In brief: Man shot outside Trent Avenue tavern
A man was shot in the abdomen while having a smoke outside a Spokane Valley bar, police said.
The Spokane Valley Police Department responded to the Oasis Tavern in the 14900 block of East Trent Avenue at 11:30 Friday evening. According to witnesses, the man went outside to smoke, then came back inside saying he’d been shot.
He was taken to a local hospital, where he was listed in critical but stable condition.
Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call Crime Check at (509) 456-2233.
Man hauling carpet missing from work
Spokane police are looking for a man who never arrived at his job site Friday.
Louis Ralph Lapham, 40, was driving a white Ford van with a roll of carpet hanging out the back. The plate number is unknown.
Police said he was supposed to show up at a Diamond Lake job site at 9 a.m. He left from the 3600 block of East Springfield Road.
Anyone with information regarding Lapham’s whereabouts should call Crime Check at (509) 456-2233.
Park ranger killed in head-on collision
SEABECK, Wash. – State parks officials on Saturday released the name of a veteran park ranger killed in a head-on crash near Seabeck.
Park ranger Ed Johanson, 44, was driving home from work Friday night when a Ford Thunderbird crossed the centerline and collided with his vehicle, authorities said. The crash happened in the Central Kitsap area, near Johanson’s home.
The 35-year-old man driving the Thunderbird was arrested on suspicion of vehicular homicide and was being evaluated for narcotics, Kitsap County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ken Dickinson said. His bail was set at $500,000.
The Thunderbird driver and a passenger suffered minor injuries, Dickinson said.
Gov. Chris Gregoire expressed her condolences, saying Johanson was a “tireless advocate and innovator for our parks and a beloved community volunteer.”
Montana avalanche kills one, injures one
KALISPELL, Mont. – One man is dead and another suffered minor injuries Saturday in an avalanche near Marias Pass, according to officials in Western Montana.
Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry said the Cut Bank men triggered the avalanche while riding snow bikes in a drainage on Skyland Road off U.S. Highway 2.
He told the Daily Inter Lake that searchers recovered the body about 3:45 p.m.
U.S. Forest Service officials on Friday warned of a moderate to high avalanche risk this weekend in backcountry areas in Montana and the Idaho Panhandle.
Probation, treatment likely in gun incident
BREMERTON – A Washington state prosecutor said his office will seek probation and treatment for a 9-year-old boy who took to school a gun that accidentally discharged and critically injured a classmate last week.
Kitsap County Prosecutor Russ Haugen said Friday that “nobody is trying to lock this little boy up.” He said prosecutors hope to hold the boy accountable not through incarceration, but rather probation, treatment and other services.
The third-grader faces charges of unlawful possession of a gun, bringing a dangerous weapon to school and third-degree assault. He is facing a capacity hearing in which a judge will determine if he knew what he did was wrong. If the judge decides the boy knew, the charges go forward.
An 8-year-old classmate, Amina Kocer-Bowman, was wounded. She is in a Seattle hospital in critical condition after undergoing surgeries.
The boy’s family bailed him out of juvenile detention and took him to his uncle’s home Thursday night. Bail had been set at $50,000. The boy will remain under house arrest and must check in daily with the county juvenile department.
Wolf backtracks near Oregon border
MEDFORD, Ore. – The lonesome and long-traveling celebrity wolf made famous for a trek of hundreds of miles is back within 10 miles of the Oregon border.
California Department of Fish and Game spokesman Mark Stopher said the department is tracking signals from the wolf’s GPS collar. OR-7 remains in California’s Siskiyou County.
He spent about one month in California’s eastern Lassen County near the Nevada border after zig-zagging across Southern Oregon’s Cascade crest.
The wolf was born in northeastern Oregon but left his pack to seek out a mate and a new territory in September.
He crossed into California at the end of December, becoming the first wolf in that state in more than 80 years.
More arrested in trooper’s death
PORT ORCHARD and LAKEWOOD, Wash. – Five people were arrested Friday on charges of rendering assistance to Joshua Blake, the man who gunned down a Washington State Patrol trooper Thursday, including an 18-year-old woman who police say was in Blake’s truck at the time of the shooting.
Police said Blake, 28, killed trooper Tony Radulescu during a traffic stop Thursday morning before taking his own life several hours later.
Early Friday, Kitsap County sheriff’s deputies arrested Jessi Foster, 32, Blake’s ex-girlfriend, on a charge of rendering assistance to him after the shooting. She is being held on bail of $500,000.
Then, late Friday night, the county Sheriff’s Office announced deputies had arrested four more people on charges of rendering criminal assistance to Blake, including an 18-year-old south Kitsap woman who it said was in Blake’s truck when he shot and killed Radulescu. She was being held in the Kitsap County Jail on bail of $500,000.
The others arrested were two men and a woman from south Kitsap, all on rendering criminal assistance charges. All were being held on $500,000 bail.
All four will be arraigned on Monday afternoon, the office said.
Crucial evidence not missing after all
PORTLAND – An Oregon State Police investigation has found that evidence from a 1990s triple-murder case was in a state Department of Justice hallway for years, even as the attorney general was recommending dismissing the case.
A jury found Phillip Cannon guilty of the 1998 murders of three people near Salem.
In 2009, the state approved a new trial after Cannon claimed that the technique used to analyze bullets at the murder scene was discredited.
When authorities attempted to retrieve the ballistics evidence in 2009, it was missing.
Susan Gerber, who was then assistant attorney general, said she never received any evidence, an assertion challenged by Cannon’s appellate lawyer and a note in Gerber’s handwriting from 2005 listing contents of evidence boxes, the Oregonian reported.