Tag: washington

The baffling disappearance of the anthropologist Sam Dubal on Mt. Rainier

Dr. Sam Dubal, 33, left for Mt. Rainier National Park on Friday, October 9, 2020, for a solo hike and was supposed to return the next day. He was spotted that day on the Mother Mountain Loop trail near Lake Mowich in the Park. Sam was reported missing on October 12 after he didn’t return home.

He was well equipped for the overnight hike, with a tent, a sleeping bag, snow gear, rain gear, a cellphone, and a charger. Sam was also an experienced hiker under challenging conditions. After an extensive search, Sam was unable to be located.

Mt. Rainier is considered one of North America’s most dangerous mountains due to its high chance of volcanic eruption. Still, it has also had a heavy toll of hiking deaths, with many visitors dying on its icy slopes because of accidents, misadventures, foul play or reasons unknown.

As of November 2023, the only clue has been a water bottle found in October near the Loop trail. No other sign of Sam has been located despite many searches in the park. The nature of this disappearance is very puzzling, as he was experienced, and the Mother Mountain trail is not difficult nor dangerous.

Keep reading

Police hunt for Washington couple who vanished in ‘suspicious’ circumstances after wife’s co-workers raise alarm when she didn’t show for work

Fears are growing for a popular chiropractor and her husband who disappeared suddenly from their Washington home at the weekend and have not been seen since.

Police arrived to carry out a welfare check at the Lacey home of Karen Koep and her husband Davido when she failed to turn up for work in the center of town on Monday.

The couple, who have two adult children, were not there, but their silver 2015 Toyota Yaris was found abandoned five miles away later that day at the Chehalis Western Trailhead in East Olympia, a popular starting point for hikers.

‘Deputies responded to the residence located in Lake Forest Development and found that the husband and wife were missing and the circumstance surrounding their disappearance is suspicious,’ said Thurston County Sheriff’s Office in a statement on Tuesday.

‘The couple’s vehicle was missing from the residence and was later located by law enforcement near 67th Avenue SE and Ranier Road SE.’

‘To ensure the integrity of the investigation we have not released many details.’

Local TV channel KING 5 Seattle reported that police initially arrested a suspect near the O’Reilly Autoparts store in the north-east of the city but he was later released without charge.

Davido is landlord to several properties in the area and police have been interrogating his tenants for clues to his disappearance.

Keep reading

WA Judge Rules That Car Manufacturers Can Legally Store Your Texts and Phone Calls Without Explicit Permission

In a move concerning privacy advocates, a federal judge last week ruled against reinstating a collective lawsuit accusing four auto manufacturing giants of contravening privacy protections in Washington state. The companies were alleged to have illicitly intercepted and documented private text messages and call records of customers using their car’s inbuilt infotainment systems.

The judge based in Seattle concluded that this activity did not constitute unauthorized privacy infringements according to state regulations.

The court’s decision favors the automakers Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen, and General Motors, who find themselves as defendants in five parallel collective lawsuits revolving around this issue. A similar case against Ford had been earlier dismissed following an appeal.

The complainants from the existing four lawsuits had sought legal redress following a previous dismissal by another judge. In their judgment given Tuesday, the appellate judge asserted that the clandestine capture and logging of mobile phone usage did not violate the provisions of the Washington Privacy Act. According to the act, to be a vulnerable plaintiff, one must demonstrate a threat to “his or her business, his or her person, or his or her reputation.”

To highlight the matters in question, the plaintiffs in one of the five lawsuits launched a legal challenge against Honda in 2021, contending that starting at least in 2014, infotainment systems in Honda’s vehicles have been storing duplicates of all text messages from smartphones once they were connected to the system.

Keep reading

Washington State Prison System Sued for Using Unreliable Drug Tests To Put Inmates in Solitary

Another state prison system is facing a lawsuit over its use of inaccurate drug field tests to throw incarcerated people in solitary confinement.

The class-action lawsuit, filed last Friday by Columbia Legal Services in a Washington state circuit court, alleges that the Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC) uses unreliable field kits to test mail for drugs and then uses the unverified results to put inmates in solitary confinement, move them to higher security prisons, and strip them of visitation rights and other privileges. This violates inmates’ due process rights and protections against cruel punishment under the state constitution, the suit argues.

“DOC continues to use these tests even though, upon information and belief, items that have tested ‘presumptive positive’ include blank notebook paper and manila envelopes purchased directly from DOC’s commissary or from DOC-approved vendors,” the suit says.

According to the lawsuit, one of the plaintiffs spent four months in solitary confinement after greeting cards shipped directly to him from a card company tested positive for drugs. The results were later invalidated by a lab. Another plaintiff, Gregory Hyde, was kept in solitary confinement—meaning he was in a cell for 23 hours a day—for nearly five months because some books of crossword and sudoku puzzles that his father mailed him tested positive for synthetic marijuana, also known as “spice,” a popular drug in prisons.

“I think DOC is using its power to punish people who can’t fight back,” Hyde said in a press release. “My elderly father just wanted to send me some puzzle books. Now they’re saying he’s a drug dealer. Now my father is too far away to see because I got transferred to a different facility. My father is impoverished and on a fixed income. I think it’s an abuse of power.”

Keep reading

The Baffling Disappearance Of Joe Pichler, The Child Actor Who Has Been Missing Since 2006

As a child, Joe Pichler starred in films like Varsity Blues and two installments of the Beethoven franchise about a beloved but mischievous Saint Bernard. But as an adult, he became the center of a baffling disappearance case, one that has frustrated authorities for almost two decades.

Pichler, who’d returned to his hometown of Bremerton, Washington, to finish high school, disappeared without a trace in 2006. According to his family, the promising young actor had plans to return to Los Angeles and revive his acting career.

Instead, he simply vanished. But though police suspected at the time that Joe Pichler had died by suicide, his family believes that foul play may have been involved.

Keep reading

Homeless Program in Washington State Has Burned Through $143 Million to House Less Than 1,000 People

Washington State has been trying to deal with their homeless problem, but they haven’t had much success.

A program designed to close down tent communities and get homeless people into housing has already spent $143 million dollars to house less than a thousand people. That’s a horrible ratio.

And now they want more cash, because they think this program has been so effective.

FOX News reports:

Blue state’s $143 million homeless program got less than a thousand people housed. Now governor wants more

An initiative to remove homeless camps from roadways needs more money to continue next year, according to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, after burning through $143 million in a little over a year.

“You can’t do this with zero dollars,” Inslee, a Democrat, told KOMO News. “We’ll need the legislature in January to step up to increase funding so we can continue the progress we’re making.”

Inslee’s statewide Rights-of-Way Safety Initiative began in June 2022 with the goal of removing homeless camps from state property near roads and offering housing to the people living in the camps.

On Friday, Inslee toured a tiny home village in Olympia funded by the initiative that will soon provide shelter to 50 people who previously lived in an encampment along I-5, KOMO reported. The governor said during the tour that the safety initiative is out of money and, come January, camps will remain on state lands if the legislature does not allocate more funds.

“We’re very proud of the work state agencies have done in our right of way initiative working alongside local officials and service providers,” a spokesperson for the governor told Fox News in an email. “We will take as much funding as we can get to continue this work.”

Keep reading

Washington Launches Online Portal To Reimburse People Criminalized By Unconstitutional Marijuana/Drug Convictions

Washington State has officially launched an online portal that people can use to request reimbursement of their legal fees if they were prosecuted under drug criminalization laws that the state Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional in 2021.

The state Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) launched the Blake Refund Bureau website on Saturday to facilitate the relief in coordination with courts, county clerks, public defenders, prosecutors, advocates and other stakeholders.

“If you have a Blake-impacted criminal record, you must first have your Blake-related convictions vacated and refund eligibility determined by the court or courts where your convictions were issued,” AOC said. “Once your convictions have been vacated, you can apply for reimbursements on your paid Blake-related [legal financial obligations].”

The novel reimbursement fund is being created following the state Supreme Court’s landmark 2021 ruling in Washington v. Blake that found the state’s criminal code for drug possession crimes was unconstitutionally flawed because it didn’t take require proof that a person “knowingly” committed the offense—creating a situation where people could be criminalized for inadvertent possession.

The ruling effectively nullified the state’s drug possession criminalization law, though the governor has since signed a bill passed by the legislature that reinstates prohibition, with statutory language fixes to pass constitutional muster and lower penalties for possession compared to the previous law.

Keep reading

Teacher instructs 10-year-old to ‘make sure this email is deleted’ after private communications about student’s gender identity in Olympia, Washington

A teacher in the Olympia School District was privately communicating with a 10-year-old student about her gender identity, and even invited the girl to her house and suggested she set up a private email account and delete messages, “…otherwise when your mom looks, you will be outed instantly.”

Alesha Perkins, who has put a spotlight on the policies of the Washington school district obtained thousands of emails and documents as part of a public disclosure request and turned them over to the unDivided podcast.

According to host Brandi Kruse, the emails from the summer to the fall of 2022, is between Jennifer Knight, a teacher at Centennial Elementary School, and one of her 5th-grade students.

In an email to school staff on April 28, Knight said that the student, a biological girl, would now be using he/him/they/them pronouns.

“Crew Knight,” the teacher wrote referring to the class, “has a student who has recently changed their name and pronouns in school and this email is to inform you of that change because you work with this child in some capacity.” 

The student “…has opened up to me these past few months and has just requested this change. Please understand that this change is his right and is not to be questioned. Please also know that they are not going by this change at home, and we will not be discussing this with his family.”

The district’s policies allow for teachers and staff to conceal gender identity and other related issues from a student’s parents, similar to the state policy which reads, “…in general, school staff should not share a student’s transgender or gender-diverse status, legal name, or sex assigned at birth with others, who could include other students, school staff, and non-school staff.”

Keep reading

I SPENT OVER A YEAR IN SOLITARY BECAUSE OF ONE MAN’S IMAGINATION

I spent much of 2009 in One North, a solitary confinement wing at the Washington State Penitentiary, in Walla Walla, Washington. We were on a 23-and-one schedule: Once each day my cell door would roll open, controlled remotely. I would step out alone, given an hour to pace the empty tier or use a pay phone. Back in my cell, I’d be confronted by more emptiness. A steel sink and toilet, a bunk, a battered paperback, and my own thoughts for company.

What you notice first about One North depends on what time of day you enter the unit. Earlier in the day, it’s the smell—an overpowering mélange of feces, urine, pepper spray, and industrial-grade cleaning solution. The smell is so pungent it seems to have weight to it, like a physical substance. The air seems to pool in your lungs, weighing them down.

Should you arrive later in the day, from midmorning on, the noise is loud enough to disorient you. The stench hits you only after your mind recovers from the clamor. The sound of screaming and clanging bars being rattled by a hundred prisoners at once. People jumping up and down on metal bunks, mule-kicking the steel sinks and toilets. Guards shouting over the PA system. Prisoners shouting at the guards and each other. The entire cacophony plays through rattling, off-key acoustics. It feels like living inside an amplifier with a hole kicked in it, cranked up to full volume.

It took only a few days in this environment for my entire psychology to shift. My mind wandered. I was restless, getting up from my bunk and going to the window in the cell door to stare out at nothing, walking back and forth for hours with no clear thoughts. My mood was darkening. All around me, based on the things they would say or scream or, more disturbingly, their deepening silence, other prisoners were obviously undergoing the same process.

As outrageous as these conditions were, the prison administration’s justification for keeping me in solitary was worse, revealing an obscenely arbitrary process through which officials wield this inhumane punishment against people in their custody. Two prisoners who violate the same facility rule—or no rule at all—can spend radically unequal periods of time in the hole. As I would find out, everything depends on the whims of whichever administrator is randomly assigned to your case.

Keep reading

Washington Judge Orders Women-Only Spa with Compulsory Nudity to Accept Trans Women with Hanging Penises

A district judge in Washington state has ruled that Olympus Spa, a women-only spa where nudity is compulsory, must allow pre-op transgender women with penises to utilize their facilities.

This ruling comes after the spa sued the Washington State Human Rights Commission (WSHRC) when they were previously ordered to change its ‘discriminatory rules’ which is ‘biological women only’ policy.

Haven Wilvich, a biological male, complained when his membership application was declined by the Korean-style spa. He was allegedly told that “transgender women without surgery are not welcome.”

The spa’s response prompted Wilvich to file a complaint with the WSHRC in May 2020.

According to the Daily Mail, the Pacific Northwest state of Washington is one of several Democrat-led regions where transgender individuals are allowed to use facilities that correspond with their identified gender, regardless of their physical status.

Keep reading