Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The acquittal yesterday of a 31-year-old National Guardsman charged in the gunshot death of his girlfriend was not necessarily a reason to celebrate, according to his attorney.

Jesse Karr was found not guilty yesterday of fatally shooting 28-year-old Sara M. Whitson in Sept. 2009 in the Chehalis apartment they shared. He said the handgun accidentally discharged as he was unloading it.

Jesse Karr

“There’s no winner in this case,” defense attorney Don McConnell said after the verdict.

“This poor guy’s gone through a lot of emotional trauma, this was the love of his life,” McConnell said.

Karr, 29, had just returned from Iraq about a month earlier and moved in with the woman he’d dated off and on for about four years, according to witness testimony.

He had offered to clean her .22 caliber handgun, and the weapon – which operated in the exact opposite way of his, according to his attorney – went off in his hand, shooting him in his finger and Whitson in the abdomen. She died during emergency surgery.

In the trial that began in Lewis County Superior Court on Monday, Deputy Prosecutor Colin Hayes told jurors it was a reckless act, by a man who’d never even seen the gun before.

“He wasn’t quite sure how to get the magazine out, he didn’t ask how to get it out, he didn’t ask about the safety,” Hayes told jurors during the three-day trial.

Karr was charged with first-degree manslaughter in February 2010.

A jury of eight women and four men deliberated a little more than seven hours over two days, and returned their verdict just before lunch yesterday. Not guilty of first-degree manslaughter and not guilty of second-degree manslaughter.

McConnell said that’s the outcome he expected, for an accident.

“It’s the way it happened, it’s the way it was,” he said. “It’s the way he told everyone from day one.”

The Centralia attorney said the shooting was a tragedy for everyone, for family, for friends, for his client.

“He’s got to live with this for the rest of his life,” McConnell said.

Hayes was disappointed, but said it was the jury’s decision.

“The jury heard the evidence and weighed it and decided he did not commit a crime,” Hayes said yesterday.

“We never contended it was not an accident,” he said. “Just reckless, or at least negligent.”

It’s the second time already this year McConnell has gotten an acquittal for a client in Lewis County Superior Court.

Two weeks ago, a jury found Jaime Roberto Hernandez not guilty of second-degree assault in what prosecutors described as an attack on a DeGoede Bulb Farm worker with a garden hoe by his supervisor. The first trial, held the first week in January, ended with a hung jury.

Newly-elected Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer – McConnell’s former law partner – has “walled off” cases such as Karr’s and Hernandez’s, those which previously involved their firm.

Meyer has arranged for supervision on those cases to be handled by his Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

The cause of the automobile accident and death almost two weeks ago of a witness in a recently filed Randle murder case continues to puzzle state troopers even after an autopsy was conducted.

Donald G. Diemert

Donald G. Diemert, 62, of Randle, was dead at the scene of a wreck in which his Pontiac Grand Am struck a guard rail, crossed the highway and then ran into a rock wall on U.S. Highway 12 east of Packwood the night of Feb. 19.

State Patrol Sgt. Jason Ashley said it was a slow speed crash, not serious enough it should have killed him.

The state patrol ruled out any mechanical failure and leaned towards some kind of medical issue or something like falling asleep at the wheel, according to Ashley.

An autopsy however, turned up no evidence of a medical event, the Lewis County Coroner’s Office said this week.

Diemert died from a broken neck, according to Chief Deputy Coroner Dawn Harris.

“Basically when his air bag deployed, because he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, it broke his neck,” Harris said.

Trooper Jason Hicks, the technical investigator for the collision, said today he found that odd.

Hicks said he has never in almost 12 years as a trooper seen a case or heard of a case in which an airbag deployment broke a person’s neck.

The windshield was cracked and Diemert was tossed to the right, with his head landing on the passenger seat, Hicks said.

“I highly doubt the airbag broke his neck,” Hicks said. “The evidence showed he was thrown low to the passenger side corner.”

Diemert was a witness in the case against Randle taxidermist Erik Massa. The 43-year-old was charged Feb. 7 with second-degree murder for the March 14 death of a 58-year-old welder from Federal Way.

Guy W. LaFontaine died from blunt force injuries to his head, torso and extremities after, investigators allege, he was at Massa’s home in Randle.

Massa, who is related to LaFontaine by marriage, has pleaded not guilty and is free on $25,000 bail.

Diemert was a retired Boeing worker who moved to the Randle-Packwood area in 1996.

Part of what was odd, was Diemert did have a laceration on his head, but it hardly bled at all, Hicks said.

“It’s just one of those things that didn’t make sense,” Hicks said.

Hicks said the state patrol is still waiting for a report from the coroner, and will look to the toxicology results to find if Diemert had any alcohol, drugs or medications in his system.

The only indication troopers had Diemert might have been impaired was an unopened can of beer in the cup holder in the car, Hicks said.

Harris said Tuesday she expected those tests to come back in eight or nine weeks.

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Read more about Don Diemert here