Washington | featured news

Speaking directly into the camera, Seattle Assistant Police Chief Deanna Nollette assures an unidentified killer that homicide detectives have a pretty good idea of what happened the night Jonathan Pecina was stabbed in the neck and appealed to the perpetrator to come forward.
“This case will never go away. We have your DNA. It is in your best interest to contact us immediately,” Nollette, who heads the Seattle Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Bureau, says near the end of a three-minute video posted on the department’s online blotter this week.

SPOKANE — In the dozen years Joshua McPhee has worked for the Federal Aviation Administration, he and his wife, Aimie, have weathered a few government shutdowns.
The extended nature of this one concerns the north Spokane couple.
Joshua McPhee still reports to his federal air traffic controller job at the Spokane International Airport, but he isn’t getting a paycheck.
Nothing on the national news makes the couple hopeful. Instead of movement toward passage of a federal budget, they see a stalemate, with politicians from both sides digging in.

STEVENSON — William Haynes, one of roughly a dozen individuals implicated in 2017’s massive poaching investigation in Washington and Oregon, pleaded guilty Thursday morning to 15 charges related to illegally hunting big game with dogs and leaving the corpses to rot.
Haynes, a Longview resident, will be sentenced on Feb. 28, but his plea in Skamania County Superior Court leaves only one major defendant in the Washington portion of the massive, high-profile case.

An early morning fire damaged a third floor balcony of a Vancouver apartment Friday but did not extend into the building, according to the Vancouver Fire Department.
The fire was reported at 5:02 a.m. at the Springfield Meadows Apartments, 4317 N.E. 66th Ave., according to Capt. Raymond Egan. He said firefighters arrived within four minutes and found a small fire on a third floor balcony.
Egan said the fire was extinguished before it could spread into the building. No residents were displaced, he said.

Donald Trump wants to build his useless border wall so that it also can be seen from space, as a rival to the Great Wall of China. It is a testament to his large ego. When he dies, he probably will request that his remains will be entombed in the cornerstone, with a giant flashing neon “Trump” billboard over it.

I wanted to write regarding a problem with the Vancouver Lake. It is a lake that all the locals love to picnic, float on tubes, paddle board, kayak, watch rowers, participate in dragon boat races or just swim. It’s a treasure in Vancouver. But the past few years, a milfoil infestation has been slowly suffocating it. We need to bring awareness and spread the word to inform residents that this gem could possibly not be usable for our community if we don’t help it.

The Salvation Army in Vancouver is lending a hand to federal workers impacted by the government shutdown.
“We assist anyone in need of the basics: food, clothing, rent and utility assistance,” Major Michael Nute, officer in charge at the faith-based nonprofit, said in a news release. Those who live paycheck to paycheck are “most vulnerable when income is frozen or stopped,” the statement continued.