Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Onalaska resident Ronald A. Brady will be sentenced on Wednesday morning following his conviction last week for fatally shooting a suspected burglar.

Brady, 60, argued self defense in his trial last week in Lewis County Superior Court. He avoided a first-degree murder conviction, but a jury of six men and six women found him guilty of second-degree manslaughter.

Judge Nelson Hunt did not order him into custody after the verdict on Friday evening, but had him return today to the courtroom in Chehalis to learn his sentencing date. He told Brady it would happen very soon after today.

Hunt this morning said sentencing should be next week.

Defense attorney Don Blair asked the judge if it could be held off until the end of July, as his client had his affairs to get in order before he goes to prison.

“We can do it on the sixth, or he can go into custody now,” Hunt said. “It was a big break for him not to go into custody that day.”

While the crime has a standard sentencing range of between 21 and 27 months, Brady faces an additional  mandatory minimum of three years – with no possibility of reduction for any “good” time – because it was committed with a firearm.

Brady admitted firing five or six shots with a .22 caliber rifle, three of them toward 56-year-old Thomas McKenzie of Morton who was outside the house Brady owns and died at the scene.

The retired bachelor was acquitted of assault in the case of McKenzie’s wife, Joanna McKenzie who testified she that while she took cover behind a truck in the driveway, she heard the glass in its windshield shot out and felt “air or something” graze her face.

Hunt will sentence him at 10 a.m. on Wednesday.
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Read “Breaking news: Onalaska murder trial: Guilty of second-degree manslaughter” from Friday June 24, 2011, here

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

Firefighters plan to burn down a Grand Mound area house tomorrow adjacent to Rochester High School.

The live fire training exercise is scheduled to begin around noon and continue until roughly 10 p.m., according to West Thurston Regional Fire Authority spokesperson Lt. Lanette Dyer.

The Rochester-Littlerock area fire department will be joined by firefighters from two other agencies. Their training will include fire behavior, smoke conditions, night operations and interagency collaboration, according to Dyer.

Th school district donated a vacant 1,400 square-foot house to the fire department to get the property cleared, according to Battalion Chief Jacob Yake.

The address is 19735 Carper Rd S.W.

Carper Road will be closed at Old Highway 9 and at the west end of 197th Avenue Southwest.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS  – John Allen Booth Jr.’s murder trial for last summer’s triple slaying has been postponed until Nov. 7.

John A. Booth Jr.

His defense attorney Roger Hunko told a judge yesterday a double-homicide trial he has in Yakima just got moved to mid-August.

Booth was scheduled to be tried in Lewis County Superior Court at the end of August, but Hunko expects his Yakima trial to last three to four weeks, Hunko told Judge Richard Brosey yesterday.

Brosey granted the extension, even though Lewis County Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher said he preferred not to delay.

They chose November because both Brosey and Meagher are unavailable in September, and Meagher has another murder trial scheduled in October.

Booth, who turned 32 last week, is charged in the August 21 shootings of four people inside a Salkum-Onalaska area home. Found dead were David West Sr., 52, David J. West Jr., 16, and Tony E. Williams, 50, of Randle. Denise Salts, 52, survived a gunshot wound to her face.

The former Onalaska man was arrested and jailed four days later.

His former cell mate Ryan J. McCarthy, 29, of Redmond, is also charged in the case. His trial is set for the week of October 10.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – One of four individuals initially believed to be inside a Chevrolet Blazer during a drive-by shooting last summer in Chehalis was sentenced to jail today, but not for drive-by shooting as she was previously charged.

Christina Palomares, 24, of Tenino, was arrested in mid-August after the incident on Southwest William Street. A .45 caliber round found at the scene missed several people standing outside but struck an unoccupied parked vehicle.

Authorities described the shooting as related to a debt owed to somebody called “Candy man” and perpetrated by gang members of the LVL, or Little Valley Lokotes. Chehalis police originally believed the mother of three was the driver.

In a plea deal, Palomares pleaded guilty today to two counts of malicious prosecution. She was sentenced in Lewis County Superior Court to 90 days in jail.

She lied about who was in the vehicle, Deputy Prosecutor Colin Hayes said this afternoon. There was some question about if she was even in the SUV, he said.

“We’re not sure who was in the driver’s seat,” he said.

Palomares is the third original suspect against whom drive-by charges have been dropped in the case.

Juan Valentino Vasquez was released in March. Last fall, drive-by shooting charges were dismissed against Ruben Alberto Palomares, the husband of Christina Palomares.

Remaining as a suspect in the shooting is Andrew Morales-Loberg, of Chehalis.

He has not yet been picked up in the case, but Hayes said today Morales-Loberg may be currently in the Yakima County Jail, but that wasn’t yet confirmed.

If he is there, the warrant is still active so he would be sent to Lewis County when Yakima is done with his case there, Hayes said.

The alleged target pointed to then 19-year-old  Morales-Loberg as the shooter, according to charging documents.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

Police stopped a driver somewhere near Mossyrock after he drove west on U.S. Highway 12 with cows falling out the back of his trailer last night.

Some five animals tumbled onto the roadway as he traveled about 13 miles through Glenoma, according to the Washington State Patrol.

Troopers called just before midnight said one cow died and four were loose, Trooper Ryan Tanner said today.

Morton Police Chief Dan Mortensen said the driver was pulling a stock trailer with load of cows and apparently both doors came open somewhere around Kiona Road west of Randle.

He didn’t know the extent of their injuries.

There were no reports of other motorists colliding with the cows.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – A jury returned with a not guilty verdict today in the case of James Michael Abbott, on trial for second-degree assault stemming from an incident at the Star Tavern in which a man’s skull was cracked.

The other man, Gary Dvojack, is in a nursing home with long term injuries, prosecutors said on Monday.

Not guilty by reason of self defense, Abbott’s attorney Don Blair said this afternoon.

They deliberated about two hours, according to Blair.

The trial in Lewis County Superior Court began on Monday.

Jurors heard Dvojack was stumbling drunk, propositioned a female bartender and as Abbott was trying to get him to leave, Dvojack touched or hit the 49-year-old Chehalis man who pushed or shoved him back last November.

Sixty-five-year-old Dvojack fell back and hit his head on the concrete floor.

Blair said his client didn’t want to stand by while the bartender could have been injured, and Dvojack turned his attention to his client and said he was gonna “kick his ass”.

Abbott didn’t hit him, or head butt him or kick him, all he did was push him, Blair said.