Lewis County Sirens.com

Lester S. Thomsen, in an undated photo, on the porch of the house on Kearney Street where he lived a few years back.

Updated

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CENTRALIA – The B Street area is in mourning.

Mourning for a man said to have been born 65 years ago in the Centralia Hospital.

An early riser, who’d given up on driving, but rarely stayed home.

Duane Thornton said it was about a year and a half ago that Lester Thomsen asked if he could rent a room at his house on Crescent Avenue. Thomsen had been living around the corner with the neighbors on Kearney Street, but they got tired of his drinking, he said.

Thomsen had a bicycle, and he rode the bus.

He did a lot of visiting, Thornton said.

“He would go hang out at the depot, at Wal-Mart, he’d go to the senior citizen’s place, the Salvation Army; he did all that stuff,” Thornton said. “And he was a big man. His hands were twice the size of mine.”

Thornton yesterday was trying to figure out where Thomsen was headed, or what he was doing walking on the railroad tracks just a few blocks south of home.

“We don’t know exactly what happened,” he said.

Police say it was just before 11:30 a.m. on Thursday when a southbound passenger train coming into the station was trying to slow, hitting the horn for the man walking with his back to the train.

The engineer said the man looked over his shoulder and began to leave the track at an angle, instead of just jumping off it directly sideways, according to police.

“This morning was the first morning I didn’t hear Les stumbling around the house making coffee,” Thornton said. “And he always wanted a coffee royal, just a splash of whiskey.”

He was one smart man, with a heart of gold, he said.

The two of them were 10 years apart, but both used to be loggers, so they were really tight, he said.

Thornton assumed his older roommate had ridden his bike to the train depot, to catch the city bus to Wal-Mart, he said. But he didn’t keep tabs on him on his daily outings.

“He’d say, ‘I’m going to go check out the lay of the land’,” Thornton said. “Or, ‘I’m going to go whoring around’. He loved to say that.”

On Kearney Street, James and Corrie Aker offered comfort to Thomsen’s grown son.

James Aker said Thomsen in his last years had lived in three  different houses in the neighborhood he called the B Street area, just west of the railroad tracks at the north end of town.

Back in the day, James Aker said, Thomsen had a nice house with property on a hill in town.

“He went into the Army, because he got caught moonshining,” Corrie Aker said. “He told me that story 100,000 times.”

Thomsen was proud of his past as a diesel mechanic and a logger, she said.

Thirty-two-year-old Thomas Simpson sat in the Aker’s living room, petting his black lab and absorbing the loss of his father.

“Walking on the tracks,” Simpson exclaimed. “Why would you walk on the tracks, especially if you can’t hear?”

Simpson was angry, mad at the coroner who wouldn’t let him see his dad, he said.

Corrie Aker dug out a photo she’d taken one summer when Thomsen had recently moved in with them, he and her husband sitting on their front porch playing cribbage.

She said she’d known Thomsen probably four years, and his son should try to remember him him the way he looked in the photo.

He had a lot of friends everywhere, Corrie Aker said.

“And he could ride his bike straight as an arrow on rum,” she said.

Yeah, someone repeated, he could ride his bike straight as an arrow on rum.
•••

CORRECTION: This news story has been updated to correct the spelling of Lester Stephen Thomsen’s last name.
•••

For background, read “Man fatally struck by train in Centralia” from Thursday April 2, 2015, here

Fourth and fifth graders head home after school today at Olympic Elementary School in Chehalis.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Just three days after a threatening anonymous phone call to a Chehalis school, it happened again.

Twice yesterday.

Chehalis police were contacted shortly after 2 o’clock yesterday afternoon because a call came in at the high school which said only that the caller had automatic weapons, and another was made to Olympic Elementary School which claimed an attacker was in a second grade classroom.

Olympic doesn’t have second graders, only fourth and fifth graders.

Still, this afternoon, a police officer parked outside the entrance to the elementary school on the Southwest Salsbury Avenue at dismissal time.

Children boarded their busses as parents parked waiting at the curb to pick up others.

Tylar Sickel said he and his wife kept their two grade schoolers home on Tuesday, because it was an option they were given. There wasn’t a lot of information to judge the situation, he said.

But last night after learning it happened again, and reading the superintendent’s message, the couple was not too worried, he said.

“We figured if it was that big of a concern, the school district would have made it apparent the kids should stay home,” Sickel said.

When it occurred on Monday at Olympic, it was the end of the school day. Police came and searched the building found nothing suspicious. The school district used their automated system to inform parents that afternoon of what happened.

Chehalis police described it as a vague threat, with something about an attack, and not specific as to the date, time and location.

Police increased their presence at the schools in the Chehalis District this week, as well as at St. Joseph Catholic School.

Chehalis School District Superintendent Ed Rothlin today described the calls as using technology to disguise the voice and also hiding the incoming phone number.

Chehalis Deputy Chief Randy Kaut said there’s some kind of electronics involved and indications the call is probably a recorded message, not a real person. When the person who answers the phone speaks, it seems to activate the message, and if they speak again, the same message is repeated, he said.

Rothlin issued a lengthy memo yesterday for students, parents and staff that states Chehalis doesn’t seem to be alone in this. Two schools in Thurston County and two in Spokane have received similar recorded anonymous calls this week, according to Rothlin.

The superintendent said they take the calls seriously, but his memo also went on to offer parents a resource for evaluating for themselves what to do, and it ends with his hope they continue to send their children to school.

Attendance was about 60 percent of normal today, according to Rothlin.

Rothlin this morning was on the phone with school officials in Spokane. Their police department is involved as well, he said.

Kaut said at mid-day today, he didn’t know if Chehalis’s calls were related to the others. Detectives are still investigating.

“We’re following up on some leads locally,” Kaut said.

Rothlin described today the changing feelings through the week about the disruption.

“The first call we got, earlier this week, it was very scary, we just don’t get those,” Rothlin said. “Yesterday, well, it still makes us nervous, but we’re really angry, because of the disruption.”

“It’s just not a good thing,” he said.

Chehalis School District students will be out of school all next week for spring break.
•••

For background, read,:

• “Anonymous threat to Chehalis grade school increases police presence” from Tuesday March 31, 2015, here

• Chehalis School District’s memo from yesterday, here

• The report Rothlin referred parents to from the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Education: “Threat Assessment in Schools”, here

Robert T. Lusk sits in between attorneys Thomas Keehan, on his right, and Erik Kupka, not pictured, in Lewis County Superior Court.

By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – His lawyer assured the judge his client has taken full responsibility for his actions, for providing the heroin to 23-year-old Tyson J. Anderson who died of an overdose.

“Mr. Lusk learned something very important,” Defense attorney Erik Kupka said. “He lost a friend; he lost a companion.”

Anderson died April 22, 2013 at a Centralia apartment where he was staying with his girlfriend. She called 911 when she awoke after the two shared drugs, and found him unconscious, according to court papers. Arriving medics could not save him.

Robert T. Lusk, now 37, was arrested and charged last summer with controlled substance homicide. The Chehalis man pleaded guilty two weeks ago.

Even though attorneys on the two sides agreed about how much time he should spend in prison, they went into detail to Judge James Lawler about their recommendation yesterday afternoon in Lewis County Superior Court.

Kupka told the judge he’d learned some about the heroin drug culture.

“People help each other in this culture, they help each other with their addictions,” he said.

When asked if he’d like to speak on his own behalf, Lusk stood and addressed the judge.

Nobody was supposed to get hurt, he said.

“It’s hard to explain how bad I hate heroin now,” Lusk said. “It’s tragic.”

The offense doesn’t include any elements of maliciousness or intent for a person to die. Only that one delivered the heroin to a person, that the person used the heroin and the person died from the heroin.

While the maximum penalty is 10 years, Lusk faced a standard sentencing range, given his criminal history, of 68 to 100 months of incarceration.

Lewis County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Will Halstead indicated to the judge the lawyers believed the low end of the range was appropriate, because the same range also applied to individuals with more significant criminal backgrounds.

Lawler, when he prepared to decide the sentence, explained what that meant to persons in the audience. Present were Lusk’s parents, but not Anderson’s parents.

The judge said he knew the attorneys worked to make a deal for both sides.

“I will respect that process and follow the agreed recommendation,” Lawler said.

Lusk was given the five years and eight months, with credit for the more than nine months he has been held in the Lewis County Jail since his arrest.

For the deal, a charge of delivery of heroin related to the same incident was dropped, a charge Halstead said would have been “folded in” anyhow.

He was also given 364 days, with 70 of them suspended, for first-degree driving with a suspended license, to be served concurrently.
•••

For background, read “Heroin overdose for one leads to prison for another” from Thursday March 19, 2015, here

An Amtrak passenger train idles as detectives investigate the the death of a pedestrian a few blocks north of the depot.

Updated at 4:27 p.m.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CENTRALIA – A passenger train hit and killed a man walking on the tracks this morning in Centralia.

It happened just before 11:30 a.m. a few blocks north of the Centralia Train Depot.

The southbound Amtrak was heading into the station, and presumably slowing to make its stop, according to the Centralia Police Department.

Firefighters responded but he was declared dead at the scene.

Police Sgt. Kurt Reichert said he understood the man was on foot heading south, with his back to the engine.

“They saw the guy, they were trying to slow, hitting the horn,” Reichert said. “He didn’t get out of the way, for whatever reason.”

Detectives were on the scene, taking measurements and gathering evidence. Both sets of tracks were shut down.

Such investigations usually take two to three hours, Reichert said.

Centralia police cars were gathered just beyond the north end of Railroad Avenue off East Hanson Street, at the edge of the BNSF rail switching yard. The Amtrak was idled there.

It was not a railroad employee, Reichert said.

He described the victim as a middle-aged man, in his 40s or 50s.

“He appears to be someone we know,” he said.

Reichert said the point of impact was in between the Sixth Street viaduct and where the patrol cars were parked.

There are no public crossings of the tracks in that area, Reichert said, although there is a private crossing for BNSF just below the viaduct.

On average, 50 trains pass through the area each day, according to a BNSF spokesperson. Rail traffic was restored about 1 p.m.

This is the seventh death this year in Washington of a trespasser on BNSF rail lines, spokesperson Gus Melonas said.