Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Skeletal remains found in Randle last year have been positively identified as a woman who disappeared from her Randle home about a mile and a half away several months before.

Trisha McKenzie-Fire

The Lewis County Coroner’s Office said this morning they are those of 58-year-old Trisha McKenzie-Fire.

The determination was made through a joint effort by a forensic anthropologist in King County and a local dentist who specializes in making identification through teeth, according to Coroner Warren McLeod.

McKenzie-Fire was reported missing by her live-in boyfriend in April 2011. Kent Anderson said he woke up one morning and she was gone from their home on Silverbrook Road, although she left her purse behind. Human remains were found the following September in a field on Joerk Road in Randle.

The cause and manner of her death remain under investigation, according to McLeod.

Anderson has since died. McLeod said all efforts to locate and notify McKenzie-Fire’s next-of-kin have been unsuccessful
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For background, read: “Breaking news: Human remains found in Randle” from Monday Sept. 26,  2011, here

Jack Silverthorne is unrepresented in Lewis County Superior Court as he asks a judge to dismiss his manslaughter conviction.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The 21-year-old sent off to prison last year after admitting he fatally punched a 16-year-old Morton boy in the head was back in court yesterday, asking to be set free.

Jack A. Silverthorne, now 22, filed a motion in Lewis County Superior Court from his cell at Coyote Ridge Corrections Center in Eastern Washington.

“It’s based on he’s never been in trouble before, and he was encouraged to take the plea,” his mother Kathryn Silverthorne said.

Silverthorne said her son rightfully ought to have been convicted of something less than he was, but didn’t understand, and just did what his defense attorney told him to do.

Austin King

The Renton resident was arrested in November 2010 in connection with the death of Austin King that summer.

The 16-year-old vanished from his family’s home in the Tilton River Mobile Home Park early on June 23 and was the subject of a month-long search headed up by volunteers. His body was found some 10 miles away off a logging road outside Morton.

Silverthorne was staying with his grandmother in the trailer park and was one of two “buddies” Austin was with the last time Austin’s mother saw her son alive.

Since there was no trial, the details of exactly what happened or why were never revealed in court. The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office believed there was a fight about a girl.

Pursuant to a plea agreement, Silverthorne pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter – recklessly causing the death of another person – and was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison, the high end of the standard sentencing range for the crime.

He sat before Judge James Lawler yesterday afternoon without an attorney.

The hearing was brief. Silverthorne’s mother and sister were the only spectators in the Chehalis courtroom.

Yesterday was the first time she’d seen her son since he was sentenced early last year, his mother said. He was almost unrecognizable, she said. Since he was locked up, her son has lost a huge amount of weight, she said.

Kathryn Silverthorne said she understands the weight loss is due to medication prescribed after he was diagnosed in jail or prison with bipolar disease.

Lewis County Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher objected to the self-crafted motion.

Lawler denied the motion, but noted it was more appropriately filed with the state Court of Appeals as a personal restraint petition. The judge certified the documents to be filed as such.

Outside the courtroom, Meagher said Silverthorne has the right to file the petition, that basically asks to be let out of prison.

But Meagher wasn’t optimistic about that happening.

Personal restraint petitions are usually something filed after someone is found guilty, Meagher said.

“But he pled guilty,” he said.

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For background, read “Morton teen homicide case ends with guilty plea” from Saturday May 7, 2011, here

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Chief Civil Deputy Stacy Brown of the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office says deputies were searching for a 35-year-old man after he stabbed a co-worker in the neck at the Beef Shop on Airport Road this morning.

Sabino Gomez Barriga

It happened about 11:30 a.m., according to Brown.

The victim is in critical condition at Providence Centralia Hospital, she said.

The suspect, Sabino Gomez Barriga of Chehalis, fled the scene on foot shortly after it occurred, according to Brown. He was taken into custody and is enroute to the Lewis County Jail, according to Brown.

Brown says little is known about the victim at this time. Deputies are waiting for an interpreter to arrive at the hospital to learn more about what occurred, she said.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

Court documents in the case of Donato Valle Vega shed light on why the 40-something Centralia car lot owner met with federal agents in Borst Park two years ago and then took them to his Harrison Avenue business and showed them pounds of drugs he had hidden in the attic.

Valle Vega was working as an informant with the FBI, assisting with an investigation of members of a Mexican drug trafficking cartel, according to his defense attorney Robert Leen.

After talking with an FBI agent and another from the DEA in early September 2010, Valle Vega admitted he had drugs, told them how much, offered to take them to the business and told them they could search both his car lot and his stash house, Assistant United States Attorneys Matthew Thomas and Darwin Roberts wrote in their trial brief.

The agents retrieved approximately four kilos of cocaine and 33 pounds of methamphetamine from Emmanuel Auto Sales that day, according to court documents. Two weeks later Centralia police assisted federal law enforcement officers with the arrest.

Valle Vega was convicted late last month of one count of possession with intent to distribute cocaine and a second similar count related to methamphetamine, in U.S. District Court in Tacoma.

He faces a minimum of 10 years in federal prison when he is sentenced, according to Assistant United States Attorney Thomas.

Both Thomas and Leen declined to talk about the case further until after sentencing.

Leen in his pretrial memo brief however wrote that his client admitted he had drugs the agents didn’t know about, but said he believed if he didn’t appear to go along with the suppliers’ plan it would mean death for him and his family, both in Centralia and in Mexico.

Valle Vega indicated he felt trapped because the men associated with the drugs were in Centralia but that as soon as they left, he gave information about the drugs, Leen wrote.

Leen, who is based in Everett, noted his client may have made some errors in judgement regarding his contacts with the drugs, but said it was out of fear.

The story begins, according to documents in the court file, on Sept. 1, 2010, the day before Valle Vega met with the agents in the Centralia park.

According to the documents: Law enforcement agents observed what they believed were narcotic being loaded into a BMW with Utah license plates at Emmanuel Auto Sales at the 1400 block of Harrison Avenue in Centralia.

At least three federal agents met with Valle Vega the following day and took the drugs. Valle Vega told them he’d received the drugs in July and had already distributed one and half kilograms of cocaine in August.

He told them they’d been provided to him by Salome Flores Apodaca, and the source was Apodaca’s brother, Augustine Flores Apodaca. They’d been sent to him concealed in a vehicle that had been brought to his auto sales business on a car hauler from Arizona.

That same day agents and Valle Vega were looking through his attic, Utah State troopers stopped the BMW in Brigham City and subsequently discovered about a pound of methamphetamine tucked into its gas tank.

The agents met with Valle Vega in Kelso a few days later. On Sept 17, they arrested him.

Federal prosecutors set out to prove the Centralia man possessed pounds of drugs that no drug trafficking organization would have provided to a person without the expectation they would be further distributed.

Neither of the trial briefs offer information about who or where Valle Vega’s customers were.

The trial lasted about four days and the jury returned a verdict of guilty as charged.

A forfeiture hearing regarding the property on Harrison Avenue is scheduled for Jan. 4. Sentencing is set for Jan. 25.

Thomas said the minimum term is 10 years in prison.

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For background, read “Centralia auto business arrest followed discovery of almost 10 pounds of cocaine” from Wednesday September 29, 2010, here