patrol.

Pieces of the van found at the scene Saturday night belong to a 1996 to 2002 full sized Chevrolet Express or GMC Savana van, according to Trooper Steven Schatzel.

Lily M. Rowland, 77, was found about 10 p.m. fatally injured on northbound Interstate 5 near the Labree Road interchange.

She had wandered away from her nearby home and when her grown daughter reported her missing, law enforcement officers had already been getting 911 calls about a pedestrian on the freeway.

Washington State Patrol detective Matt Hughes said he believed she had been missing less than an hour.

Rowland’s husband of 52 years said his wife had Alzheimer’s disease and had a tendency to try to wander away. Billy Rowland Sr. said when he realized she’d left, he looked around the house about 10 minutes before he and his daughter drove a couple times around the area.

The couple live on Bishop Road, but previously lived near Marys Corner, where they raised six children. His wife grew up there, he said.

“She was always wanting to go home; she didn’t know where, just go home,” he said.

Lily Rowland was a home maker, although she worked at a tree farm near Toledo in the 1980s, according to her husband.

After his retirement, the couple spent a lot of time traveling, buying and selling antiques, mostly farm items, at swap meets, he said.

“It’s just shocking,” Billy Rowland said. “It’s just sad, sad, sad. There’s no way to explain it.

“I just hope they get that guy.”

Lily Rowland’s funeral service is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Friday at the cemetery next to Fir Lawn Funeral Chapel in Toledo.

Anyone with information about what happened is asked to call detective Hughes at 360-449-7944 or 360-772-1010.

This photo is an example of the particular body and grille style of the van troopers are looking for. Details such as window configurations, color and length my be different. / Courtesy photo Washington State Patrol