Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

This was updated at 12:02 p.m.

A pickup truck slammed through the bedroom wall of a Pe Ell house overnight sending two residents to the hospital.

Aid and law enforcement were called about 1:30 a.m. to the home on North Third Street.

The driver, 26-year-old Brian T. Zock of Pe Ell, was still in the cab of his truck when firefighters arrived, but not seriously injured, according to responders. Troopers are blaming driving under the influence.

The couple was in their bed, the vehicle came through the house and hit the end of the bed, Assistant Fire Chief Mike Davis said this morning.

“She was actually knocked out the bed, she was on the floor and he was still on the mattress,” Davis said.

Norman D. Moreau, 73, was flown by helicopter to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle with internal injures, according to the Washington State Patrol. He is listed in serious condition this morning.

Mary Moreau, 71, was taken to Providence Centralia Hospital with scrapes and less serious injuries, according to the state patrol.

The 1976 Ford pickup truck had been northbound on North Third Street when it struck the home on the left side of the street, according to the state patrol. The house sits in between Fifth and Sixth avenues, according to Davis.

Firefighters had to go through the front door to get to the couple, Davis said.

It appeared the bed was shoved across the room and she actually landed inside an adjacent bathroom, Davis said. They were conscious and alert.

Neither were trapped, but it was challenging getting through the debris to get them on backboards, he said. The bed was destroyed, he said.

“The room looked like a bomb went off in it,” he said.

Deputy marshals with Pe Ell were on the scene when firefighters arrived and troopers were still at the house when Davis returned from an ambulance trip to the hospital. The truck has been removed, he said.

The front six to eight feet of the truck was inside and the rest was outside, according to Davis. The driver was positioned where the exterior wall had been. “His knees were inside, but the back of his head was outside, Davis said.

“Everybody involved was lucky,” he said this morning

Davis said troopers took the driver to the hospital to be checked out.

No charges had been issued as early of this morning; the collision is still under investigation, according to Trooper Mike Anderson.

The Lewis County Jail log shows Zock was booked about 10:45 a.m. for vehicular assault.

Attorneys review an order allowing analysis of trace evidence, a spot so small the entire sample will be consumed. Counterclockwise beginning in front are Brad Meagher, James Dixon, Rick Cordes and Roger Hunko.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The state crime lab found a spot of what might be blood on clothing believed to belong to murder suspect Ryan J. McCarthy, but it’s so small that if they test it, there won’t be anything left for a defense expert to conduct its own analysis.

Ryan J. McCarthy

Lewis County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher filed a motion last week asking a judge to allow the DNA test, and allow the defense to have its own expert present when it’s done.

McCarthy, 29, and John Allen Booth Jr., 31, are former prison cell mates charged in the August 21 shootings inside a Salkum-Onalaska area home that left three people dead and one woman seriously wounded.

The pair are charged with murder and extortion in connection with the deaths of David J. West Sr. 52, his son David J. West Jr., 16, and Tony E. Williams, 50, of Randle, at the West’s home. Booth is also charged with the attempted murder of 51-year-old Denise Salts who lived there.

McCarthy’s wife, according to charging documents, told detectives that on Aug. 21, her husband showed up at her workplace with a bag containing the clothes he had been wearing when she picked him up in Centralia about 2:30 that morning. She said she threw it into a dumpster. It was recovered by law enforcement, according to charging documents.

John A. Booth Jr.

Meagher and lawyers for the defendants went before Judge Richard Brosey this week to discuss the proposed DNA test.

Six jail officers guarded the two defendants in the small fourth-floor courtroom in Chehalis during the proceedings on Wednesday afternoon.

The test will essentially consume all the trace evidence, Meagher told the judge.

McCarthy’s attorney, Rick Cordes, said he could bring in his own expert while it’s done. Brosey agreed with the arrangement.

Brosey also signed an order Wednesday allowing Booth’s fiancee Shawna Trent to get back her computer and an iPod seized by detectives.

Booth’s attorney, James Dixon, then asked the judge to lift a prohibition against any contact between Booth and Trent. She is listed as a witness in the case.

She is a longtime girlfriend of Booth, he told the judge. They consider themselves married, he said.

The couple underwent a religious marriage ceremony in June and had a date set for this month to do a civil ceremony.

Dixon noted a similar allowance was made for McCarthy and his wife, although she too is a witness.

Meagher opposed the request for visitation at the jail.

Brosey said he would allow telephone contact, as all phone calls from the jail are recorded. And he said he would allow visits, which are conducted through a video system in which inmates and their visitors are not ever in the same room.

The visits will have to be recorded and there can be no conversation about the case, the judge said.

A trial date has not yet been set for Booth, a former Onalaska resident.

Attorneys have a deadline at the end of March to file a “notice for special proceedings”. Defense attorneys are compiling a collection of information looking to show why the death penalty should not be sought for Booth.

McCarthy’s trial is scheduled for the week of April 18.

Both men have pleaded not guilty.
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Read recent stories on the case:
“News brief: Springtime trial set for one defendant in triple homicide” from Thursday Nov. 18, 2010

“Attorneys ask for more time on decision about seeking death penalty” from Wednesday Oct. 20, 2010

John A. Booth Jr. next to his attorney in Lewis County Superior Court on Wednesday afternoon as participants wait for the judge to enter.

Ryan J. McCarthy, in the jury box, talks with his lawyer before proceedings begin on Wednesday.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

A man federal authorities are calling an “enforcer” in a drug ring accused of distributing highly pure methamphetamine in Cowlitz and Lewis counties was sentenced today to 10 years in prison.

Michael J. Waddington, 24, of Silver Lake, was arrested in June. His co-defendants in the case include Toledo residents Erica Deann Lewis and Anthony Wayne Reisbeck, along with Randy Scott Chalupa of Longview.

The Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Narcotics Task Force and the Drug Enforcement Administration began investigating members of the group in 2009. Information revealed the four were selling pound quantities of meth in and around Kelso, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office.

“Waddington admitted one of his roles in the drug organization was to collect drug debts,” the office stated in a news release today.

In asking for a significant prison term, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Backhus noted for the court Waddington illegally possessed multiple firearms, including rifles, pistols and a sawed-off shotgun, according to the news release. He also has previous convictions for assault and then threatening a witness in the assault case, according to the news release.

Waddington pleaded guilty in October and was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Tacoma for conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, and being armed with a firearm in connection with a drug crime. Judge Robert J. Bryan imposed the sentence.

The other defendants are set to be sentenced early in 2011.
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Read the June 9, 2010 news story “News Brief: Alleged meth ring defendants handed over to feds” here

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The man charged with having pounds of methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin when he was captured following a high-speed chase in Chehalis a year ago pleaded guilty today in a compromise deal because the main witness against him is Robbie Russell.

Robert John Maddaus Jr.

Robert John Maddaus Jr., 41, was in Lewis County Superior Court this afternoon with his attorney Ken Johnson.

Senior Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher told the judge he reduced the charges to possession of each of three drugs.

“The intent element here, I was going to use Robbie Russell for that, and that just isn’t going to happen,” Meagher said.

After the two men were apprehended by Lewis County sheriff’s deputies in November 2009, detectives found in the car a backpack containing two and a half pounds of methamphetamine, nearly a half pound of cocaine and almost one-third pound of heroin, according to charging documents.

Maddaus – who is a Rochester resident, according to court documents – was initially charged with possession of each of the three drugs with intent to deliver, as well as unlawful possession of a firearm.

Robert Shawn Russell

The red Corvette belonged to Russell and it was Russell who was driving, according to Johnson. An argument could have been made at trial the drugs belonged to Russell, Johnson said.

Russell had been contacted by law enforcement and made arrangements to turn Maddaus over to them, Johnson said.

The attorney called the circumstances of that night “very peculiar”. Despite Russell’s agreement, he sped away when deputies tried to pull him over, he said.

“Back then, Russell was working with us,” Meagher said after today’s court hearing. But after that, he committed a bunch of crimes, he said.

Earlier this month, Russell was sent to prison with a six-year sentence.

“It’s not like we can count on Robbie Russell coming back and cooperating, things have changed,” Meagher said.

Judge James Lawler sentenced Maddaus today to one year and a day for each of the three counts. They will be served concurrently.

Lawler then signed an order transporting Maddaus back to Thurston County, where he is set for trial next week for first-degree murder in the case of a man found handcuffed and shot to death on an Olympia street in November of last year.

Some of the fire departments begin wrapping hoses and putting gear away as the downtown firefight wound down yesterday

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

TOLEDO – Members of eight fire departments battled the blaze yesterday morning that threatened an entire city block in downtown Toledo, and in the end two buildings were destroyed and a handful of adjacent businesses suffered light smoke damage.

The upper levels of the former Masonic building that holds Cowlitz River Antiques was gutted and the attic to the adjacent Used Book Store to the north was burned. The ground floor of both sustained water damage.

“Not good,” Toledo Mayor Jerry Pratt said yesterday as he watched firefighters winding down the operation. “That whole upstairs is full of Toledo history.”

The proprietors of the two businesses were instrumental in creating the Toledo Historical Society some six years ago and they keep its records, collections of photographs and artifacts inside.

Marie and Robert Oberg own the larger building and she had a logging museum fixed up upstairs, former city council member Steve McNew said as he and his wife spent part of their Christmas morning observing the aftermath.

Anita Emel who operates the bookstore surveyed the scene earlier in the day and then left, according to the mayor.

“I talked to Anita this morning, she’s pretty distraught,” Pratt said. “In fact I held her while she cried for a little while.”

Emel and Oberg helped found the society in the spring of 2004, in part because the area which saw one of the earliest white settlements in Lewis County had no museum.

While crews couldn’t fight the fire from inside because of the risk of the roofs collapsing, after it was under control firefighters made a quick trip inside the bookstore and retrieved some important papers and photos belonging to the historical society, according to Lewis County Fire District 2 Chief Grant Wiltbank.

“Anita stood at the window and said ‘we need those boxes right there’,” Wiltbank said. “It was just in and out.”

Wiltbank said the fire appears to have started on the second floor and spread to the attics of both buildings. The cause is under investigation.

The two storefronts along with Timberland Bank face Second Street – which was renamed Ramsey Street on that block a few years back – just off of the main route through town, Cowlitz Street which is state Route 505.

The bank was spared, but a row of businesses on Cowlitz Street sustained some smoke damage, according to the fire chief.

The backside of the two buildings – where the worst of the fire was – sits just across a narrow alley from Toledo Hardware.

“Our big concern was the fire jumping and taking out the hardware store and the pharmacy,” Wiltbank said.

The call came at 4:30 a.m. and drew what Wiltbank estimated was at least 30 firefighters.

Responders came from Toledo, Winlock, Vader, Napavine, Centralia, Castle Rock, Toutle and Kelso-Longview – the equivalent of a three-alarm fire, according to the chief.

Wiltbank, a volunteer chief was on his way home from his job at the fire department in Gig Harbor. Assistant Chief Mike Dorothy was the incident commander. Mayor Pratt said he arrived after getting a phone call at 5 a.m.

“When I came down the hill, the street was blocked and the flames were shooting close to 40 feet high,” Pratt said.

The fire hoses weren’t making a lot of headway until the ladder truck from Centralia’s Riverside Fire Authority joined them, according to Pratt.

“Thank God for the Centralia fire department, they probably saved the block,” he said. “When they opened up with that thing, it really knocked it down.”

Anita Emel's Used Book Store

Marie and Robert Oberg's Cowlitz River Antiques

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Read yesterday morning’s breaking news of the fire as it burned and see more photos here

Firefighters this morning at the fire in Salkum. / Courtesy photo by Bob Jackson of Onalaska

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

Four residents suffering from smoke inhalation and a responding firefighter who injured his leg were hospitalized after a fire broke out this morning in a Salkum home.

Some 25 firefighters from Salkum, Onalaska, Mossyrock and Lewis County Fire District 5 based in Napavine answered the 7:30 a.m. call to the residence in between U.S. Highway 12 and state Route 508.

“Don’t know what caused it, but it was a total loss, a double-wide trailer,” District 8 Assistant Chief Don Taylor said this afternoon.

Responders got the blaze under control about 11:30 a.m. and the scene was finally cleared about 2 p.m., he said.

A couple and two older teenage relatives who live there had a pair of out-of-town guests overnight, Taylor said.

He said one of the house guests was sleeping on the living room floor when she was awakened by what she thought was the sound of bacon cooking.

“She looked up and saw nobody was cooking and she could see flickering on the walls,” he said. “She opened a door – I don’t know if it was a back door or an inside door – and a ball of fire drove her back.”

Taylor said the older gentleman who lives there had severe smoke inhalation and a hand injury he thought he got trying to help the others out of the home.

A District 8 firefighter injured his leg when he fell through the floor during mop up, Taylor said.

The residence on 100 block of Maple Crest Drive is off a one-lane road with a narrower driveway so arriving fire trucks had to be stacked up along the road making fighting the fire more challenging, according to Taylor.

A car was destroyed by the fire, but a garage was spared, he said.

Taylor didn’t know all the details of how the occupants got out but said somebody had thrown a brick through a bedroom window and they were barefoot and in their night clothes at the back of the house when firefighters arrived.

“We had to bring them past the fire to get them to the ambulances,” he said. Two were carried and the others escorted, he said.

The fire department contacted the Red Cross to assist the fire victims with a place to stay.

The cause is under investigation.
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Read this morning’s news item on the fire here

Firefighters this morning at the fire in Salkum. / Courtesy photo by Bob Jackson of Onalaska