Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – An undivulged number of staff members at Green Hill School have been reassigned during an investigation into the November escape of a 16-year-old inmate.

Chehalis police were told the boy was last checked on at about 5 a.m. on Nov. 8 and discovered missing from his room about 6:30 a.m.

After he was captured, however, the youth told detectives he had climbed out his window about 10:15 p.m. the night before, taken wire cutters from an unlocked building and fled through a hole he cut in the fence, according to charging documents.

The now-17-year-old boy is set to be arraigned this week on first-degree escape and other charges following the November incident at the state juvenile detention facility in south Chehalis.

Michael A. Lavallie was incarcerated at Green Hill for possession of a stolen vehicle and attempting to elude a police vehicle.

Normal procedures are for head counts to be done hourly, according to Criss Stewart, a manager at Green Hill.

Green Hill Superintendent Marybeth Queral said yesterday she requested an outside investigation to see if there were policy violations and at what level.

“Those are the facts being investigated; when did he leave, when was he checked on, who was responsible,” Queral said.

The Washington State Patrol is conducting the investigation, she said.

Lavallie was picked up in Yelm three weeks after he escaped and remains at Green Hill. He was set to be released in July of next year, according to the Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office.

Last week, he was charged as an adult in Lewis County Superior Court.

Charging documents in his case say he told Chehalis police detectives he dug the rubber out from around his cell window with his comb and pencil and shook the metal bars until the screws were loose enough he could remove them.

He was in the “Hawthorne” unit.

Lavallie said he first tried to use a rake he found to help him climb over the fence but when that didn’t work, went to the vocational shop building and got two pairs of wire cutters, according to the charging documents.

Police, deputies and troopers who converged on the neighborhood discovered an Isuzu Trooper had been stolen from the 300 block of Chehalis Avenue. The youth allegedly told police he dumped the vehicle in Rainier because it was having transmission troubles. He then went to stay with his father on Hobby Street, according to charging documents.

Lavallie has previous addresses from places such as Tenino, Rainier, Olympia and Roy, according to Chehalis police.

He was captured on Nov. 29 by a Thurston County sheriff’s deputy who followed a vehicle in Yelm which was registered the boy’s sister.

Lavallie is also charged with theft of a motor vehicle, second-degree burglary, third-degree theft and third-degree malicious mischief.

Green Hill School is a medium and maximum secure facility for older juvenile boys incarcerated for felonies and operated by the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration, under the state Department of Social and Health Services.

It sits on some 45 acres between Interstate 5 and Southwest Pacific Avenue north of Southwest Parkland Street. It currently holds about 182 residents and employes about 250 people.

Queral became its superintendent in the fall of 2007 and about a year ago, was made the superintendent also of Maple Lane School in Grand Mound.

Queral said she couldn’t speak to the specifics about the incident during the active administrative investigation, and said she didn’t know when it would be completed.

Depending on the results, she will probably conduct an internal investigation afterward, she said.

She declined to say how many employees were reassigned because of the escape, only that it is more than one.

The last escape from Green Hill was in early 2003 when two residents were apprehended in the area within less than an hour after climbing over the razor-wired fence.

•••

Read “Search for Green Hill escapee moves into south Thurston County” from Monday Nov. 8, 2010, here

Read “Green Hill escapee picked up near Yelm” from Tuesday Nov. 30, 2010, here

Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 16th, 2011 at 5:00 am and is filed under Top story of the day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.