Local News

WARRENTON, Ore. (AP) — A Longview woman was arrested in Warrenton, Ore., after mistakenly texting an off-duty police officer to see if he wanted to buy some drugs.

Officer Ray Ayers wasn’t sure at first if the text was a joke or a mistake, but he played along. After a series of back-and-forth messages, Ayers met 48-year-old Diana Cochran at a Warrenton grocery store. After confirming she had been texting the officer, police say she agreed to a search and they found methamphetamine, marijuana and prescription drugs in her possession.

Cochran was arrested and charged Friday with attempting to deliver those drugs and was booked into the Clatsop County Jail.

The Associated Press

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. – Oregon State Police say they found 13 pounds of marijuana in the trunk of a car driven by a Washington state man near Klamath Falls.

The driver, Samuel Alcalan of Yakima, was cited and released. One of his passengers, Mario Serrano-Lopez, of Wapato, was booked in the Klamath County Jail. Each faces one charge of unlawful possession and distribution of a controlled substance.

State police say a female passenger was released without being arrested or cited.

The three were stopped on Highway 97 near the north side of Klamath Falls on a traffic violation.

A Bothell woman, Chun Ho Bahn, 63, was one of two people identified Thursday as one of the nine people who died in last weekend’s bus crash in Oregon.

According to the Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office, she was traveling with her husband, Youn Bahn, 66, who is being treated at St. Anthony Hospital in Pendleton, Ore.

The other victim identified Thursday is Ae Ja Kim, 61, of Gangwon Province, Korea. Her husband, Man Sun Kim, age 71, is being treated at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland.

The medical examiner’s office said Thursday it has identified all nine of the passengers who died in the crash.  The identities of seven have been released, and the names of the remaining two will be released once it is clear that relatives have been notified, officials said. There were 38 people injured in the crash.

Those who died in the crash and whose names already have been officially released are :

Dale William Osborn, 57, of Spanaway,

Yong Ho Lee, 75, of Lynnwood,

Youmin Kim, 11, South Korea

Oun Hong Jung, 67, and his wife, Joong Wha Kim, 63, South Korea, who may have been staying with relatives in the Bothell area.

Meanwhile, friends of a Seattle Pacific University student, Richard Sohn, 19, say his death has been reported by news agencies in Korea, but he is not among the victims whose names have been released to date.

Two more victims of Sunday’s fatal bus plunge in Eastern Oregon were identified today by the Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office – and they are believed to have ties to the Seattle area.

The names released Wednesday were Oun Hong Jung, 67, and his wife, Joong Wha Kim, 63. The couple are from Korea and were reportedly staying with relatives in Bothell, police said.

Nine people were killed and another 38 were injured in the crash.  Six of the passengers who died have yet to be officially identified.

There are other Seattle-area connections to the bus crash.

The only other victim officially identified is Dale William Osborn, 57, of Spanaway. Also killed was Yong Ho Lee, 75, of Lynnwood, according to her son. Friends and the college roommate of another bus passenger, Richard Sohn, 19, fear Sohn was among those killed.

This post was updated at 7:05 p.m.  Death toll stands at nine.

The Associated Press

PENDLETON, Ore. (AP)– A tour bus careened through a guardrail along an icy Oregon highway and several hundred feet down a steep embankment Sunday, killing nine people and injuring more than 20 others, authorities said.

 The charter bus carrying about 40 people lost control around 10:30 a.m. on the snow- and ice-covered lanes of Interstate 84, according to the Oregon State Police.

 The bus came to rest at the bottom of a snowy slope. More than a dozen rescue workers descended the hill and used ropes to help retrieve people from the wreckage in freezing weather. The bus driver was among the survivors, but had not yet spoken to police because of the severity of the injuries the driver had suffered.

 Lt. Greg Hastings said the bus crashed along the west end of the Blue Mountains, and west of an area called Deadman Pass. Stretches of highway in the rural and agricultural area of east Oregon tend to be icy in winter months.

 The bus slid down the hill and landed upright, with little or no debris visible around the crash site.

 St. Anthony Hospital in Pendleton treated 26 people from the accident, including some who were treated and then transported to other medical facilities, said hospital spokesman Larry Blanc.

 In addition to the people who were transferred from St. Anthony to La Grand and Hermiston, Ore., and Walla Walla, Wash., Hastings said. Others were taken directly to hospitals further away, including Boise, Idaho, and Portland, Ore.

 I-84 is a major east-west highway through Oregon that follows the Columbia River Gorge.

 Umatilla County Emergency Manager Jack Remillard said the bus was owned by Mi Joo travel in Vancouver, B.C., and state police said the bus was en route from Las Vegas to Vancouver.

 A woman who answered the phone at a listing for the company confirmed with The Associated Press that it owned the bus and said it was on a tour of the Western U.S. She declined to give her name.

 A bus safety website run by the U.S. Department of Transportation said Mi Joo Tour & Travel has six buses, none of which have been involved in any accidents in at least the past two years.

 The bus crash was the second fatal accident in Oregon on Sunday morning. A 69-year-old man died in a rollover accident.

 A spokesman for the American Bus Association said buses carry more than 700 million passengers a year in the United States.

 “The industry as a whole is a very safe industry,” said Dan Ronan of the Washington, D.C.,-based group. “There are only a handful of accidents every year. Comparatively speaking, we’re the safest form of surface transportation.”

Oregon authorities are investigating how a farmer was eaten by his hogs.

The Coos County district attorney’s office says 70-year-old Terry Vance Garner never returned after he set out to feed his animals Wednesday on his farm near the Oregon coast.

A family member later found Garner’s dentures and pieces of his body in the hog enclosure, but most of his remains had been consumed.

The district attorney’s office said in a statement Monday that it’s possible Garner had a medical emergency, such as a heart attack, or was knocked over by the animals before he was killed. But criminal activity has not been ruled out.

Authorities estimate the hogs weigh 700 pounds. The DA’s office says one hog had either bitten or been aggressive with Garner previously.

The Associated Press

Paul Gaylord in a Portland hospital nearly died but is now recovering from a rare case of the plague. He expects to lose fingers and probably toes because of  gangrene. (Gaylord family photo / AP)

A closeup of Paul Gaylord’s blackened hand.

The Associated Press

 PORTLAND — One look at Paul Gaylord’s hands shows why the plague is referred to as “Black Death.”

The welder’s once-strong hands have been withered by the cell-killing infection and darkened to the color of charcoal.

“I don’t think I can do my job,” Gaylord said in a phone interview from a Bend, Ore., hospital. “I’m going to lose all my fingers on both hands. I don’t know about my thumbs. The toes — I might lose all them, too.”

Gaylord, 59, contracted a rare case of the plague trying to take a mouse from the jaws of a choking cat at his home in Prineville, in rural Oregon.

He faces a difficult recovery now that he’s out of intensive care. His family is trying to raise money to get him into a new house, because the manufactured home he was living in has a leaky roof, a moldy bathroom and mice — dangerous living conditions for a man with a weakened immune system.

The bacterium that causes the plague is carried by fleas, which can infect people and animals. The disease that killed millions in the Middle Ages is extremely rare in current times — an average of seven cases occur in the U.S. each year.

Gaylord’s illness began after he saw a stray cat — who he’d named Charlie — with a dead mouse jammed in the back of his throat. The cat appeared to be choking, so Gaylord and a friend attempted to dislodge the mouse.

The distressed cat bit his hand. Unable to remove the mouse, Gaylord shot Charlie to end his suffering and buried him in the yard.

Two days later, he awoke with a fever and chills.

An Army veteran who rarely visits a doctor, Gaylord felt sick enough to go to the Veterans Administration outpatient clinic in nearby Bend. But the clinic had so many patients that doctors couldn’t see him for more than a week.

The next day, Gaylord, who doesn’t have private health insurance, went to an urgent care clinic. The doctor diagnosed cat scratch fever, provided him with medicine and told him to return if his condition worsened.

He was back a few days later. Diana Gaylord said her brother dripped with sweat and his lymph nodes swelled.

“He had a lump under his arm swollen almost as big as a lemon,” she said.

A doctor at the urgent care clinic sent him in an ambulance to St. Charles Medical Center in Redmond, Ore. There, a doctor diagnosed the plague, and Gaylord was taken to a larger hospital in Bend.

Gaylord spent nearly a month on life support. At one point, doctors thought he was going to die, said Debbie Gaylord, his wife.

Gaylord’s case is Oregon’s fifth since 1995. None has been fatal.

The cat’s body was dug up, and tests confirmed it had the plague. Other cats and dogs in the area were tested and none had the disease, said Karen Yeargain of the Crook County Health Department.

Debbie Gaylord said she and her husband have never been churchgoing types, but that might change when he comes home.

“We do our praying the way we do it. But now, I don’t know. We might have to rethink the church,” she said.

This photo from 2008 shows Kent Couch lifting off from a gas station in Bend, Ore., in a lawn chair rigged with giant party balloons for a flight that ended 235 miles away in an Idaho farm field. (Jeff Barnard / AP, 2008)

This photo from 2008 shows Kent Couch riding a lawn chair tied to giant party balloons in Bend, Ore. Couch flew again today, this time in a tandem rig with Fareed Lafta. (Photo by Jeff Barnard / AP, 2008)

An Oregon man and an Iraqi adventurer have taken to the sky in a pair of lawn chairs suspended from helium-filled party balloons.

Cheered by several hundred supporters, Kent Couch and Fareed Lafta lifted off Saturday morning from a Shell gas station in Bend, Ore., The Associated Press reported.

Earlier, volunteers filled 350 5-foot-diameter balloons with helium and tied them to Couch’s homemade tandem lawn chair rig.

The two men hope to fly through the night across Idaho and touch down Sunday morning somewhere in southwestern Montana. But winds were carrying them in a southeastern direction shortly after the 10:20 a.m. takeoff.

The flight is a warm-up for plans to fly a tandem lawn chair balloon rig in Baghdad sometime in the future, according to the AP report.

Gabriel Pigotti was driving this 1994 Ferrari when it collided with a Ford Edge. (Oregon State Police)

A 33-year-old Seattle man died Thursday morning in Oregon when his 1994 Ferrari 348 coupe collided with a 2011 Ford Edge.

In a news release, Oregon State Police say Gabriel Pigotti was approaching an intersection when his vehicle collided with the Ford, which was making a left turn. He was extricated from the Ferrari by fire personnel and taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead two hours later.

The driver of the Ford, Peter MacNab, 90, of Wasco, was taken to a hospital with minor injuries, OSP said. Both drivers were wearing safety restraints.

Investigation into the crash is ongoing. Witnesses told investigators that speed may have been a factor.