Lewis County Sirens.com

A fire investigator is looking at a possible electrical issue as a cause to last night's blaze on Harms Road. / Courtesy photo by Ted McCarty

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

A 4-year-old boy is being credited with alerting family members to a fire last night in the Ethel area that destroyed the upper level of a home.

Eight people were in the house on the 100 block of Harms Road and Kurt Mullins had just put his two little grandchildren, ages 4 and 5, to bed upstairs, Fire Investigator Ted McCarty said this morning.

“Shortly after, the kids yelled they could smell smoke in the bedroom,” McCarty said. “He went in, found fire in a storage space, and at that point he gathered up the kids, and a couple older kids and they all got outside,” McCarty said.

Lewis County Fire District 8 Assistant Chief Don Taylor today called Byron Wilson “our local hero”. Taylor didn’t have the name of the other child.

A smoke alarm also went off and everyone escaped unhurt, Taylor said.

McCarty described the occupants as Mullins. his wife, three children and three grandchildren.

The 9 p.m. call to Lewis County Fire District 8 drew some 35 firefighters from four districts.

McCarty called it a stubborn fire.

When the second crew to enter the 1920s wood-frame house attempted to get upstairs, the stairwell was too hot and there was fire overhead so they had be pulled out, responders said.

Taylor, the incident commander, said they sprayed about 25,000 gallons of water on the fire.

The upper story was burned off and parts of it it collapsed down into the first floor.

McCarty said it appeared to start in the storage area under the roof’s eves and he’s looking at an electrical issue for the cause, but has nothing concrete yet.

The house is insured, he said. The Red Cross was contacted to assist the residents.

Taylor said it was knocked down by 3 a.m. and the last firefighters didn’t depart until about 6:30 this morning.

It’s been a record-breaking year for the Salkum area fire district as far as structure fires, Taylor said.

Last month, a Christmas Day fire chased six people out of a burning mobile home on Maple Crest Drive, and the month before, firefighters spent Thanksgiving night extinguishing a blaze at Misty Morning Dairy.

“Five, maybe six, would be a busy year,” Taylor said. “This past year, I think we’ve had somewhere in the neighborhood of 15.”

The assistant fire chief didn’t have a good idea of why so many fires, but he is concerned it won’t slow down anytime soon.

“We had that earthquake and it’s guaranteed it damaged several fireplaces or chimneys” he said. “And I don’t know if people realize this.”

As winter continues and folks use their fireplaces more, the creosote can be expected to keep building up, he said, and damaged masonry is vulnerable.

While he isn’t pointing to that as a cause of the Harms Road blaze, Taylor said the bricks in portions of the chimney there were packed with the flammable material.

Rodney Wallace and his mother Darlene Wallace wait for an elevator in the Lewis County Law and Justice Center after his hearing on Thursday.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Toledo resident Rodney Wallace won his freedom from a state mental hospital this summer but found himself back in court last week after the hospital review board found signs he was slipping back into his mental illness.

The farm mechanic was 37 when he was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity of second-degree assault and felony eluding for a July 2005 incident in which he was accused of trying to run down his father and two deputies with a tractor near the family’s Toledo home. He had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

Under state law, the hospital could hold Wallace as long as the maximum time he would have gotten if convicted, which is 10 years, but in August his attorney persuaded a judge Wallace was stabilized and should be allowed to live with his parents, Ralland and Darlene Wallace.

Lewis County Superior Court Judge Nelson Hunt granted Wallace a release with conditions; among the requirements: that he take his medications, refrain from consuming alcohol, and meet regularly with both a community mental health professional and Western State Hospital’s community nurse.

But, Wallace was returned to the hospital in October after a meeting with the hospital’s therapist in which he described talking to his grandparents in heaven, complaining the FBI was following him and that his face was red, literally painted red, according to Senior Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher.

On Thursday, Wallace, his lawyer, his private psychologist, family and friends went before Judge Hunt in an attempt to convince him the hospital was overreacting in claiming he should remain locked up.

Meagher argued for the hospital.

“What the review board concluded was there were signs of decompensation, and that’s one of the conditions of his orders,” Meagher told the judge.

Wallace’s lawyer Zenon Olbertz suggested it was unreasonable to revoke the conditional release, especially since the hospital’s gradual recovery program means a minimum of a 13-month stay.

Olbertz said his client has followed the court’s requirements, taking his medications, seeing his therapists, and “there’s not one sentence in the record, since 2005, that he’ ever been a danger to anybody.”

He downplayed the report of delusional thinking.

“If everybody who has these kinds of thoughts were swept off the street, we wouldn’t have enough places to put them,” Olbertz said.

Hunt said the present situation was “almost predicted” before Wallace was allowed to return to the family farm in August. He revoked Wallace’s conditional release.

“I give a great deal of deference to Western State Hospital,” Hunt said. “I’m unwilling to subject the community to that risk.”

•••

Read “Toledo man released from Western State Hospital” from Thursday Aug. 19, 2010 here

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – New Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod continued his first official week on the job completing unfinished business of ex-Coroner Terry Wilson.

Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod

On Monday, McLeod forwarded a change to the 1998 death certificate of Toledo resident Ronda Reynolds from suicide to undetermined, fulfilling a campaign promise to adhere to a judge’s 2009 order in the case.

And McLeod this week finished filling out the death certificate for 16-year-old Austin King of Morton. The teenager’s body was found in July, a month after he mysteriously vanished.

The coroner’s office had concluded by early October the manner of the Austin’s death was homicide, but refused to reveal the cause determined by the autopsy and a forensic specialist, at the request of the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office.

Even after prosecutors charged a suspect in November and alleged in court documents the teen was found with a cracked skull, the space on his death certificate for “cause” remained blank.

The newly elected community college instructor from Chehalis – following Wilson’s 28-year tenure – has vowed to make the workings of the office more transparent.

McLeod said yesterday when stepped into the elected office Jan. 1, Austin’s death certificate was already signed by Wilson and the cause of death read blunt injury to the head.

McLeod filled in the answer to “how it occurred” with the words “struck in the head by an assailant.”

McLeod said the decision on cause would have been made by the pathologist, but he is “just jumping into this at the tail end.” He didn’t have readily available the date of death listed on the certificate.

The new coroner said the reason for revealing the contents of the document now was because he met this week with Senior Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher.

“He told me all the information is out publicly,” McLeod said. “And there’s no longer any details being withheld from the public.”

The coroner’s office has not yet released Austin’s remains to his family, because the suspect’s attorney might want to engage an expert to examine them, according to the coroner’s office and the prosecutor’s office.

A June trial is scheduled for an acquaintance of the teenager, Jack Arnold Silverthorne, 20, of Renton, who is charged with first-degree murder and remains held on $2 million bail.

McLeod said the transition from old coroner to new has been very smooth and Wilson has been extremely helpful.

He said he met with Wilson several times and was given a key to the office not long after the November election.

“I’ve had authorization to go out on calls pretty much since the election,” McLeod said, noting he even attended autopsies before Jan. 1.

“I’m hitting the floor running,” he said.

He said he intends, at this point, to retain Dawn Harris as chief deputy coroner. Harris was promoted to the position in early August after Wilson’s longtime chief deputy was let go following an arrest for driving under the influence of prescription medications.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

Police officers surrounded a Centralia area trailer home last night and then arrested an individual being sought since an August drive-by shooting in Chehalis.

Juan Valentino Vasquez

Juan Valentino Vasquez, also known by his street name “Grover”, was booked into the Lewis County Jail for first-degree assault.

Vasquez is one of two outstanding suspects from an August 7 incident on Southwest William Street in which somebody fired a round from a red Chevrolet Blazer that missed several people standing outside but struck an unoccupied parked vehicle.

Authorities describe the shooting as related to a debt owed to somebody called “Candy man” and perpetrated by the LVL gang.

A Tenino couple was arrested soon after, believed to be two of the four individuals in the vehicle.

Centralia police during a traffic stop last night gained information on Vasquez’s whereabouts and were joined by Lewis County Sheriff’s Office deputies and a Chehalis detective in the trailer park on Windsor Avenue, according to police.

Detectives were able to talk Vasquez out of the trailer by phone and he was taken into custody without incident, according to Chehalis Police Chief Glenn Schaffer.

Chehalis police said Vasquez had been staying in the 19-year-old Centralia woman’s home about a week.

A search of the trailer last night turned up a fully automatic Chinese SKS firearm, described by Schaffer as a shortened rifle, and illegal for anyone to possess. It’s not believed to be the gun used in August.

Police are still looking for the fourth individual, Andrew Morales Loberg of Chehalis

More coming

Read background on the case here