County to pay $1 million in slaying

Published 9:11 pm Friday, October 3, 2008

STANWOOD — Snohomish County earlier this week agreed to pay more than $1 million to the parents of a Stanwood High School student who was shot to death by her ex-boyfriend in 2004.

Dayna Fure’s parents filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging police failed to protect Fure, 18, from Mario Valentin, despite numerous warnings that he was a danger to their daughter.

Valentin, 23, of Seattle, snuck into Fure’s bedroom May 24, 2004, shot her and then turned the gun on himself. Prior to her death, Fure had obtained a protection order against Valentin. She asked for the order after Valentin engaged in an armed standoff with Stanwood police and Snohomish County sheriff’s deputies.

He came to Fure’s work, sat in her car, held a gun to his head and threatened to shoot himself. He also threatened Fure after the standoff, according to court documents.

The settlement was reached Monday, three weeks before the case was scheduled to go to trial in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

The details are still being worked out, Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Michael Held said.

The lawsuit claimed that Stanwood police — who actually are sheriff’s deputies — downplayed the risk to Fure, who had broken off the two-year relationship a couple of months earlier. Officers failed to arrest Valentin even though they were aware that he stalked and threatened Fure and possessed a gun, according to court documents.

The lawsuit also alleged police followed a policy that diminished the importance of domestic violence against women. Stanwood police officers didn’t have the proper training or supervision to adequately address domestic violence crimes, according to the lawsuit.

Snohomish County was named in the lawsuit along with the city of Stanwood and three police officers. Stanwood contracts for police services with the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office. Tom Davis, now undersheriff, was Stanwood police chief at the time of the murder.

Court documents show that the sheriff’s office in 2000 created two detective positions specifically to handle domestic violence cases. Three years earlier, a felony domestic violence unit was created in the Snohomish County Prosecutor’s Office.

Deputy prosecutors with the unit, along with domestic violence advocates put on training seminars for deputies in 1997.

The training for deputies was outdated and didn’t include deputies working in Stanwood, said Seattle attorney Andrea Brenneke, who represents Fure’s parents. The office also lacked any written policies and procedures about domestic violence enforcement, she said.

Rick Bart, then sheriff, was questioned as part of the lawsuit, and said the office had a policy in place that required deputies to follow the Domestic Violence Protection Act. But, he said, the policy should have been more up to date.

“I think that’s where we fell down,” Bart said. “There are things we should have had in there.”

While there may not have been a specific written domestic violence policy, that doesn’t mean domestic violence laws went unenforced or victims unprotected, Held said.

He and Brenneke declined to discuss the exact amount the county has agreed to pay or any additional details about the settlement. Those details, they said, haven’t been finalized.

The county has agreed to increase domestic violence training for deputies as part of the settlement.

Fure’s parents plan to direct some of the money to domestic violence causes, Brenneke said.

“They want to prevent what happened to Dayna from happening to anyone else,” she said.

Reporter Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463 or hefley@heraldnet.com.