Northwest Briefly
Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, January 4, 2006
MONTESANO – State Department of Transportation officials aren’t sure when Highway 107 between Montesano and Cosmopolis will reopen. A 300-foot section of road buckled and shifted 25 feet after heavy rains last week.
Problems from a slide on U.S. 101 10 miles south of Cosmopolis also are growing. The road remains open, but officials are concerned it may have to be closed because the slide continues to move despite daily repairs, said Tom Gibbs, a department maintenance and operations superintendent.
The steep terrain near the slide on Highway 107 means no detour around the damaged area is available, forcing motorists to go the long way through Cosmopolis and Aberdeen on U.S. 101.
Gibbs said engineers are planning to bring in a drill to collect soil samples to determine how “deep and big the slide is,” but repairs will have to wait until the samples can be analyzed.
The Daily World
Tacoma: A beating, gunplay, pot, prostitutes
An unpaid bill for $22,000 worth of sex acts apparently led to a confrontation Monday that injured a Wollochet Bay-area man and left one of his suspected attackers hospitalized with a gunshot wound.
Pierce County prosecutors on Tuesday charged two men with assault and burglary for going to Terry Riggs’ home and beating him because he hadn’t paid his escort service bill, court documents say.
Prosecutors said Riggs, 57, was acting in self-defense when he shot one of the intruders, but he likely will face a felony charge for a marijuana-growing operation sheriff’s deputies say they found in his home.
Shawn Becklund, 33, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to first-degree burglary, second-degree assault and unlawful possession of a firearm. He is being held in the Pierce County Jail on $40,000 bond. John Oleary, 26, is in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound to his abdomen.
Riggs told detectives he had been paying a woman for sex for more than a year. He said the woman came to his house on New Year’s Eve and gave him a $22,000 bill for services rendered. He refused to pay and called the woman’s mother.
Riggs told deputies that sometime after 8 a.m. Monday, he heard a knock on his door and saw two men in ski masks, one with a handgun. He said he grabbed his own gun and fired a shot after the door was forced open. Riggs said he was pushed to the ground and beaten, court documents say.
“Something is ridiculous about the whole thing,” Sorensen said. “There’s something obviously unusual about the dollar amount that we’re talking about here. It is hard to believe that someone in that line of work would be willing to extend that kind of credit.”
The News Tribune
Stolen wheelchair found; suspect held
Police have recovered a Pierce County woman’s power wheelchair after it was stolen as she looked on last week, and they arrested a 29-year-old man in connection with the crime, Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said Tuesday.
Troyer said Lakewood police recovered the $3,000 wheelchair Saturday from a woman who had bought it from a man for $50 earlier that day. She called police after she learned that such a wheelchair had been stolen near Puyallup.
Diane Daugert, 55, was riding her Jet 7 wheelchair near her Puyallup home Dec. 26 when the battery died. When Daugert, who has cerebral palsy, left the wheelchair to get help, a white SUV with a ski rack pulled up. Two men got out, loaded the wheelchair and sped off, laughing and waving at her.
Troyer said tips from the Tacoma-Pierce County Crime Stoppers hotline led deputies to the 29-year-old man, who was booked into the Pierce County Jail on suspicion of first-degree possession of stolen property.
Daugert accepted a new wheelchair from Scooters America, said Jim Johnston, her roommate. She hopes her old chair can be refurbished and given to someone else.
The News Tribune
Kent: Suspect in string of robberies arrested
A man suspected of a string of bank robberies in south King County was arrested Tuesday morning after he and a getaway driver made the mistake of driving by the Kent bank branch he is believed to have robbed 45 minutes earlier.
Members of an FBI task force alerted to the robbery were searching for the suspects’ vehicle, described by witnesses as a green Mazda pickup truck with a brown stripe.
“And, by lucky coincidence, here comes a green Mazda pickup with a brown stripe,” said Robbie Burroughs, an FBI spokeswoman.
The detectives pursued the pickup to a school parking lot, where the passenger jumped out and fled on foot.
He was captured, but the man in the pickup drove away. Kent officers arrested the pickup driver at his home a short time later.
The 41-year-old passenger is a suspect in seven bank robberies in the Kent, Renton and Auburn areas since mid-November.
King County Journal
Lakewood: State’s first black woman mayor
Claudia Thomas, who is believed to be the first black female mayor in Washington’s history, will lead Pierce County’s second-largest city for the next two years.
The Lakewood City Council on Tuesday voted 4-3 to make Thomas mayor. She was chosen over former mayor Doug Richardson.
Thomas, 74, said she wants to put the “unity back in community.”
“We’re going to work together and have a more cohesive city,” she said.
According to 2000 Census figures, the city has 7,132 black residents, about 12 percent of the population.
The News Tribune
East Wenatchee: SUV driver pinned in crash
A U.S. Forest Service seasonal firefighter died Friday after he lost control of his sport utility vehicle on a snowy road, authorities said.
Nicholas O. Dreis, 26, of East Wenatchee lost control of his 1990 Toyota 4Runner, which rolled over a number of times and pinned him late Friday night in the Blue Grade area, a popular off-road site about five miles north of his hometown, said Cam Phillips, a Douglas County Fire District 2 firefighter.
Dreis, who had been driving down a slope in snow 8 to 12 inches deep, was pronounced dead by paramedics shortly after midnight.
A passenger, Matthew Hatmaker, 29, of Wenatchee was treated for injuries at Central Washington Hospital in Wenatchee and released, Douglas County sheriff’s Sgt. Harvey Gjesdal said.
Associated Press
Pasco: Man pleads innocent in check case
A Pasco man accused of using a phony check to buy a $40,000 sports sedan pleaded innocent Tuesday in Franklin County Superior Court to one count of first-degree theft.
When confronted about the check, Stephen Matthew Griffitt, 34, allegedly returned the car to Tri-Cities Motor Sales with 1,759 miles on the odometer. The 2006 Mitsubishi Lancer had only 13 miles on it when he drove it off the lot Dec. 9, according to court documents.
Pasco police were called to the dealership Dec. 23. The bank from which the check was issued confirmed that it was a fake, with a nonexistent account number, court documents said.
Griffitt is being held in the Franklin County jail on $10,000 bail.
Tri-City Herald
