Family harassed in Forks after being accused of being Antifa

Published 6:59 am Friday, June 5, 2020

FORKS —A multi-racial family of four from Spokane was accused of being members of Antifa, followed and prevented from leaving their campsite by trees felled to block the road, Clallam County Sheriff’s deputies said.

Four high school students cut the trees with chainsaws to allow the family to leave, said Sgt. Ed Anderson in a press release issued late Thursday.

The Clallam County Sheriff’s Office is actively conducting a criminal investigation into the incident and is seeking information regarding those involved, Anderson said.

Names of the campers or the high school students were not available Thursday.

Deputies were dispatched at about 6:39 p.m. Wednesday to the Sitkum Sol Duc Road, which is known locally as the A Road, in Forks following a request for assistance from four stranded campers, Anderson said.

The campers were stranded after someone had felled alder trees across the roadway, preventing their exit from the area, he said.

The family — a husband and wife, their 16-year-old daughter and the husband’s mother — were driving a full-size school bus and had prepared to camp off a logging road spur on the A Road about 5 miles east of U.S. Highway 101, Anderson said.

The family had shopped for camping supplies at Forks Outfitters and were confronted “by seven or eight carloads of people in the grocery store parking lot,” Anderson said they reported to deputies.

“The people in the parking lot repeatedly asked them if they were Antifa protesters. The family told the people they weren’t associated with any such group and were just camping,” the press release said.

“The family had to drive their bus around vehicles in the parking lot in order to get back onto Highway 101.”

The family told deputies that at least four vehicles followed them as they drove northbound out of Forks. They said that two of the vehicles had people in them carrying what appeared to be semi-automatic rifles.

They drove their bus up the A Road and onto a logging spur road, where they pitched a tent to camp for the night, they told deputies, but then heard gunshots in the distance and power saws down the road from where they were camping. They packed their camp to leave.

They found that someone had cut down trees across the spur road.

They were trapped.

Four Forks High School students contacted deputies as they drove up the A Road toward the campers, Anderson said.

“The students used their chainsaw to clear the roadway for the family,” he said in the release.

Deputies escorted the family to the Forks sheriff’s detachment for interviews. Soon after they left, their bus broke down and deputies helped them get their bus running again so they could travel, Anderson said.

Law enforcement officers from the Sheriff’s Office, La Push Police and Quinault Fish and Wildlife responded to help the stranded campers.

To provide information, call the sheriff’s office at 360-417-2259.

This story originally appeared in the Peninsula Daily News, a sister publication to The Herald.