Lewis County Sirens.com

Posters featuring Kayla Croft-Payne will travel around the country on sides of trucks.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The face of a missing Chehalis girl will soon be pasted poster-sized on the sides of truck trailers that travel throughout the country.

Kayla Croft-Payne was reported missing on May 5, 2010  by a friend who hadn’t seen or heard from her for several days. She was 18 years old and living outside Chehalis.

Gordon Trucking, in Pacific, will unveil Croft-Payne’s poster on Friday morning adding it to their fleet that highlights missing children from Washington and Oregon.

“The whole idea is just to get, in her case to get her picture out there,” Washington State Patrol Lt. Ron Mead said. “They get a lot of exposure they wouldn’t otherwise get.”

Mead said her image will be placed on multiple trailers.

Gordon Trucking already features other youngsters, such as Kyron Horman, who was 7 years old when he disappeared in Portland. A new age-progressed picture of Kyron and two other children are currently being added to the fleet, according to Mead.

It’s part of a partnership called Homeward Bound, involving private industry and the state patrol, according to Mead.

When Croft-Payne turned 18, she got several thousand dollars from a trust fund and moved into an apartment in Chehalis. Neither her father or her mother knew a lot about the friends their daughter was hanging out with in the months before she vanished.

Last year, the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office said it had followed tips up into Pierce County, and down into Cowlitz County, saying the last place they could verify she was seen was a trailer park in the Toutle area.

“As long as there is hope, we have a responsibility to keep that hope alive,” Mead said.
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For background, read “Kayla Croft-Payne: Missing Lewis County teen’s parents still seeking answers” from Friday March 25, 2011, here

Dan Coon of the state patrol says Kayla Croft-Payne’s picture will be on the trailers of five big rigs that travel throughout the Northwest and Canada. / Courtesy photo by Washington State Patrol

A team of outside law enforcement officers finished up their scene investigation this morning where a deputy fatally shot a Napavine man along state Route 6 near Boistfort.

Updated at 8:52 a.m., 9:11 a.m. and 5:06 p.m.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

A Lewis County sheriff’s deputy shot and killed a motorist west of Adna this morning the sheriff’s office said lunged out of his vehicle with a knife.

It happened about 12:17 a.m. on the 2300 block of state Route 6, according to the sheriff’s office.

The dead man is identified only as a 64-year-old Napavine resident.

According to a news release from the sheriff’s office: The deputy was on routine patrol when he saw a car parked in a turnout and stopped to see if the driver needed assistance.

“When the deputy approached the vehicle he observed a man with, what appeared to be, self-inflicted lacerations and bleeding heavily,” the sheriff’s office states. “When the deputy tried to speak with the man, the man lunged out of his vehicle with a large knife and charged the deputy.”

The sheriff’s office says the deputy was forced to shoot to avoid being attacked.

Aid was summoned and the motorist was pronounced dead shortly after aid arrived, according to the sheriff’s office.

A team of outside law enforcement officers was summoned to the scene near Boistfort this morning to investigate.

The unnamed deputy is a nine-year veteran of the office. He is being put on paid administrative leave as is standard procedure, according to Chief Civil Deputy Stacy Brown.

The incident took place at a large gravel turnout just east of the South Fork Chehalis RIver Bridge near Boistfort.

The deputy was alone when it occurred, according to Brown.

Asked what made the deputy think the man’s injuries were self inflicted, she said: Because there was nobody else around.

The sheriff’s office has no reason to believe there was anyone else involved, according to Brown.

She said the dead man’s name will be released by the Lewis County Coroner’s Office, which customarily doesn’t happen until family has been notified.

Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod said his office is working to locate the next-of-kin and then confirm the identity of the deceased. An autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow.

A stretch of state Route 6 between Spooner Road and Boistfort Road was shut down until about 6:30 a.m. for the investigation, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation.

It was just 16 months ago when another Lewis County deputy fatally shot another Napavine man. In June 2011, Deputy Matt McKnight opened fire on a 33-year-old man he thought was armed with a knife on a residential street in Napavine.

That incident too occurred at night time, and McKnight said Steven V. Petersen began to charge him.

The deputy was cleared but last month Petersen’s family filed a lawsuit saying McKnight engaged in a ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ approach to law enforcement.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

A former Southern California woman who now lives in Glenoma pleaded guilty today to charges in connection with orchestrating a mortgage fraud scheme convincing lenders to fund more than $20 million in loans on approximately three dozen properties in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Wanda Coleman, 59, admitted to one count of mail fraud pursuant to a plea agreement filed under seal in U.S. District Court in Portland, according to authorities.

Assistant United States Attorney Joshua Robbins said Coleman had a film company and some of the proceeds were used to finance films and some for personal use.

She is a former resident of Pauma Valley in San Diego County, he said. He said he couldn’t say exactly if she had family or other connections that prompted her to relocate to Lewis County.

Robbins said Coleman recruited straw buyers who offered to pay sellers substantially more than their asking price in return for the sellers’ agreement to refund the excess amount to her or companies she controlled.

She and co-conspirators submitted mortgage applications that contained false information regarding the buyers’ employment, income and assets as well as omitted material information, according to the U.S. Attorneys’ Office.

The buyers ultimately defaulted on the loans, resulting in foreclosures and losses of more than $11 million to the lenders, Robbins said.

The indictment was filed a year ago, but covered activities from as early as 2005 and into 2009, he said. It’s the kind of scheme which was easier to pull off before the housing market crashed and transactions tightened up, he said.

Three others have pleaded guilty in connection with the scheme, as well as two more individuals in related cases, according to Robbins. The so-called straw buyers were not charged, he said.

“The mortgage broker, the escrow agent, they were all in on it,” Robbins said.

Participants also forged bank statements and prepared other fraudulent documents to corroborate the false claims, according to the U.S. Attorneys’ Office.

Robbins said he only knew of the one film Coleman was involved in called “Samurai Woman”.

The case grew out of an investigation by the FBI and originated in the United States Attorneys Office in the Central District of California. It was transferred to the District of Oregon for entry of the plea and sentencing because of the proximity to Coleman’s new residence, Robbins said.

She will be sentenced on Jan. 25 in Portland. The maximum sentence is 30 years but the details in the plea agreement are under seal for now.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

An 80-year-old Morton man who lives alone was reported missing yesterday after his grown son arrived at the man’s residence for a planned hunting outing to find nobody home.

William H. Osborne

William H. Osborne was last seen on Monday purchasing a hunting license at Tri Mountain Sports & Radio Shack in town, according to the Morton Police Department.

“We’re putting all resources into locating him, obviously time is of the essence,” Chief Dan Mortensen said this morning.

Osborne’s family describes him as possibly having some short term memory loss and he’s not very mobile because of his age, Mortensen said. He’s 5-feet 8-inches tall and about 185 pounds.

One challenge is it’s virtually impossible to activate a search and rescue mission because they have no specific location to start looking, the chief said.

Osborne’s family is in the area looking and police have alerted local law enforcement and surrounding agencies, according to Mortensen.

Osborne drives a silver 2003 Dodge Dakota pickup with a white utility canopy. Its license plate is B67640P.

He and his son spoke around 11:30 a.m. on Monday and that’s the last time Osborne’s cell phone was used, the chief said. He purchased the hunting license between noon and 2 p.m.

The son, who lives in Orting, showed up yesterday to meet his father, and then checked a local restaurant before calling police, Mortensen said.

Police tried unsuccessfully to “ping” the cell phone to learn its location, he said.

His neighbors didn’t think he came home Monday night, the chief said.

“We don’t know where he is,” Mortensen said. “His son thought he could have gone up into the mountains to shoot his gun, possibly grouse hunting.”