Travis M. Myers looks over paperwork allowing him to be released from jail after seeing a judge in Lewis County Superior Court.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – It was like a shoving match, but ended very badly.
The couple had been drinking. The mother shoved the father. The father shoved the mother knocking her to the ground.
The grown son shoved the father in the chest, who fell backwards, hitting his head on the sidewalk and losing consciousness.
It all happened late last Tuesday night in front of a Morton motel, where a trooper had dropped off 48-year-old Cathy Myers, after contacting her on the side of U.S. Highway 12 in her vehicle and intoxicated.
According to Morton Police Department Chief Dan Mortensen, the father and son had traveled from the family home in Vader to pick up the mother.
The couple argued; she didn’t want to go home because she’d spent money on a motel room, according to court documents from the police report.
When the shoving was over, Cathy Myers told her son to just leave, that she and her husband would spend the night in the motel and come home in the morning, court documents recount.
Travis M. Myers, 27, said he left not knowing his father was seriously injured.
Michael K. Myers, 52, died on Thursday at Haborview Medical Center in Seattle.
Travis Myers was arrested and now the Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office is considering charging him with second-degree manslaughter.
Lewis County Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher asked a judge yesterday to release the younger Myers, as he awaits the results of the autopsy.
Chief Mortensen said the older Myers had a serious head injury, but whether he died from that is an unanswered question, according to Meagher.
“At first glance it seems so, but we have to wait for the report,” Meagher said after yesterday’s court hearing.
Travis Myers’ appearance before a judge yesterday afternoon was brief. Meagher asked Lewis County Superior Court Judge James Lawler to release him on a $25,000 unsecured bond, co-signed by his sister. She and her mother were in the courtroom. Lawler agreed.
The 27-year-old has no criminal history, the judge was told.
The King County Medical Examiner’s Office in Seattle said today the cause and manner of death are pending the results of some tests.
Second-degree manslaughter is a class B felony. A person is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree when, with criminal negligence, he or she causes the death of another person, according to state law.
Meagher’s declaration of probable cause filed in court offers information from interviews with the mother and the son; nothing from the father:
When Reserve Officer Ron Myer responded to an aid call from Cathy to the Seasons Motel on 200 block of Westlake Avenue that night – at 10:27 p.m., according to the police chief, or just after midnight according to Meagher – he found an adult male laying on the sidewalk.
Officer Myer performed CPR until an aid crew arrived. Michael was taken to Morton General Hospital and then airlifted to Harborview.
According to Travis’s statement to police, his parents had gone to a friends house somewhere on U.S. Highway 12. His mother left his father there, but then was arrested – he thought for a DUI but court documents say for so-called physical control under the influence – and her car was impounded.
Cathy called home in Vader and asked her daughter Shannon to come pick her up. Shannon asked her brother to do it. Before Travis left, his father arrived, having gotten a ride home from the friend.
Travis described his father as stumbling down drunk.
Travis told the police chief that when they arrived to the motel, his parents began to argue and then the three shoves occurred.
Cathy told the police chief she was intoxicated that night, that both she and her husband had been drinking.
She said she remembered being either hit or pushed by her husband and falling backwards. She said her son stepped up and pushed his father who then fell down. When interviewed earlier at the hospital by Trooper Jason Hicks, Cathy said her son either hit or pushed her husband.
She said she didn’t realize her husband was hurt when she told he son to go home. But then, she said, she realized Michael was not responding so she called 911.
“Cathy said she believed her son’s actions were in defense of her,” Meagher wrote. “She didn’t believe Travis intended to hurt his father.”
Travis told the police chief he left not knowing his father seriously hurt. His car broke down as he got close to home, so he walked to his uncle’s home to stay the night, he said.
His sister phoned there about 3:30 a.m. looking for her brother, saying the police were looking for him.
Travis and his uncle went to the Lewis County Jail to talk with law enforcement, and was arrested.
Travis Myers is scheduled to be back in Lewis County Superior Court on Dec. 6.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
Yes in this case it would seem you would look at intent. Did he intend to seriously injure his father, no he was protecting his mother.
Drinking will get you 15 to life!
Poor kid. Sounds like both parents are/were a mess (alcoholics) and he was just sticking up for him mom. The fact that a shove resulted in his own father’s death is punishment enough, as far as I am concerned.
Actually under Washington State law there is people do not have the duty to protect others. However, if you do come to the aid of someone and end up causing the death of someone it is under the law manslaughter if the person died from the intervention. Aid to others is a defense.
Justice has been served. Citizens do have the duty to protect.
Good Morning Lewis County!