Lewis County Sirens.com

Police officers search the grassy area at Euclid and Third streets after a Centralia police officer fired upon a stolen truck when it rammed his patrol car this afternoon.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CENTRALIA – A police officer fired shots at a vehicle that rammed the officer’s patrol car during a pursuit of a stolen pickup truck in Centralia late this afternoon, according to Centralia police.

The chase began on Kresky Avenue and continued through downtown and into a residential neighborhood at the north end of Centralia.

A suspect was caught on the other side of the Skookumchuck River after bailing out of the truck and fleeing on foot, according to Centralia Officer John Panco.

“It doesn’t appear the suspect was hit,” Panco said just before 7 p.m. this evening.

Chris Wilson, a 21-year-old whose grassy side yard was cordoned off by police tape, said he came out of his house and saw a patrol car on the grass and an officer standing outside it.

“That’s when I heard shots being fired and then there’s a whole bunch of dust and smoke,” Wilson said.

Wilson said the big white truck and patrol car took off north across the railroad tracks.

It was just a block away where the suspect jumped out of the truck and started running, according to Panco.

It began with a report of a stolen vehicle from the 1100 block of South Gold Street at 4:22 p.m., according to Panco. The officer spotted the truck on Kresky and gave chase, he said.

The officer, whose identity was not released, had a minor injury and couldn’t pursue the man on foot, Panco said.

Centralia police were joined by officers from Chehalis, the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office and the Washington State Patrol in a search for the suspect. The SWAT team which happened to be training joined in, along with police dog Kayo and his handler Sgt. Brian Warren.

The suspect was found in Riverside Rotary Park and arrested for first-degree assault and possession of stolen property. Joshua A. Fitchhorn, 32, of SeaTac, was booked into the Lewis County Jail.

The officer was checked out at Providence Centralia Hospital and has been released, according to Panco.

Small yellow flags marked potential evidence in the grass next to Wilson’s home at Euclid and Third streets. Police officers scoured the area there, along the railroad tracks and even on a nearby roof.

The SWAT truck and another large police vehicle blocked off the area from traffic. Police expected personnel from the state patrol to be out there for hours taking measurements.

Panco said in a news release just before 9 p.m. the suspect rammed the patrol car twice and the officer fired at least two shots in self defense.

Neighbor Rich Butterton said he saw the cloud of dust as well. He was inside when he heard sirens and vehicles that sounded like they were driving way too fast for his street, he said.

“I heard smash, pop, pop, pop, pop,” Butterton said. Then he went out his front door and saw the cloud of dust.

“This is not supposed to happen here at home,” Butterton said. “This is like Seattle-Tacoma stuff; not Centralia stuff.”

Members of the Centralia Police Department return to the SWAT vehicle after a search for a subject who reportedly rammed a patrol car

South Lewis County EMS’s new base is now at the corner of state Route 505 and North Military Road in Winlock

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

WINLOCK – The paramedics who respond to 911 calls in South Lewis County have a new home, a new name and and an increased presence at night.

South Lewis County EMS has moved its quarters to a spot about a half mile west of Interstate 5, to the corner of state Route 505 and North Military Road, near Winlock High School.

The group of eight medics will soon be known as Lewis County Medic 1. And they’ve altered their work schedule so two people will be on duty 24 hours a day at the new site.

Fire Chief Grant Wiltbank

The most visible change is their quarters. They began moving the Fourth of July weekend.

Lewis County Fire Districts 2 and 15 spent $300,000 out of their reserves to purchase the four acres which hold a newer three-bedroom house and a double garage tall enough to park the ambulance indoors, according to Grant Wiltbank, chief of the Toledo-area fire district and executive director of the shared ambulance service.

“The idea was to secure a site that might be used for a joint station in the future,” Wiltbank said last week.

The property sits immediately south of the vast acreage adjacent to Interstate 5 that is expected to one day grow into an industrial park.

It’s all zoned for industrial use and once the area gets water and sewer and development begins, it would have become prohibitively expensive to move there, Wiltbank said.

Their former base was a 1970s single-wide, one bedroom mobile home that was in rough shape when they got it, Wiltbank said. It sat just north of state Route 505 at exit 63 just west of the freeway.

“It worked for what we needed,” Paramedic Kirk Johnston said when he returned from a call to the 2,200-square-foot house one afternoon early last week. “This is just so much … there’s no comparison.”

A big change is being able to park the ambulance inside. The spacious garage will really help, especially in the winter time, said Paramedic Delaney Haddow.

“When it snowed and stuff, we’d have to unbury the ambulance to get out,” she said.

The group, officially named the Interlocal Organization of Lewis County Fire Districts 2, 7 and 15 serves the areas of Toledo, Vader and Winlock, and also responds in Ryderwood. It continues to house three of its paramedics next to the Lewis County Fire District 5 station on Jackson Highway at Avery Road East. Those crews serve the areas covered by fire districts in Napavine, Onalaska, Salkum and Mossyrock.

Inside the new place is a comfy couch and two recliners, and even a bonus room being furnished with hand-me-down exercise equipment. Outside the front door is South Military Road which drops directly into Vader.

Most of their medical calls are for problems such as difficulty breathing or chest pains, but in the summer the calls for trauma go up, the two paramedics said. The changes help carve seconds off response times, according to Wiltbank.

Call volume for the emergency responders feels like it’s at least doubled since she began with South Lewis County EMS in January 2002, Haddow said as she showed off the new quarters. That should only continue, they think. The long term growth in Lewis County is expected in the south portions, according to Wiltbank.

The schedule change means there will be two paramedics on duty at night, where before there was only one.

“We’re also doing transports from Morton General Hospital to wherever they need to go,” Haddow said. “So like last night, I took somebody from Morton to St. Pete’s, so that left a paramedic on duty.”

The groups’ revenue comes from the fees charged for transports.

They’re now doing business as Lewis County Medic 1, a change that should help the public more easily understand what they do, the two medics said.

That will show up on their paperwork, on new uniforms and over time, with the re-lettering of their rigs.

“South Lewis County EMS was just too long of a name,” Johnston said. “People would say, what’s that?”

Riverside Fire Authority Chief Jim Walkoski said that firefighters battling the Saturday furniture store blaze reduced the heat on themselves as best they could by keeping themselves as low to the ground as possible. / Photo by Richard LaLonde

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

While the fire department has finished its part of the investigation into the cause of the weekend’s three-alarm fire at a Centralia furniture business, they will now wait for insurance company investigators to conduct tests on various machines from inside the building to look for a possible ignition source.

Riverside Fire Authority Chief Jim Walkowski said he estimated the loss at Just Wood Furniture at about $2 million.

They believe the area of origin was somewhere in the back of the 13,000 square-foot structure, Walkowski said today.

Just Wood – owned by Tom Nelson – manufactured, repaired and sold retail at the business on Harrison Avenue near Yew Street, according to the fire chief. It was a complete loss, as was separate business, Cascade Tax Service which was located inside the building.

“Fires like these take weeks, if not months before we get answers,” Walkowski said.

Firefighters were dispatched at 3:26 a.m. on Saturday after a police officer responded to a burglar alarm there, Walkowski said. The chief said not to read much into that, as fire activity can set off motion detectors.

It took two hours to get the blaze under control and until about 8 o’clock in the morning before it was fully extinguished, according to the chief.

Forty firefighters from six departments battled to keep it contained and prevent it from burning down a convenience store on one side, an accounting office on the other and a small house in the back, Walkowski said as he finished up reports today.

Besides the wood furniture, the business with an adjoining two-story shop contained wood, sawdust, solvents, lacquers and numerous propane cylinders.

“All very, very combustible,” Walkowski said. “There was a huge fire load inside that building.”

When firefighters pulled up, the roof had collapsed and flames had already ignited trees and the side of the Food Mart next door. They didn’t go inside the burning building, according to Walkowski.

“At the height of the firefight, we were pumping 8,000 gallons of water per minute; that is significant,” Walkowski said, noting one ladder truck can put out 1,000 gallons per minute. The city turned on additional pumps and valves to make that possible, he said.

They had police officers chasing down flying embers and nearly had to relocate the command post which was 60 to 80 feet away in a small parking lot across Harrison, the chief said.

“You couldn’t even put your hand on the side of the command vehicle, it was so hot,” Walkowski said.

Personnel and apparatus from departments in Chehalis, Napavine, Oakville and the city of Olympia assisted in fighting the fire. One firefighter was treated for an ankle injury.

The last three-alarm fire in Centralia was four years ago when half of Oakview Elementary School in the north end of town was destroyed by runaway fireworks.

Late Saturday afternoon, Harrison Avenue was reopened and a fence surrounded the blackened remains of the fire. A bulldozer-type machine was parked inside, and nearby was a Just Wood truck and trailer which were spared. File cabinets from the tax business had also been rescued, according to Chief Walkowski.

Centralia resident Jaspal Mohan said she had arrived about 6 a.m. that morning to open Centralia Food Mart, after closing about 11:30 p.m. the night before.

“I was worried, I saw flashing lights, from Mellen Street,” Mohan said.

She found her front door was open after firefighters broke into her convenience store to check in the attic for fire. There was none, but one exterior wall was left charred and an outside corner had burned.

Also Saturday afternoon, Richard LaLonde and a neighbor were pruning and removing bushes from in between their houses, a task prompted by the overnight experience.

The Rochester Primary School teacher said thankfully the wind was carrying embers the other way, because the vacant house in front and very close to theirs on Harrison Avenue is surrounded by tall, dry grass.

LaLonde and his wife were asleep when their children woke them about 3:30 a.m. They were among the crowd who watched for hours.

Cindy LaLonde said it seemed only minutes that the flames moved from the back of the building to the front.

“It all went up, and it went up fast,” Richard LaLonde said.
•••
To view several photos and read the original Saturday news story about the fire at Just Wood Furniture click here.

Family, friends and others gather with candles at Gust Backstrom Park in Morton on Friday night to honor 16-year-old Austin King.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

MORTON – A grass field at a Morton park drew more than 200  people last night, both individuals who knew and those who never knew 16-year-old Austin King.

The gathering came three days after the body of a young adult male was discovered off a logging road 10 miles away from the missing Morton boy’s home.

The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office has not said the body is that of the teenager; it hasn’t been identified yet.

Hundreds of candles were lit and a handful of folks spoke before a prayer was recited.

“When I heard, I cried,” said one man who said he didn’t know Austin. “It could have been my boy.”

“We want to thank you from the bottom of our heart for bringing home our baby,” said another adult.

Another called whoever did this “monsters.”

Eloise Pugh from Glenoma whispered how unfortunate it was she didn’t see elected officials from Morton or members of the sheriff’s office present.

“It feels like they don’t care,” Pugh said quietly. “These people know their children, they know their child.”

Morton resident Jennifer Mau and women she called her “core” team coordinated blue ribbons for lapels, a jug to collect funds for funeral expenses, and balloons.

The 30-year-old is the local chapter founder of a Texas-based motorcycle group called Guardians of the Children. Their mission is to help protect abused kids, but Mau has become active in assisting and now in setting up searches for runaway children.

Members of Guardians of the Children came from as far away as Tacoma to support Austin King's family.

She organized the search effort for Austin that began not long after he vanished sometime between June 23 and 24. The teenager was labeled by the sheriff’s office as a runaway, and two or three weeks later re-classified as endangered-missing.

What happened remains a mystery.

The sheriff’s office in talking Wednesday about the unidentified body said there was no initial obvious indication of an accident or suicide and none of foul play “at this time.” But it’s not clear what they had to work from.

After an autopsy was conducted on Thursday, the remains were taken to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office in Seattle, for additional examination by a forensic anthropologist.

Yesterday, the sheriff’s office released a statement that a high priority is being given to determining the identity, but DNA testing is necessary for that.

“It’s not expected to be completed for at least another week,” the statement read.

Austin’s mother, 35-year-old Christy Harper kept a low profile at Gust Backstrom Park last night. His father Shaun King lives in Chehalis and he has numerous brothers and sisters, according to family members.

One cousin from Randle and another from Onalaska were among the many relatives who were part of the convergence at the park.

“He’s 16 years old, it shouldn’t have happened,” said A.J. Spears a cousin who was at the teenager’s home in the Tilton River Mobile Home Park when his family realized he was gone.

Like others, he’s heard lots of stories, but doesn’t know anything for sure, Spears said.

“It’s crazy, I’ve never heard of it in this area,” he said. “And I’ve lived here all my life.”

•••
To read “Vigil for Morton teen still on; body found yesterday not identified” – click here – from Wednesday July 21, 2010 at 12:06 p.m.

A collection of photographs of Austin King is displayed on a picnic table in the park in Morton on Friday night.

Firefighters prepare to put more water into the second story of a house on the 600 block of Northwest Folsom Street in Chehalis yesterday afternoon.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

One firefighter was hospitalized and another narrowly escaped a falling air conditioner unit during a fire in Chehalis yesterday that destroyed a two-story house.

Chehalis Fire Department Acting Capt. Pat Gilligan said this morning a volunteer from Lewis County Fire District 6 suffered heat exhaustion as five departments worked the blaze on Northwest Folsom Street.

Chehalis Fire Chief Kelvin Johnson said he could see the smoke as he left the station to answer the 2:10 p.m. call, and when he arrived, flames were shooting out the back of the wood-frame home.

It was vacant.

Investigators are returning today to figure out what sparked the blaze, according to Gilligan.

The 28-year-old volunteer was released from the hospital after spending about four hours there yesterday, District 6 Chief Bud Goodwillie said this morning.

He was among those spraying water on the adjoining structures to prevent them from catching fire, Gilligan said.

One one side, a garage housed a 1960 Corvette belonging to Chehalis Fire Capt. Casey Beck, who resides across the street. On the other side, the plastic clips melted from an air conditioning unit in a second-story window and it dropped to the ground, nearly striking Chehalis Assistant Chief Larry Allen, according to Gilligan.

The Chehalis Fire Department was joined by crews from Centralia, Rochester and Lewis County Fire districts 5 and 6, according to the chief.

Gilligan said the upstairs of the house was completely burned and the downstairs damaged by smoke and water. He said the $175,000 structure was likely a total loss.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

While the sheriff’s office says it won’t speculate if the body found outside of Morton is missing teenager Austin King, the woman who has headed up the search spoke this morning as though it is Austin.

“I can’t say much because of the integrity of the investigation, but I know law enforcement spoke with Christy last night and she has accepted the fact and come to terms with it,” said Jennifer Mau of Morton.

Austin King

About 25 individuals, mostly family, are gathered in Morton’s Gus Backstrom Park this morning including Mau and the 16-year-old boy’s mother Christy Harper. Harper and others have been staying day and night at the park which has been serving as a central point for the search.

Austin was last seen by his mother almost a month ago, when he said goodnight early in the morning of June 23. He was classified by the sheriff’s office as a runaway, and since been labeled endangered-missing.

The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office sent out a short news release last night, saying they got word at 2 p.m. yesterday the body of a male was found near a logging road outside Morton.

“There’s no way we can put a positive identification until we get dental records or even DNA,” sheriff’s Cmdr. Steve Aust said this morning.

Aust said he doesn’t have an idea of the age of the person found. The Lewis County Corner’s Office described the individual as a young adult.

Detectives were at the scene about 10 miles from the boys’ Chapman Road home until 9:30 or 10 p.m. last night. Aust said they are in Morton again today and hope to have some more answers by the end of the day.

“We’re treating it as a suspicious death until we know otherwise,” Aust said.

Aust said the remains were found on the ground, but not in plain sight. He declined to say how far off the logging road the find was made.

Mau, a 30-year-old Centralia College student, who organized searches for Austin, said the candle light vigil scheduled for 6 p.m. Friday in the park is still on. Anyone who wants to come is welcome, she said.

Austin, who his mother said is home schooled, is one of four children who live with her  in the Tilton River Mobile Home Park. His mother has described him as a boy who never took off without telling family where he was going, didn’t go out after dark or often even alone, and liked to spend time playing video games, listening to music and watching movies.

He slept in a small detached building he called his apartment, and that’s where he went off with two buddies to watch television a month ago after he said goodnight to his mom.

Mau said she wasn’t part of the search party of five who discovered the body, and attributed the find to the fact the search was moving to increasingly farther away areas, as well as a Portland woman she called a medium, or “an intuitive” named Sonya Grace.

“She worked with me on a map and came up with that point, that road.” Mau said. “She said that’s the road where we should send searchers.”

Mau got involved with the case because she is founder of the Mount St. Helens chapter of a Texas-based group called Guardians of the Children, an organization she says help with abused and missing kids.

“I really have a hard time because law enforcement stereotypes kids as runaways” she said this morning. “I don’t have any reason to think Austin ran away.”

The Camas-native, who moved to Morton 10 years ago, said she founded the local group in the fall of 2008 with her boyfriend.

“I have two children of my own,” she said. “I would be completely devastated if this was my kid, that’s why I’m out here.”
•••
Proceeds from T-shirts available Friday night will be used for funeral expenses, according to Mau.

Accounts had already been set up at Sterling Savings Bank in Austin’s and his mother’s names for a reward fund and to help pay for food for the people who have been searching.

Kail Homan talks to news reporters yesterday at the fire station in Napavine

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

NAPAVINE – Six-year-old Kail Homan was honored by the fire department yesterday for his actions which quite possibly helped save his mother’s life.

Late last week the child woke in the night to hear his mother moaning and he woke up his older brother who called for help.

His mom, Kristen Homan, is diabetic and her blood sugar had gotten too low, according to responders from Lewis County Fire District 5.

Kail Homan

“I don’t know what woke him, but if he hadn’t, there’s a pretty good likelihood his mom wouldn’t have made it,” District 5 Lt. Laura Hanson said.

Paramedics, firefighters and Fire Chief Eric Linn gathered at the fire station in Napavine yesterday afternoon to present Kail with a citation for being brave and courageous in an emergency.

Homan and her other three children were there as well.

She’s been diabetic since she was 9 years old and has taught her children what to do if she should ever show symptoms of low blood sugar, she said.

“If they can’t get me to respond, or if I’m asleep and making strange noises or if I’m slow,” the rural Chehalis resident said. “We practice it, do like a fire drill.”

They bring her candy, she said.

It was about 3 o’clock last Thursday morning when Homan was having trouble. Kail realized his mother wasn’t right.

“I woke up my big brother,” the child told a small crowd of TV camera people and news reporters gathered to hear his story.

His older brother Kain called their grandfather in Chehalis, who called 911.

Paramedic Marla Nixon and Lt. Hanson responded to the aid call at the Homan’s Jackson Highway home.

“We started an IV, gave her dextrose and waited for her to wake up,” Nixon said. She didn’t have to go to the hospital.

Hanson also gave Kail a fire department cap yesterday. The 6-year-old then got to go for a short ride in a fire engine. He took his 3-year-old brother Kage along.

Homan wanted others to learn some of the signs of distress diabetics might display. She was clearly proud her family members know just what to look for, and what to do.

“He handled it perfectly,” she said. “Just like we practiced.”

Kail Homan, 6, and his 3-year-old brother Kage pose for a snap shot at the fire department in Napavine yesterday