Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

Someone forgot about Smokey Bear.

When 911 calls alerted firefighters to a glow in the Cinebar Hills, members of Lewis County Fire District 8 set out in the dark up a logging road and discovered a wildfire covering about two acres on extremely steep terrain.

And, they found the remnants of a campfire someone didn’t fully extinguish, according to Chief Duran McDaniel.

What began about midnight on Tuesday didn’t end for another 16 hours, he said.

The scene was about a mile up Forest Service Road 71, on the way to Newaukum Lake, he said. The small area surrounded by forest had been logged about four years earlier, and the campfire had been built some 10 feet away from a well-seasoned slash pile in what McDaniel called a landing zone.

“It appears people have using the area for target practice,” he said.

Firefighters did what they could to contain what was burning on Weyerhaeuser property while they waited for crews from the state Department of Natural Resources, McDaniel said.

DNR summoned three “convict crews” and three engine teams, he said.  Members of the fire district assisted by hauling tanker trucks of water through the night and into the following afternoon.

The chief said the DNR investigation indicated the campfire – without even a ring of rocks surrounding it – was probably used sometime since Sunday.

A burn ban goes into effect on Monday in Lewis County because of how much the vegetation has dried out. Exceptions are made for recreational fires in approved receptacles.

A similar burn ban statewide began July 1 on all forestland and other property that is protected by the state Department of Natural Resources.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

The sheriff’s office is investigating what it calls a suspicious death of a woman on a Forest Service Road near Morton.

Deputies were called about 1:30 a.m. by a resident on the 5900 block of state Route 508 who said a man came to her house to report he and his fiancee had been in a collision on Forest Service Road 73 and she was not breathing, according to the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office.

Aid and deputies arriving to the scene a couple of miles away found the 48-year-old Chehalis woman dead, according to the sheriff’s office.

Forest Service Road 73 begins at state Route 508 about two miles west of Morton.

The 32-year-old Randle man is being questioned, Chief Civil Deputy Stacy Brown said in a news release. He stated the couple had been “jumped” and the wreck happened when they were trying to get away, according to Brown.

The sheriff’s office is looking for a Kelso man they think might have information related to the investigation, according to Brown. He is 39-year-old Roger Etter.

Brown declined to say what detectives think Etter might know about the case, but is asking anyone with information on his whereabouts to call the sheriff’s office or Crime Stoppers.

An autopsy will be scheduled for the victim, according to the sheriff’s office.

Roger Etter

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Local officials have decided it’s becoming too dry for outdoor burning in Lewis County.

Beginning on Monday at 12:01 a.m., a burn ban goes into effect until further notice, according to the Lewis County Fire Marshal.

Exceptions are made for recreational fires either in approved campfire sites or approved burning receptacles, according to Fire Marshal Fred Chapman. Answers to related can questions can be sought by calling Chapman at 360-740-1146.

A similar burn ban statewide went into effect July 1 on all forestland and other property that is protected by the state Department of Natural Resources.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

A 41-year-old Packwood man was arrested at gunpoint yesterday after he allegedly forced his companion at knife point to drive toward Randle, while being pursued by sheriff’s deputies.

The 22-year-old woman from Morton, whom he was dating, was finally able to escape their vehicle near Kiona Creek Road and run to the safety of a nearby patrol car, according to the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office.

It happened around 3 p.m. beginning at the Glenoma Grocery, on the 8000 block of U.S. Highway 12.

Zachery H. Bynum was booked into the Lewis County Jail for multiple offenses, according to the sheriff’ office. The young woman was taken to Morton General Hospital with cuts, bruises and scrapes, Chief Civil Deputy Stacy Brown said.

Brown said it started with a call to the grocery about a fight, when a man was seen forcing a woman into the driver’s seat of a truck, choking her and slamming her face into the steering wheel. How they came to be together at the store, Brown said she didn’t know.

When law enforcement arrived, he allegedly forced her to drive away, heading east on U.S. Highway 12, holding a large knife – described as a mini machete – to her neck, according to the sheriff’s office.

After their pickup truck ran over spike strips set out about four miles down the road, a struggle ensued but the woman managed to get away, according to Brown.

Brown said Bynum was uncooperative and combative and finally taken into custody after a Taser was deployed. He was booked for first-degree assault, first-degree kidnapping and eluding, she said.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

Mossyrock Police Chief Jeremy Stamper has resigned, taking the one-person department down to none.

Jeannette Miller, city clerk for the central Lewis County town of some 750 people, said the city council has not yet decided how it will proceed. The mayor only notified the council last week, she said.

They have placed an advertisement for a new chief however, Miller said today.

Mossyrock Mayor Tom Meade said at the end of June he had full confidence in his chief, even though the chief’s wife had secured a protection order against her husband a month earlier.

Four days after the temporary order was put into place by the court for a year, Stamper’s wife Shannon Stamper filed a request for it to be withdrawn. It was terminated on July 1.

Miller said the chief’s last day was July 6, and he had given his two week notice more than two weeks before that.

He’s moving out of the state, she said.  He was hired by the city in 2003.

Jeremy Stamper didn’t return a phone call seeking comment.
•••

For background, read:

• “Mossyrock police chief’s wife cancels protection order” from Monday July 1, 2013, here

• “Mossyrock police chief contesting protection order” from Friday June 28, 2013, here

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CENTRALIA – Some neighbors were evacuated and others asked to stay in their homes during a gun scare incident today at a house in a Centralia retirement community.

It ended with a man in his 70s dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound and his wife taken to the hospital for a precautionary examination, according to police.

Officers were called about 12:40 p.m. to Stillwaters Estates near Providence Centralia Hospital where a caregiver stepped out of the house to call 911 after the man made a statement about a gun and walked into his wife’s bedroom with a rifle, according to police.

Centralia Police Department spokesperson Officer John Panco said in a news release the man had possibly made threats to harm his wife.

Because of the weapon, SWAT team members were called in and officers made repeated but unsuccessful attempts to contact the couple, Panco said.

Finally, around 3 p.m., officers entered the home on the 100 block of Hawthorne Lane and found the man dead, Panco said. The wife was not shot or harmed, according to Panco.

Panco said he did not know which of the couple was under the care of a caregiver. He said he did not know why the man would have killed himself.

Police didn’t heard the gunshot, Panco said.