Detectives process the scene this afternoon in Onalaska where four people were shot, three of them fatally.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
ONALASKA – The state Department of Corrections has issued a nationwide arrest warrant for John Allen Booth Jr., the man suspected in the overnight slaying of three people inside an Onalaska-area home in connection with a drug debt collection.
Booth, who is from Onalaska, was just released from prison in December after serving five and a half years for second-assault, first-degree burglary and witness tampering, according to a DOC spokesperson. Booth is being supervised by the DOC and a special unit has been assigned to find him.
John Allen Booth Jr.
“We have specialists on the scene there, in Tacoma and at DOC headquarters in Olympia working this case,” DOC spokesperson Chad Lewis said late this afternoon.
Booth, 31, is considered armed and extremely dangerous.
The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office has only said four individuals were shot, three fatally. One survivor was airlifted to an undisclosed hospital. Sheriff Steve Mansfield today would not release the ages or the genders of the victims.
“They’re people who either lived in the house or were visiting,” Mansfield said this afternoon. “We think a couple of them are related.”
Yellow police tape about a quarter mile up a gravel road kept news media away from the sand-colored rambler where detectives were collecting evidence. The rental house on the 100 block of Wings Way, off of Gore Road, is about two and half miles northeast of the Ethel Post Office.
“What they found was a very sad and brutal scene,” Mansfield said.
There could very well have some innocent “third-party” people in the house, he said, although he didn’t know that for sure.
Deputies were called about 2 o’clock this morning when neighbors reported shots fired inside a residence. They arrived at 2:24 a.m. The Salkum-area fire department was dispatched at 2:36 a.m.
The fourth person was taken by ambulance to Lewis County Fire District 8’s main fire station in Salkum on U.S. Highway 12 where a Life Flight helicopter met them.
At about 9 a.m. this morning, the hospital told sheriff’s Cmdr. Steve Aust the patient was in critical condition but expected to live, Aust said.
A trio of teenagers were among the many wondering today who was dead and who survived.
Sixteen-year-old Forrest Moore said he has been calling and texting his best friend who lives in the house, and getting no answer.
“We’ve been trying to put it together, but we don’t know,” said Tiffany L’Italien who showed up with Moore and another friend.
The 15-year-old said she trains the couple’s horses and was at the house the day before and “everything seemed fine.” Moore was comforted somewhat because he didn’t see his fellow Onalaska High School student’s red Chevrolet parked at the house, so he was pretty sure he wasn’t there when it happened, he said.
Sheriff Mansfield said his detectives were either at the scene or out chasing down leads. They’re working closely with the Centralia Police Department, he said.
The sheriff’s office has put out a teletype and the suspect’s photo and description to other law enforcement agencies. Mansfield was expecting a Washington State Patrol crime scene van anytime, he said this afternoon.
Spokane law enforcement authorities were enlisted to help after the sheriff’s office “pinged” Booth’s cell phone and discovered he had made a phone call from the Spokane area to a friend in Lewis County about noontime, according to the sheriff’s office.
“We have a lot of other evidence and people associated on the fringe that have helped us on this,” Mansfield said.
The sheriff’s office is looking for blue or teal four-door 1998 Dodge Diplomat, which doesn’t belong to Booth, but he has been known to drive.
The sheriff’s office is asking anyone with information to call 911 immediately. Lewis County Crime Stoppers is offering $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
The last multiple homicide Cmdr. Aust could remember since he’s been a deputy was when two people were slain in the early 1990s out toward Pe Ell.
“I can’t recall any triple homicides in my time,” Aust said.
Booth works in Tacoma and is being supervised by a community corrections officer in DOC’s Tacoma office.
He’s been in Washington prisons three times. He spent about seven months in prison in 1998 and almost four years beginning in late 1999, according to the Department of Corrections.
“This guy needs to be back in prison, we need to get him; this is a real sad thing folks,” Mansfield said this afternoon. “If you look at the drug culture, it’s not (just) Lewis County, when you’re doing drugs, selling drugs, this is what you can get.”
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Note: The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office reported the home is in Salkum. It is about three miles west of the heart of Salkum but has an Onalaska address.