Lewis County Sirens.com

Leo B. Bunker, in orange jail garb, listens while attorneys and a judge finalize details for his trial.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – A Lewis County rape trial that has been repeatedly postponed because of illnesses involving the defendant, the victim and even a judge faces yet another test.

Doctors say the stress of facing in court the man she says violently raped her and otherwise physically abused her during their short marriage could trigger another heart attack for the victim.

Lewis County Deputy Prosecutor Joely O’Rourke told a judge today the victim has an ongoing coronary condition, has had a quadruple bypass and has 28 “stents”. She recently had a heart attack, according to the prosecutor.

O’Rourke said she’s been in close contact with the woman’s treating physician and cardiologist.

“Both have highly advised against her testifying at all,” O’Rourke said.

The prosecutor’s comments came during a hearing today in which she requested the woman be allowed to testify via video, specifically using Skype on a 70-inch screen which would be present in the courtroom.

O’Rourke described how when Leo B. Bunker’s first trial began in January, the victim had so much anxiety, she broke down sobbing and had to be picked her up off the floor.

“I know its unprecedented, but I think we have the technology,” she told the judge. “I think if there ever was a case to do something like this, this is it.”

Judge James Lawler denied the motion, but called it an unusual situation.

“Her condition doesn’t make it impossible for her testify, but that it would be stressful,” Lawler said. “Given that, I can’t find she’s unavailable.”

“It will be uncomfortable, it is for every victim that has to  come in to testify,” he said.

The trial is scheduled to begin next week.

Bunker, 53, of Winlock, has been locked up for about a year and half awaiting trial.

He was charged in December 2011.

The victim contacted law enforcement about a month earlier, describing how she’d recently reconnected with the man who she dated in high school, according to charging documents.

In the beginning, it was okay, but then he began to dominate her, would not let her talk on the phone or leave the house without his permission, she told the deputy.

Charging documents allege that in early October 2011, he forced her to go to Vancouver, Wash. to get married.

She said she was waiting for him to go to jail to get away from him, according to O’Rourke. According to his attorney, Bunker was convicted of violating a protection order in connection with an assault on his previous wife. But his report date got moved, and the victim, frightened she would not survive, snuck out and contacted an ex-boyfriend, according to charging documents.

When she tried to sneak back in, he accused her of cheating, began choking her and said he would kill her, she told the deputy. She said he ripped off her clothes and raped her.

The victim spoke of his taste for pornographic movies depicting violent rape and murder, allegedly telling her to pay attention because it could happen to her, according to charging documents.

Bunker is charged with two counts of second-degree rape, one count of harassment and two counts of violating a protection order. He has pleaded not guilty.

Since being locked up awaiting trial, he was diagnosed with throat cancer and has undergone surgery and radiation, according to his attorney.

His trial finally began in January, but on the second day he was sick from chemotherapy, according to O’Rourke. The next day they reconvened but the following day, the judge got sick, she said. A mistrial was declared.

It has repeatedly been postponed since then because of Bunker’s health, and then when the victim had a heart attack.

Defense attorney Michael Underwood today asked the judge to delay the trial once again. Because of the throat condition, his client’s voice is just a whisper, he said.

“He looks good, but he’s not feeling good,” Underwood told the judge. “I just need him to be in his best best medical condition he can be in (for trial).”

Lawler denied the request. Underwood indicated he was going to prepare a motion for a change of venue, due to pretrial publicity.

O’Rourke said last week, the victim wants to testify; she wants Bunker put away. Not so much for punishment, but because she’s afraid of him, O’Rourke said.

After today’s hearing and the judge’s denial of using Skype, it’s not clear what will happen.

“Given that the doctors have told it it could kill her, I’m not going to force her to testify,” O’Rourke said.

Justin D. McPherson, right, stands with his attorney Ken Johnson as jurors exit the courtroom during his trial for burglary.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Two women who drove away from downtown Centralia with the two suspected thieves following the botched burglary at Salewsky’s Jewelry shop say they didn’t really know what was going on.

They were waiting in their cars in the parking lot at the railroad station after a long night at a casino, 30-year-old Jennifer Nordyke testified.

“Ryan and Rachael were talking about getting a hotel,” Nordyke said. “The guys say, hold on, we’ll be right back.”

The men were gone 15 to 30 minutes, she said.

Prosecutors initially said Nordyke and Rachael Hunter were the getaway drivers after Justin D. McPherson and his friend broke through a wall into the Tower Avenue business early one morning in mid-March, and fled after McPherson was shot when he was confronted by the owner’s son.

The two women have made plea deals in exchange for their testimony. Ryan W. Cox, also charged in the case, remains held in the Lewis County Jail.

The trial for McPherson opened yesterday in Lewis County Superior Court. It’s expected to run in to tomorrow.

Centralia police called about 7 a.m. on March 20 found a trail of dropped jewelry leading from a person-sized hole cut into the wall of the store from a vacant adjacent business space. Officers recovered a crowbar. The lock on the back door at the alley was discovered broken.

A Seattle area man who was staying at the Olympic Club hotel and smoking a cigarette near his work van early that morning testified he saw two men in black running toward him.

“All I heard was go, go, go,” Joshua Morris said.

The two cars he’d noticed with women in them parked near his van then squealed out of the lot, Morris said.

He thought a bank had been robbed, he said.

“At first I didn’t believe what I saw,” he said. “But I’ve seen a lot of movies.”

Fred Salewsky testified he thinks all of the missing jewelry has been recovered, about $3,800 worth.

Salewsky told the court yesterday he got a call from his son Jeremy Salewsky early that morning.

Jeremy Salewsky lives in an apartment above the shop the senior Salewsky bought from his father in 1985.

“My son tells me, ‘I think I might have shot someone’,” Fred Salewsky said. “I said, I will be right there.”

Centralia police got a break in the case a few days later when an off-duty detective learned a male with a gunshot wound was dropped off at a Tacoma hospital by a female in a red Mercedes the morning of the burglary, according to charging documents.

Officers arrested Nordyke on March 22 when she showed up to visit McPherson; they arrested McPherson as he was released from the hospital a few days later. Cox was charged on April 30; Hunter on May 10.

Police described McPherson as someone with an extensive criminal background, well known to police in the Renton, Kent, Auburn area.

The 29-year-old has a 2006 conviction for possession of stolen property, as well as three three eluding convictions, according to prosecutors. He is represented by Chehalis attorney Ken Johnson.

McPherson is charged with one count of second-degree burglary as well as one count of residential burglary.

He’s sat quietly in the courtroom as Johnson and Lewis County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Will Halstead questioned witnesses.

Jeremy Salewsky testified yesterday it was too dark too see more than a male figure with a blue hooded sweatshirt when he came downstairs to investigate an odd noise that morning.

He didn’t expect to see someone standing there, and fired from his Colt 45 handgun, he said.

He couldn’t even tell which way the person was facing, he said. Police have said McPherson was shot in the lower back.

“The individual jumped back though a wall that was cut,” Jeremy Salewsky testified.

The younger Salewsky said then he just stood there stunned a minute or two after it happened.

Nordyke, who said she and McPherson live in Federal Way, told jurors she expects prosecutors will drop two felony charges against her. Her hearing is set for tomorrow.

She admitted she didn’t want to be on the witness stand.

“If I testify, I get a misdemeanor charge, rendering criminal assistance,” she said, her voice breaking. “And I get to stay in drug court so I can raise our children.”

McPherson and she have known each other about 10 years. He and Cox have been good friends since childhood, she said.

She described leaving Centralia, a town she said she wasn’t familiar with, and traveling north on the freeway looking for blue hospital signs, trying to keep McPherson awake, holding hands and praying.

Nordyke explained he used the name of a friend’s ex-husband who had health insurance at the hospital, because they didn’t have insurance.

Reluctantly, she read aloud a passage from a police report in which she told officers she heard McPherson say to a friend that morning, “Dude, Mike, I tried to rob a jewelry store.”

On the stand today, Hunter said she’d been offered the same plea deal.

Halstead questioned her about what she thought McPherson and Cox were doing when they left the women in the parking lot that morning.

“Maybe something that wasn’t on the up and up,” Hunter said.  “So I didn’t really ask.”

Cox is scheduled for a change of plea and sentencing next week.
•••

For background, read “Jewelry store burglary suspect, alleged getaway driver awaiting May trial” from Thursday April 4, 2013, here

Tamala J. Summerhill, right, waits while defense attorney Bob Schroeter confers with a deputy prosecutor during her court appearance.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The Tacoma woman accused of letting loose with her pepper spray at the Centralia Outlets over the weekend says news reporters got the story all wrong.

Tamala J. Summerhill, 53, bailed out of jail but returned to go before a Lewis County Superior Court judge yesterday afternoon.

Police said they were called to the shopping center on Saturday because a female used pepper spray to break up a brawl between her grown son and another man outside the Nike Factory Outlet then chased the subject, spraying him and two boys who were with him.

Summerhill is charged with two counts of third-degree child assault and one count of fourth-degree assault.

“I want to tell it, and I will let my lawyer do that,” Summerhill said after her court hearing.

Centralia police said after a disagreement inside the store between 22-year-old Jesse Summerhill and a 38-year-old Tumwater man, the pair ended up in a fight once they got outside.

The 38-year-old Tumwater man had the younger Summerhill on the ground when the mother sprayed him, according to the police version.

Police arrested Jesse Summerhill, also of Tacoma, for misdemeanor assault

How and why the scuffle started and what happened after are not very clear.

Both men told police the other one initiated the rudeness inside the store – over a cashier being ready to take the next customer in line – and once outside challenged the other one to fight, according to charging documents.

The documents allege the following information:

Corey Leneker said he had begun to walk to his car with his two 8-year-old boys but the mother and son followed him calling him names.

“He ordered the two boys to get in the front seat of their vehicle, which they did,” charging documents state.

The two men fought. After Leneker was sprayed he ran and they chased him, Leneker told police. She was spraying as they were running, he said.

Leneker reached his vehicle when the woman sprayed him again and the two boys, charging documents state.

It was streaming spray and not the fog type, according to police.

An independent witness told police Leneker was trying to shield the kids when she sprayed all three of them.

Officers checked the children who both had red and inflamed faces and trouble seeing because of the irritant in their eyes; symptoms of having been pepper sprayed.

Tamala Summerhill told police she sprayed Leneker to get him off her son. When confronted with the information from the witness, she made no comment.

“The boys, I don’t know why they’re an issue,” defense attorney Bob Schroeter said outside the courtroom. “The father said he put them inside the vehicle.”

During the brief court appearance yesterday afternoon, Lewis County Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher said he had no problem with setting bail with a $10,000 signature bond.

Judge Richard Brosey pointed out it was already set at $20,000 and she posted bail, so he wouldn’t change it.

Schroeter, who represented Tamala Summerhill just for that appearance, said her income qualified her for a court appointed attorney.

Tamala Summerhill works at Joint Base Lewis McChord in child care and family services, Schroeter said.

Her arraignment was scheduled for June 6.