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
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter