Lewis County Sirens.com

Volunteers pretend to be injured in a bus crash at 183rd Avenue Southwest and Sargent Road.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

ROCHESTER – As hundreds of people were imagined to be fleeing a tsunami on the coast this morning, emergency management officials and responders tested their abilities to coordinate a response in Thurston and Lewis counties.

The large scale exercise included folks gathering as early as 7:30 a.m. in a new emergency coordination center on Tilley Road, practicing opening a shelter for evacuees at the former Maple Lane School in Grand Mound, testing communications at Lewis County’s emergency operations center in Chehalis and providing support from Riverside Fire Authority’s main station in Centralia.

In the midst of the drill, a simulated bus crash drew deputies and fire departments to Rochester where as many as 20 civilians pretended to be injured.

One of the incident commanders, Olympia Fire Department Assistant Chief Pat Dale, said they role played accepting three or four bus loads of coastal residents at Maple Lane, the shuttered juvenile incarceration facility in Grand Mound.

“We did that from here and it went pretty well,” Dale said as the exercise wrapped up just before noon.

The exercise conducted by Homeland Security Region Three – comprised of Lewis, Thurston, Grays Harbor, Pacific and Mason counties – was titled Pacific Panda.

Organizers described the event as a way to test communications, citizen sheltering, incident management and mass care. Homeland Security Region Three Coordinator Jesi Chapin said last week although it’s not the most likely natural disaster, it’s consequences would be widespread.

Responders from several fire and police agencies practice assessing and treating passengers from an imaginary bus crash

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Pretend patients wait to be transported following a mock bus wreck in Rochester

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – You can’t just go around pulling firearms on folks.

That was the message prosecutors wanted to get across to a 70-year-old Curtis resident who claimed he mistook the grown daughter of a neighbor for a poacher when he fired his weapon and ordered her to the ground at gunpoint one night last November.

Lewis County Chief Criminal Deputy Brad Meagher recommended jail time for Gary O. Watson during a hearing today in Lewis County Superior Court.

Watson, who let his attorney speak for him, was in court to formalize a plea agreement that allowed him to escape a felony assault charge, and what his lawyer said was the possibility of having to serve every day of a 38 month sentence had he gone to trial and failed to persuade a jury it was self defense.

“I just want to make sure the court understands this was a very unique and fortunately not catastrophic alignment of facts,” defense attorney David Arcuri told the judge.

Watson was arrested Nov. 13 at the 1000 block of Wildwood Road in the south end of the Boistfort Valley.

Arriving Lewis County sheriff’s deputies were told Watson was outside his home because he’d been called by a neighbor about a suspicious car stopped on the road earlier. The 27-year-old victim said she was on the roadway when it happened.

The facts are in dispute and prosecutors would have had some “proof problems” for second-degree assault had they gone to trial, Meagher told the court.

Watson has no criminal history, he said.

“We agree it was really not the proper way to handle the situation, but Mr. Watson did not intend to point blank assault someone,” Meagher said as described the reason for reducing the charges.

The sheriff’s office arrested Watson for first-degree assault in November. Prosecutors then charged him with second-degree assault. The agreement was guilty pleas to three gross misdemeanors.

The participants described a scenario in which Watson got a call from Amanda Freidly’s parents who live on the other side of the road telling him a car had broke down earlier nearby, had left and then returned but its driver was nowhere to be seen.

Arcuri said they told him it could be poachers, in a stretch of the Boistfort Valley he called “elk poaching central.”

Watson went outside with his gun, in the dark, and when a vehicle pulled into a drive across the road, he “makes a mistake of firing a shot,” Arcuri said.

He ordered the person out of the car and holds them at gunpoint, Arcuri said.

Watson said he fired a shot in the air. Amanda Freidly said a bullet whizzed right past her.

“I want to make sure the court understands almost a perfect storm of bad facts,” Arcuri said as he attempted to persuade the judge to accept agreed recommendation for a sentence.

Through his lawyer, Watson admitted he did it in such a way that created a substantial risk of death or injury and the manner in which he “displayed” his firearm would have caused her to be alarmed for her safety

The attorneys told Judge James Lawler the defendant lived his entire life in the area crime free and that Freidly’s mother Debbie Mueller had called him to warn him she thought might be poachers outside.

Mueller said – outside the courtroom – she told him no such thing. And it’s her understanding Watson and his wife live on a boat in Olympia and use his mother-in-law’s home on Wildwood Road for a fixed address, she said.

Freidly said the episode terrified her, and described that she still finds herself scared deeply at times for no good reason.

Watson pleaded guilty to fourth-degree assault, unlawful display of a firearm and reckless endangerment.

He agreed to give up his concealed weapon permit.

Judge Lawler accepted the plea agreement of 20 days in jail. The rest of the possible 364 days will be suspended for two years.

The judge said he was satisfied it was fair given Watson’s lack of criminal history during a lifetime of residence here and given the potential of what could have happened, since it involved a gun.

“A lot of gross misdemeanors get just a day or two in jail,” Lawler said.

Watson got credit for three days served when he was arrested.

He was taken into custody at the end of the hearing.
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Read about the arrest, here

Joshua Vance is escorted out of a Chehalis courtroom after making his pleas to murder, attempted murder

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The Centralia College student accused of stabbing to death his sleeping father in their Onalaska home two months ago pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Joshua Leroy Vance, 25, appeared in Lewis County Superior Court today. He has been found competent to stand trial.

Judge Nelson Hunt asked Vance if he heard and understood what his attorney told the court about why they were there.

“Yes I do,” Vance replied.

He is charged with first-degree murder in the death of his father Terry Vance, a 58-year-old Onalaskan long known for his dedication to coaching and refereeing baseball.

The younger Vance is also charged with three counts of attempted first-degree murder, as he allegedly told an arriving deputy he was going to kill his grandmother, nephew and uncle but couldn’t because he cut his hand.

He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity this morning to all four counts.

Joshua Vance’s family has said he was being treated for mental health issues and had gone off his medication because he couldn’t afford it.

He was arrested early the morning of March 7 after he and his grandmother both called 911. Deputies found the father in a bedroom dead of multiple stab wounds.

Joshua Vance was taken to a Seattle regional trauma hospital to be treated for lacerations to his fingers he told a first responder he did to himself to make himself stop.

Attorneys on both sides in March requested an order for him to be evaluated by specialists at Western State Hospital to determine if he was mentally competent to stand trial.

An 85-minute interview conducted inside the Lewis County Jail concluded he was, according to a report in his court file dated April 12.

His defense attorney David Arcuri said the finding only means that today his client has sufficient mental abilities to be a defendant, to understand the basics of the criminal justice system and to meaningfully assist in his own defense.

“It’s totally irrelevant to the date of the offense,” Arcuri said.

The questions now will be what what his client’s mental state when the events occurred, Arcuri said.

The guidelines for criminal insanity look at if a person suffers from a mental disease or defect such that they could not comprehend the nature or quality of their act, and, even if they could understand, could not conform their behavior, according to Arcuri

The report from Western State Hospital describes Joshua Vance as being under the care of a Chehalis clinic since early 2008.

His diagnosis’s included psychotic disorder, major depression, amphetamine dependence and alcohol abuse, according to the report.

One of the passages describe his Cascade Mental Health doctor as understanding a hospital stay in early 2010 was related to “command hallucinations to kill himself and harm others.” The report describes his complaints of hearing voices in the past and as recently as March.

He has in the past been treated at least two other mental health clinics, one of them in 2009 for substance induced hallucinations and mood disorder, according to the report.

Joshua Vance told the evaluator he started using methamphetamine at age 11, but had not used it for the previous two years. He said he began using cannabis when he was 8 years old.

His doctor, according to the report, indicated last October, with his medications adjusted, he seemed to be doing fairly well.

He started school, was getting good grades and  began going to the gym, according to the report.

Joshua Vance’s past criminal offenses include possession of a controlled substance without a prescription in 2006, third-degree assault and attempted eluding in 2005, according to the report.

Lewis County prosecutors have amended the current charges to include aggravating circumstances of deliberate cruelty and a particularly vulnerable victim – because his father was asleep when it happened, according to Deputy Prosecutor Joely Yeager. An so-called deadly weapon enhancement has been added as well.

Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher told the judge today he expects the trial will last five days. It was scheduled for the week of Oct. 22.
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Read background “Murder suspect: “When he was good, he was such a good young man”” from Friday March 9, 2012, here

Nicholas Hunter Lee Matchett / Courtesy photo

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

A family and a community is in mourning following the loss of 8-year-old Nicholas Hunter Lee Matchett to drowning in the Chehalis River.

Nicholas was found on a gravel bar a quarter mile downstream from his home near the intersection of state Route 6 and Ceres Hill Road about an hour after his mother reported him missing late Friday afternoon.

He was a student at Boistfort School.

School Principal Rich Apperson said he will be missed as a friend and a member of the school family.

“This was a year he was really flourishing,” Apperson said.

“He was learning to work an iPad and if he had a choice, he might play Angry Birds, or country music,” Apperson said.

Nicholas was one of only about 100 students at the small school in the Boistfort Valley.

Apperson said they tried to keep today as normal as possible for the children, but brought in a counselor and expect to do the same tomorrow, “just in case, as people comes to terms.”

A youth pastor and his wife spoke to each of the classes today, and an informational flyer was sent home with the kids, he said.

The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office has not completed its investigation, but it was reasonable to surmise the child fell into the river, according to sheriff’s Cmdr. Steve Aust.

“The boy had been swinging on the porch and his mom went in the house for a few minutes,” Aust said. “She asked her 11-year-old daughter to go check on him.”

Deputies didn’t find any specific spot where the river bank behind the Matchett’s house caved, but he could have gone straight in without touching the bank, Aust said.

Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod confirmed this morning the death was an accidental drowning.

Michelle Matchett, his mother, said her son loved everybody.

“He was happy all the time, he was never unhappy,” she said.

He especially liked the movie “Over the hedge”, she said. “He watched it about a million times.”

Nicholas was developmentally delayed, his mother said, describing that as not yet learning to talk.

His school principal said Nicholas had vision and hearing problems, but this year got glasses and a hearing aid and was making good progress.

“We all kind of got to know him,” Apperson said. “He was and yet he wasn’t so much outside the ballpark of what kids go through.”

Next door neighbors Starla and Bruce Terry spoke of a high and dangerously unstable river bank that goes behind both theirs and the Matchett’s homes.

Over the years, the bank has eroded, and the winding river moved closer and closer to their properties, Starla Terry said.

“I’m saying, he fell off a cliff that if I had my way, wouldn’t have been there,” Starla Terry said.

Various regulations have prevented anyone from clearing debris from the original channel to allow it to move back, something she has wanted done for years, she said.

The Matchett’s house is about nine miles west of Chehalis, near where the South Fork of the Chehalis RIver meets the main fork.

Starla Terry, an accountant, has been on the phone getting pledges from her clients to help pay funeral costs.

The single mother of two works at Home Depot in Chehalis, and doesn’t have a budget for such an expense, she said.

Starla Terry said she has several irons in the fire to help her neighbor with an “utter disaster.”

“He was just such a cute little thing,” she said. “Honest to God, all those long golden curls.”

Anyone who wants to make a donation can contact Starla Terry at 360-245-3334. An account named Nicky Matchett Memorial is set up to take donations at Wells Fargo Bank.

Nicholas’s graveside service is set for 11 a.m. on Thursday at the Boistfort Cemetery.

It will be followed at 1:30 p.m. with a celebration of life and potluck in the gym at Boistfort School, for anyone who would like to attend, according to Apperson.

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For background read “Breaking news: Child drowns in Chehalis River” from Friday May 4, 2012 at 7:38 p.m., here