Lewis County Sirens.com

Firefighters knocked down a blaze on the 1400 block of Logan Street in Centralia on July 16.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CENTRALIA – Authorities have failed to find a cause for last month’s daytime fire that destroyed a vacant house on Logan Street, but the blaze remains in the suspicious file as far as police are concerned.

“We have an origin point, but we don’t have a cause for the fire as of right now,” fire investigator Rick Mack said today. “We’ll leave it undetermined. That leaves the door open in case we get more information.”

Mack, assistant chief and fire marshal for Riverside Fire Authority, said they completed their forensic examination and there was no evidence sent off to be tested.

“We’re hoping to get more information from anyone who saw anything,” Mack said.

Firefighters responded about 4:15 p.m. on July 16 to reports of a fully involved structure fire in a residential neighborhood at the north end of town.

Burning was a one and a half-story wood-frame home built around the turn of the century. The blaze extended to a detached garage in back.

Investigators concluded the fire originated inside the back portion of the house, Mack said.

According to Mack, some of the circumstances that make it feel odd are the lack of what commonly causes house fires: There was nobody living there who had a cooking accident, for example, he said. And it couldn’t have been an electrical problem because the power had been turned off a some point prior.

“Whether there was somebody who was in the residence doing something they didn’t intend to happen, I don’t know,” he said.

Exactly how long the home had been vacant or even who owns it isn’t clear.

Centralia Police Department detective Sgt. Pat Fitzgerald said police had contact in April with tenants living there.

County records show the owner as Dan Henderson, the Centralia city council member.

But Henderson says he surrendered the house in May of 2010 as a result of a bankruptcy.

Henderson said he believes it’s now owned by a loan servicing company in Colorado, and that neither they nor the previous bank that had the mortgage have properly recorded the change of owners.

The ensuing confusion even resulted in a nuisance infraction being issued to Henderson in late June, following a complaint about a large pile of garbage and a non-running vehicle on the property. But the police chief told him today the department was asking that to be dismissed, according to Henderson.

Henderson did say he has since been made aware there were some “petty burglary folks” squatting there as well as someone whose children were removed by Child Protective Services.

Police and fire authorities got one report the day of the fire of an individual walking away from the area, but that hasn’t been substantiated, according to police Sgt. Fitzgerald.

He said police are actively seeking people with information.

“It’s suspicious,” Fitzgerald said. “Houses do not spontaneously catch on fire.”

Mack and Fitzgerald are asking for anyone who knows anything or learns something about the cause of the fire to call them. Mack 360-330-9854. Fitzgerald 360-330-7614.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

For the third time an appeals court has reversed a conviction in a Lewis County shooting death at a campground from more than a decade ago.

Kenneth L. Slert has three times been convicted of second-degree murder in the death of 53-year-old John Benson, a truck driver and father of five from Eatonville.

Slert claimed self defense in the October 2000 shooting off Skate Creek Road in between Packwood and Ashford.

The opinion filed yesterday by the Washington Court of Appeals remanded the case for a new trial based on a violation of a public trial right.

Specifically, four prospective jurors were excused during a closed door meeting between the judge and attorneys, according to the opinion.

One judge on the three-member panel dissented.

According to the court record, Benson went to Slert’s campsite where the two drank whiskey, argued over politics and fought.

Slert claimed he went into his tent to retrieve his gun and shot Benson who tried to come into the tent, and then shot him a second time when Benson was laying on the ground and reached out and grabbed at Slert.

The former carpenter who lived in Tacoma has been in prison since after his first trial in 2004.

Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer doesn’t yet have an answer whether his office will go for a fourth trial in the case.

Meyer previously represented Slert while working as a defense attorney, so two of his senior deputies will be making the decision.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – A 50-year-old Olympia woman pleaded guilty as charged in the Adna burglary that last month sent three home-alone children to hide in their bedroom.

Darlene J. Lockard was sentenced today to almost two and a half years in prison, the high end of the standard sentencing range for her for residential burglary.

Darlene J. Lockard

The 29-month sentence will be served concurrently with the lesser time she was handed down for  possession of methamphetamine and misdemeanor theft.

Thirteen-year-old  Braydon Carper was babysitting his brothers, 7 and 5 years old, when they heard knocking on the door of their Penning Road home on July 12. Just the night before, his parents had a conversation about what to do if anyone came to the house while their parents were out.

Braydon took his brothers in their bedroom and when they heard banging on the door, locked that door and called his mother. Something prompted the intruder to leave right away.

Lockard was stopped by an arriving deputy about a quarter mile away with a crowbar in her van as well as costume jewelry from the house.

Lockard pleaded guilty this morning pursuant to a plea agreement in Lewis County Superior Court and was sentenced by Judge James Lawler.

Defense attorney David Arcuri said there was no evidence  his client knew the children were there but prosecutors threatened to enhance the charges if she went to trial, to include committing a burglary when someone is home. If convicted, a judge would have been free to sentence her up to 10 years in prison.

She decided to accept the plea agreement.
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For background, read: “Jehovah’s Witnesses visit: A dress rehearsal for home invasion burglary” from Thursday July 19 2012, here

Bailey the kitty is back home after three days at the vet.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CENTRALIA – The Centralia Police Department is investigating an early morning attack on a pair of cats that left one dead on Ham Hill Road.

Owner Cheryl Oakley said she awoke to barking so loud she thought it was inside her house. When she went outside, she saw two dogs in her yard, one of them with what looked like a possum or mole in its mouth.

Then she realized it was her 9-month-old Siamese kitty, she said.

“I screamed at them,” Oakley said. “When I saw it was her, I screamed louder and they ran away.”

Bailey the young cat was covered in blood. Her companion Roscoe the tabby was nowhere to be found, she said.

The strictly indoor cats had apparently pushed through a window screen and gotten outside, according to Oakley.

It was about 3 o’clock last Monday morning.

Oakley said a police officer showed up, then left. Five minutes later he returned with two dogs in his car which she identified as the ones she’d seen in her yard, she said.

When daylight came, Oakley found Roscoe dead across the road.

By mid-week, Bailey was home from the veterinary clinic and on the mend. But Oakley is left wondering what will become of the dogs.

“I don’t understand why they brought them back to the owner,” she said.

Police issued a citation – a civil infraction actually – to Felipe Loa-Vargas for dog at large, meaning a dog caught roaming off it’s owner’s property. The fine can be as high as $250.

But an animal control officer with the city is investigating further.

Boe Wohld, as the city’s special services officer, has dealt with animals in Centralia for more than 30 years.

Wohld said maybe seven or eight times a year they’ll get a report of an unprovoked attack by a dog on a domestic animal that ends in death.

Whether an offending dog gets impounded immediately for killing has to do with whether the act is witnessed, he said.

He checked on the two dogs this week, and saw they were not only in their pen, but chained up inside it, he said.

The city code about dogs that bite is patterned after state law.

In general, a dog gets one “free bite”, Wohld said. After that, if it does it again, the “dangerous dog” rules kick in.

And that’s a big deal, Wohld said.

If a dog is designated “dangerous”, the requirements put upon the owner are strict and expensive, according to Wohld. So strict, that when it occurs, most owners choose to give up their pet, he said.

Wohld guessed there are only about four or five such animals living in the city.

Among the requirements, according to Centralia’s code, are being kept in an enclosure with a secure top, proof of special liability insurance and in some cases having to wear a muzzle when taken for walks.

The “free bite” pass doesn’t apply if a dog inflicts severe injury on a human or kills a pet while off its property in an unprovoked attack.

Bailey the kitty was lucky.

Although the veterinarian surmised she was violently shaken, while her hindquarters were trapped in the dog’s jaws, she had no broken bones and didn’t require stitches for the tears along her backside.

“If you saw her when I brought her in, you would not think she would have made it,” Oakley said.

The vet kept her for three days, concerned about a deep wound in her groin, and possible spinal cord injury, according to Oakley.

She was sent home Wednesday with antibiotics and pain medication.

Roscoe has been buried. This weekend Oakley planned to bolt the window screens so her kitty can’t escape again.

“What if it was a kid?” Oakley asks, and then teared up. “It was a kid. It was mine.”

Wohld expected the animal control officer’s investigation could be finished as early as Monday.

Bailey, left, and Roscoe, right.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Prosecutors have amended the charges against a Winlock man accused of sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl in a Mossyrock-area campground five years ago.

Reginald L. Juntunen, now 24, was arrested and charged last week after he was identified through DNA as a suspect, according to authorities.

Charging documents in the case initially alleged the child was anally raped by a dark-skinned male wearing a hoodie and a stocking cap who forced her into the public restroom.

However, count one of first-degree rape of a child was altered earlier this week to include “or in the alternative, first-degree child molestation.”

The difference is penetration or just bodily contact, according to Lewis County Deputy Prosecutor Joely O’Rourke.

They did it to cover their bases, O’Rourke said.

“It’s a precaution on our part, in case there’s any discrepancies in the victim’s statement,” she said.

The victim was young when she was interviewed, she added.

Juntunen is also charged with first-degree rape, and now, or in the alternative, indecent liberties with forcible compulsion, with a similar distinction. He remains charged with first-degree kidnapping with sexual motivation.

He denied to detectives being in the park in 2007 when he was 19 years old.

He pleaded not guilty yesterday in Lewis County Superior Court and remains held on $500,000 bail.

A trial is scheduled for the week of Sept. 17.
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Fo background, read “Prosecutors: Winlock man ID’d through DNA charged in 2007 campground rape of child” from Friday July 27, 2012, here