Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The recently released report on crime in Washington state suggests that while crime is down a bit statewide, it grew by more than 18 percent across Lewis County last year.

The biggest jump locally was murder, with six occurring in Lewis County during 2010, compared with only two the year before.

The Lewis County city with the highest crime rate, when numbers are adjusted for population, is Chehalis.

Last year in Chehalis, there were 103.3 “part one” offenses -serious crimes against people and property – reported for each 1,000 Chehalis residents, according to the report published last month by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.

The report’s crime index looks at certain offenses, not all, which are selected because they are indicators of the total amount of criminal activity.

Chehalis Police Chief Glenn Schaffer said 2010 was definitely a “crazy year” with almost double the number of arrests over 2009.

However, viewing the numbers per capita can be somewhat misleading, Schaffer said.

“We have I-5, we have the whole Twin City Town center, so you have an influx of people who travel through here or come to work here,” Schaffer said.

His officers go to Wal-Mart more than 600 times each year for shoplifters, he said.

Schaffer holds to the idea there’s no easy way to explain why the trends of crime rise and fall.

When the economy started to decline in 2009, he expected the city’s crime rate would sky rocket, but it didn’t, he said.

“We got into 2010 and that’s when we saw the spike,” he said.

Centralia came in second, with a crime rate Police Chief Bob Berg called disturbing when he released preliminary numbers  in February.

Also according to the report: Most listed crimes increased from 2009 in Lewis County, including burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, aggravated assault and robbery. Only arson and rape were down.

The most common crimes locally and statewide are larceny (theft) and burglary.

The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office reported 256 burglaries last year, down slightly from 2009.

Centralia saw 212 burglaries and Chehalis saw 97, both up by almost half from the year before.

Morton showed a decrease of the listed crimes of 35 percent from 2009.

Not all cities and towns passed their numbers along to WASPC last year, among those were Pe Ell and Vader.

Other data included in the Crime in Washington 2010 Annual Report include the number of employees by agency, assaults on officers, crime clearance rates and more.

According to the numbers provided, the Chehalis Police Department cleared 333 of their part one crimes last year, which translates to almost 45 percent of those crimes.

The Centralia Police Department cleared 237 of their part one crimes last year, which is about 19 percent of them.

The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office cleared 142 part one crimes, or about 18 percent of them.

•••
“Part one” crimes per 1,000 population last year, by agency

Chehalis:  103.3, up 27.3%

Centralia:  78.4, up 41.2%

Morton: 39.1, down 35.3%

Toledo:  28.8, up 100%

Napavine: 28.6, (no 2009 numbers to compare)

Winlock:  26.3, no change

Mossyrock:  25.9, no change

Lewis County Sheriff’s Office:  17.0, down 1.2%

Pe Ell:  no report

Vader:  no report

Lewis County total:  38.8, up 18.5%

Thurston County total:  34.9, up 7.7%

Cowlitz County total:  39.5, down 5.2%

Grays Harbor County total:  39.5, up 10.6%

Yakima County total:  50.4, up 2%

Washington state overall:  39.8, down .3%

Source: Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, Crime in Washington 2010 Annual Report

This news story was updated at 9 p.m.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – A 22-year-old man abducted from Centralia on Friday was located this afternoon at a hotel in Olympia.

Max Cross was uninjured, according to the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office.

Max Cross

Cross told sheriff’s detectives he was taken at knife-point by 24-year-old Seth T. Lloyd and two other unidentified males very early Friday morning from a residence on the 300 block of Big Hanaford Road, according to the sheriff’s office.

Lloyd, who was booked into jail on Friday night, was charged today in Lewis County Superior Court with one count of second-degree kidnapping.

The sheriff’s office says deputies believe the abduction occurred over a debt.

Both men are described as transient and living in Centralia.

The investigation is ongoing, according to the sheriff’s office.

A second man was also arrested Friday and initially suspected to be involved but new information today indicated he was not present during the kidnapping, Lewis County Deputy Prosecutor Will Halstead said this afternoon.

However, that man, Calvin C. Reece Jr., 38, of Centralia, was charged this afternoon with first-degree robbery, in connection with an incident that allegedly occurred later Friday morning in Vader.

Seth T. Lloyd

Charging documents give the following account of what deputies learned when they responded to a disturbance about 1:30 a.m. on Friday:

Cross and his girlfriend were staying a few days with Matthew Odle on Big Hanaford Road. The girlfriend overheard a phone conversation Cross had with two males, and she could hear them yelling through the phone.

At about 1 a.m. as they were watching television, a mini van came into the trailer park and stopped at Odle’s home.

Cross yelled at his girlfriend to hide and she did.

She said she heard a voice she believed to be Lloyd state, “What no money?” and “Empty your pockets.”

Odle told deputies the two males grabbed both of Cross’s arms, pushed him into the van and sped away.

Odle identified Lloyd and Reece through photographs as the two men involved.

Deputies found Lloyd about 7:25 p.m. the same day at Hill Krees Avenue  (sp) in Centralia where he ran, but was eventually apprehended. Lloyd denied kidnapping Cross, but admitted being with him earlier that morning.

Details about where Cross was taken were not included in the charging documents.

Calvin C. Reece Jr.

The documents give the following account of deputies’ pursuit of Reece:

Deputies got information on Friday Reece was at Coma Road in Vader, and when they arrived, they saw Reece standing in the driveway with a large combat knife. He was taken into custody.

The resident of the home, Earl Sisk, told deputies Reece is a “shirt tail” relative and had been dropped off that morning by two males.

Sisk said Reece approached him with the six-inch-bladed knife and demanded he get him a firearm, and money and provide him transportation out of the area.

Sisk said Reece came inside and began demanding various items of value such as a battery charger, chainsaw chains and DVDs.

Sisk said he was able to get Reece outside in hopes a passerby would call 911. Then deputies arrived.

Reece was charged this afternoon with first-degree robbery. His bail was set at $100,000.

Odle was also in court, charged with unlawful possession of a firearm for allegedly having a gun in his hand and another on his hip during the events of Friday night.

Lloyd was represented in court this afternoon by defense attorney Bob Schroeter who told the court Lloyd had “only tangential involvement if anything.”

Judge James Lawler set his bail at $100,000.

Lloyd’s arraignment is scheduled for Thursday.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The Onalaska man who allowed a teenage drinking party at his home after which a 15-year-old boy died from alcohol poisoning was sentenced yesterday to nine months in jail.

Nickolas Barnes

James W. Taylor, 30, was taken into custody following the proceedings yesterday afternoon in Lewis County Superior Court.

Taylor was initially charged with second-degree manslaughter but pleaded guilty in February to lesser charges including furnishing liquor to minors and failing to summon assistance.

Judge Nelson Hunt said the outcome might serve as a caution to adults who facilitate binge drinking.

The sentencing ends a case that began when high school sophomore Nickolas Barnes passed out in Taylor’s front yard, following a drinking game in which he and another teenage boy reportedly downed more than 11 shots of vodka.

James W. Taylor

Prosecutors alleged Taylor told the teenagers to “let him sleep it off.”

Nickolas was found not breathing an hour or two later; his friends had removed his clothes and written on his body with a black marker.

Taylor and another man took him to a hospital, but Nickolas died two days later, on Sept. 21, 2009. His blood alcohol level was .32.

Nickolas’s grandmother Susan Patterson spoke for his family when she addressed Taylor, a father of several children.

“It’s been one year, seven months and 20 days since Nick died because you didn’t call 911,” Patterson said.

“I pray you will never ever know the empty feeling that is in our hearts over the loss of a child,” she said. “I hope the hands you put your children’s lives in know how to call 911.”

Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer explained the plea agreement saying no amount of time will make up for what happened, but “we believe with the facts we have, this is the best outcome.”

Defense attorney Don Blair told the court his client made a decision he will regret the rest of his life.

Taylor apologized for everything that happened.

“I don’t expect forgiveness or anything, I know what happened and there is nothing much to say,” he said. “I’m sorry Barnes family for your loss. If I could take his place, I would.”

•••

Read more on the plea agreement in “Onalaskan offers mixed pleas in teen’s alcohol poisoning death” from Thursday Feb. 24, 2011, here

Read about the party in “Remembering Nickolas Barnes” from Thursday Sept. 23, 2010, here

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS –  The coroners inquest into the controversial 1998 death in Toledo of former state trooper Ronda Reynolds is being put on hold, Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod announced this morning.

Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod

A review by a panel of citizens was set for the end of August, but McLeod says now the outcome of a related civil case and as well as a triple-murder trial scheduled for the same time both present conflicts.

One of McLeod’s first acts after he took office in January was to change Reynolds’ death certificate from suicide to undetermined. Soon afterward, he announced that rather than review it himself behind closed doors, he preferred a coroners inquest, an open forum that would enhance public confidence in the final conclusion.

The case was the subject of a civil trial in November 2009 after which a panel of citizens concluded then-Coroner Terry Wilson’s determination that Reynolds’ died of suicide was arbitrary, capricious and incorrect. A judge ordered Wilson to change the manner of death, but Wilson instead appealed the order.

McLeod took over the coroner’s office after winning last November’s election.

Ronda Reynolds

Today McLeod is saying the outcome of the civil case appeal – Thompson vs. Wilson – could include an order giving him 10 days to review the case and come up with the manner of death.

“I cannot in good conscious spend tens of thousands of Lewis County taxpayers’ dollars to pursue an inquest when a real possibility exists that the Court of Appeals may order me to conduct a case review to make my own determination as to the manner of Ronda’s death,” McLeod wrote in a news release.

The appeal – by both the coroner and by Barb Thompson, the mother of Reynolds – is being argued in the Court of Appeals in Tacoma in June.

The other issue, according to McLeod, is a criminal trial for John A. Booth Jr., charged with last summer’s homicides in the Salkum-Onalaska area, is scheduled to begin the same week.

Because many individuals are involved in both cases, that would place an undue burden on the resources of the Lewis County Prosecutors Office, McLeod writes. Lewis County sheriff’s detectives are involved in both cases.

Initial plans were to hold the inquest in Clark County beginning Aug. 29 with an outside coroner presiding and Lewis County Deputy Civil Prosecutor David Fine presenting the case to a panel of six citizens.

Fine has represented the coroner, along with Olympia attorney John Justice, on the civil case.

McLeod notes that he still feels a coroner’s inquest is the best format for full public disclosure of the facts in the case and his decision on whether to do so at a later date will depend on the outcome of the Appeals Court decision.
•••

Read “Details of coming coroner’s inquest in Ronda Reynolds death unfolding slowly” from Friday Feb. 18, 2011, here

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Chehalis police arrested the chief financial officer for Steck Medical Group yesterday for allegedly embezzling some $25,000 from the health clinic.

Keith B. Mohoric, 51, of Centralia, had worked for the business a little more than a year and a half and was fired yesterday, according to authorities.

Steck Medical Group Chief Executive Officer Chris Bredeson said this morning they recently discovered discrepancies in their bank deposits. They contacted police on Friday.

Bredeson said in a prepared statement: “While significant, the losses do not affect the clinics’ services to patients.”

Detectives went to the clinic on Bishop Road in Chehalis yesterday morning to interview Mohoric and then booked him into the Lewis County Jail for first-degree theft and forgery, police detective Sgt. Rick McNamara said.

McNamara said essentially, not all the money that was supposed to be going to the bank actually was.

McNamara said Mohoric did not say why he did it, “just that he needed it, he was having money issues.”

Steck Medical Group operates multiple clinics in Lewis County, including Steck Medical Center in Chehalis.

Bredeson said Mohoric promised restitution.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – A Winlock woman has been granted a domestic violence protection order against Lewis County Sheriff Steve Mansfield’s son, alleging in court that 20-year-old John C. Mansfield shoved her in a downtown Winlock beauty salon and other instances of assault.

The younger Mansfield appeared in a Chehalis courtroom yesterday where a visiting commissioner for Lewis County Superior Court left in place the order prohibiting him from contacting her or coming near her.

Kaitlyn M. Larson, 18, sought and secured a temporary court order on April 21, following an incident three weeks earlier in Winlock.

The pair have a 2-year-old child together.

John Mansfield was accompanied by Chehalis attorney Jennifer Johnson yesterday who told Court Commissioner Pro-Tem Richard Adamson there was no substantiation for the allegations made by Larson.

The entire Lewis County judiciary has recused themselves from the case because it involves the elected sheriff’s son.

Commissioner Adamson reversed the portion of the temporary order which had prohibited John Mansfield from contact with the child.

Yesterday was John Mansfield’s opportunity to dispute the conditions of the order, but Larson’s’ newly-hired attorney asked to postpone the hearing so she could prepare.

Olympia attorney Jennifer Smith –  Larson’s lawyer – and Johnson both said after the hearing they had no comment on the case.

“I still maintain I have no comment, and we’re going to move forward in the best interests of the child,” Smith said.

Larson, who lives in Winlock, wrote in her April 21 request that John Mansfield has in the past left bruises on her and nearly broken her ribs, none of which she received medical attention for.

There was no indication in her filing he was ever arrested.

Sheriff Mansfield has said he has no comment on the situation.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with me or my wife,” Mansfield said the day after the petition was filed.

“If he’d have done those things, he’d have gone to jail,” Mansfield said.

Larson wrote that she called 911 on March 30 after John Mansfield came into McKenzie’s salon and took her son out of her friend’s arms “very forcefully”.

When she told him he couldn’t take the child, he shoved her and they argued, she wrote.

John Mansfield took the toddler out to his own mother while he came back inside to get a blanket, yelled at the hair dresser and then left, she wrote.

Larson, John Mansfield and their baby were swept into the news two years ago when the state Attorney General’s office was asked to look into a complaint that Sheriff Mansfield improperly handled a runaway report the parents of the then-16-year-old Larson  attempted to file with the sheriff’s office.

Larson was at a residence on the Mansfield’s property, and was not picked up and returned home.

The Attorney General’s office review, dated Nov. 18, 2009, blamed a lapse of three days in entering the girl’s name into the relevant computer databases for runaways on Mansfield personally and on Mansfield’s decision not to ask an outside agency to handle the case; but declined to file any charge against the sheriff.

Among the instances from the past Larson cites in her April 21 handwritten request for the protection order:

John Mansfield once shoved her trying to get her phone; shoved her to the ground and sat on top of her.

One night, when she refused to give him her phone, “he shoved me off the bed, I hit my head on the ceiling and could barely breathe.”

He followed her and her boyfriend from Centralia to Adna, calling her and threatening her. “He constantly texts me even after I repeatedly asked him to stop.”

“One time John held me against the wall with his (undecipherable) gun and hit me in the face, giving me a black eye …”

Larson filed a proposed parenting plant with the court, asking that the child reside with her.

A hearing is set for June 1, when the visiting court commissioner returns, for John Mansfield to respond to the conditions currently in place in the protection order.

Austin King

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS –  The 21-year-old charged in last summer’s homicide of Morton teenager Austin King admitted he did it and indicated he was sorry in Lewis County Superior Court yesterday afternoon.

Jack A. Silverthorne listened as his lawyer J.P. Enbody read his statement aloud in a courtroom packed with friends and family of the dead 16-year-old.

” … I want to apologize to the family for what happened, it never should have happened,” Enbody read. “I want everybody to know, I never meant to cause his death.”

Jack A. Silverthorne

Silverthorne admitted he hit Austin in the head with his fist, causing his death.

Austin’s body was found last July following a month-long search, down an embankment, some 40 feet off a logging road outside Morton. His skull was cracked above his right ear.

An indentation of a knuckle was found in the skull, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher told the court yesterday.

At first, investigators thought it was caused by a rock or something similar, Meagher said. The discovery it was a fist is what led prosecutors to enter into a plea agreement, according to Meager.

“That changed things for us,” Meager said.

There was evidence of a fight, with “probably intent to injure or hurt him, but we can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt there was intent to kill,” he said.

Silverthorne was previously charged with first-degree murder, the elements of which include premeditation and intent to kill.

He pleaded guilty yesterday to first-degree manslaughter, recklessly causing the death of another person.

He was then sentenced to eight and a half years in prison, the high end of the standard sentencing range for the crime.

Since there will be no trial, the details of exactly what happened or why may never be known.

Authorities believe Silverthorne took Austin up into the woods, and his motive was related to an attraction to a girl, the mother of Austin’s child, according to charging documents.

Austin was home schooled and was described by his mother Christy Harper as a boy who  liked to spend time playing video games, listening to music and watching movies.

The family lived in the Tilton River Mobile Home Park. Silverthorne was staying in the same trailer park with his grandmother at the time.

Harper last saw her son about 12:15 a.m. on June 23 when he said goodnight and went off to his detached bedroom outside of their home with two buddies to watch television.

The teenager’s body was found July 20  by volunteer searchers some 10 miles away from his home.

Silverthorne, who lives in Renton, was arrested in November. His broken hand was part of what tied him to the death.

Lewis County Superior Court Judge James Lawler yesterday gave a lengthy explanation about the various kinds of charges connected with homicides, the different mandatory lengths of sentences for each and his decision to accept the plea bargain.

“I don’t have the discretion to impose life in prison,” Lawler said. “Even if some of you want that and feel he deserves that.”

Austin’s parents both chose not to address the judge at the sentencing.

His father, Shawn King of Chehalis, was among the many who lingered after the hearing.

“It could have been prevented, if the court system would have listened to me,” King said.

King said he was speaking of custody decisions made in family court, but didn’t have time to elaborate because he had to get to work.

Leslie Mathews, a friend of Austin’s mother, found the length of the sentence difficult to understand, as she spoke of the nightmares that keep her awake.

Mathews said she’s known Austin since he was three or four years old. She was part of the small search group who found his body.

“To know he only got 12 years, or eight years, or whatever, it hurts so bad,” she said. “I hurt for the family. I hurt for myself every day.”
•••

Read more about the case in “Morton homicide: Suspect had broken hand, victim had cracked skull” from Wednesday Nov. 10, 2010, here