Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – A mother holding her baby and another mother who has lost her only child sat on opposite sides of the courtroom this morning as 29-year-old James W. Taylor faced a judge for the second time this week in connection with last year’s alcohol-poisoning death of Onalaska teenager Nickolas Barnes.

James W. Taylor

“My client is a father of four, has a full time job and had never been in trouble with the law,” Centralia attorney Don Blair told the judge.

Taylor was locked up Tuesday after he was summoned to Lewis County Superior Court more than a year after Nickolas, 15, died after playing drinking games with vodka at an underage party in Taylor’s Onalaska home.

Blair asked Judge James Lawler to lower Taylor’s bail. Deputy Prosecutor Steve Scott opposed the request. Lawler reduced bail to $10,000.

Taylor is charged with second-degree manslaughter, furnishing liquor to minors and failing to summon assistance.

Nickolas Barnes

Prosecutors allege Taylor purchased beer and allowed nine teenagers to drink the night of Sept. 18 last year. Charging documents say after Nickolas and a 16-year-old boy downed more than 11 shots of vodka, Nickolas passed out in the front yard, where his friends removed his clothes and wrote on his body with a black marker.

Prosecutors allege Taylor told the teenagers to “let him sleep it off.”

The Onalaska High School sophomore died in a hospital on Sept. 21. Prosecutors say Nickolas’s blood alcohol level was .32, which is four times the amount which an adult would be illegally intoxicated if driving.

In the audience for Taylor’s arraignment was his wife, holding the child and Nickolas’s mother, uncle and grandmother.

He pleaded not guilty to each of the nine charges.

A trial date has not been set. Taylor was released from jail at mid-day today.
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Read “Remembering Nickolas Barnes” from Thursday Sept. 23, 2010 here

James W. Taylor of Onalaska confers with defense attorney Bob Schroeter as lawyers and the judge considered Taylor's bail on second-degree manslaughter, furnishing liquor to minors and failing to summon assistance.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The 29-year-old man charged last month in last year’s alcohol-poisoning death of Onalaska teenager Nickolas Barnes appeared before a judge yesterday afternoon in Lewis County Superior Court in Chehalis.

More than a year after the 15-year-old died after playing drinking games with vodka and other teenagers at James W. Taylor’s residence, Taylor is facing charges of second-degree manslaughter, furnishing liquor to minors and failing to summon assistance.

Prosecutors have said Taylor could face as much as 27 months in prison if convicted as charged.

The brief hearing was for the purpose of setting bail. His arraignment is scheduled for Oct. 14.

Deputy Prosecutor Steve Scott asked for $100,000 bail and defense attorney Bob Schroeter asked for $20,000, unsecured, noting the moving company employee came to court on his own volition following a summons.

Judge James Lawler said he was required to consider community safety and whether Taylor is likely to return to court as directed. The judge ordered him held on a $25,000 signature bond, provided it’s co-signed by a property owner.

The judge also ordered Taylor to have no contact with any witnesses in the case, which means he will probably have to move out of the house where he lives with his wife and children, according to Schroeter.

Nickolas’s grandmother Susan Patterson spoke briefly to reporters before she and several other family members met with elected Prosecutor Michael Golden after the court hearing.

Patterson called it a very sad day.

“My grandson is dead because of stupidity, and another young man’s life is fixing to go to hell in a hand basket, because of stupidity,” Patterson said.

Young people need to realize when other kids pass out from drinking, “you get help,” she said.

Nickolas was a sophomore at Onalaska High School and was buried on Sept. 24 of last year, which would have been his 16th birthday.

Centralia defense attorney Don Blair was appointed to represent Taylor.

Taylor was booked into the Lewis County Jail after court yesterday and remains there today.

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Read the Sept. 23, 2010 story about Nickolas Barnes and what prosecutors believe happened at the party that night here

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The owner of a Centralia muffler shop was sentenced today to 20 months in prison after pleading guilty to three times selling methamphetamine to a police informant.

Frank Eugene Willis, 65, answered “Yes, your honor” repeatedly to the many questions Judge James Lawler asked him about the rights he was giving up by pleading guilty.

Eight family members and friends of Willis were behind him in the audience in Lewis County Superior Court.

Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Brad Meagher told the judge part of the reason they brokered the plea deal was Willis has no criminal history and police neglected a 15-day deadline to get judicial approval for the wire intercepts – recordings made with a confidential informant.

“That was an issue for us,” Meagher said.

Among the charges dropped were possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver and possession of stolen property, including two firearms.

Willis, the longtime owner of the Muffler Hut on South Gold Street was arrested Aug. 19 after the Centralia Police Department’s SWAT team and other officers served a search warrant there, following an investigation into trafficking of narcotics and stolen property.

Police seized about 40 firearms – described as mostly a collection of old rifles and some shotguns – and two were confirmed as stolen, according to Willis’s attorney James Dixon. The two attorneys are negotiating about Willis forfeiting most of the guns, Dixon said.

The Olympia attorney had notified the court almost two weeks ago his client was planning to plead guilty and the lawyers were still hammering out a plea agreement.

Yesterday, when Dixon received some of the case records from the prosecutor’s office, he realized the police department had not gotten the required judicial review, he said.

“Once I discovered the problem with the wires, the prosecutor made an offer, which was fair, and we accepted,” Dixon said.

The standard sentencing range for the crimes to which Willis pleaded guilty is 12 to 20 months. Meagher and Dixon agreed on the recommended sentence and the judge concurred.

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Read the news story from Thursday Aug. 19, 2010 when police served a search warrant at the Muffler Hut here

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

Police detained about a half dozen people when they served a search warrant yesterday morning in a Centralia trailer park, including one man who apparently swallowed large amount of methamphetamine and nearly died.

Centralia Police Department detective Sgt. Pat Fitzgerald said when the SWAT team and detectives arrived at the residence off the 1700 block of Harrison Avenue to look for evidence of a forged and counterfeit check operation, a 27-year-old man on the porch refused to give up and fought with the SWAT team, so they used a Taser gun.

The man was taken to the hospital to be checked out and began having convulsions, Fitzgerald said.

At Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, providers concluded he must have ingested drugs, and it was “touch and go for awhile” Fitzgerald said.

“The report we got from the hospital was it was more than anything they’d ever seen before,” he said.

Three individuals were arrested after the 8:30 a.m. visit to the trailer, including Erica D. McCleary, 33, of Centralia, for forgery and identity theft, according to police.

Police found identification and other personal information of numerous victims from the greater Centralia area and other items consistent with a suspected operation, according to Fitzgerald.

“We don’t know the number of victims yet,” Fitzgerald said this morning.

Also arrested was Ronald W. McNeal, 50, of Centralia, for possession of methamphetamine and April L. Busby, 34, of Rochester, for an unrelated outstanding bench warrant, police said. The others were released.

The search followed a lengthy investigation and turned up credit cards, social security numbers and other personal information police suspect was stolen in car prowls and from mailboxes.

“Anytime you get this kind of activity, you can (expect to) link it to a lot of petty crimes,” he said. “Most of the time, those things are related to drugs.”

McCleary and McNeal live at the residence just south of the fire station, and several people receive mail there, he said.

It’s the home of Fred Isaacson, a man known to law enforcement as “Blind Freddie” and yesterday marked the third time Centralia police have served search warrants there in the past year, according to Fitzgerald.

Late last summer, they arrested Isaacson there and in May of this year, police found Robbie Russell hiding inside a sofa in the trailer when his friends has removed some of the upholstery and stapled it back together with the wanted man inside, according to police.
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Read yesterday’s news story “News brief: Search at Centralia home turns up forged check operation, police say” for a few more details about yesterday’s raid here.