News

Three babies overdosed — one fatally — on fentanyl left unsecured inside three Everett homes in less than one week, the city's Fire and Police departments said Thursday.

Everett police did not release detailed information about the overdoses — including whether any parents have been arrested or charged with a crime — because of active investigations. Investigators don't believe the overdoses are connected, the Everett Police Department said in a statement.

The three incidents, as reported by police:

• Shortly before 8 a.m. Saturday, April 20, someone called 911 after finding an 11-month-old baby unresponsive inside a home on East Marine View Drive in Everett's Delta neighborhood. The baby was given naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal drug, before firefighters arrived. The baby was released after being treated at a hospital, the city's Fire and Police departments said in the statement.
• Four days later, on Wednesday, someone called 911 shortly before noon after finding a 6-month-old struggling to breathe at an apartment building on Broadway in the Port Gardner neighborhood. Firefighters gave the baby a dose of naloxone after finding them unresponsive. That child is in stable condition at Seattle Children's hospital, fire and police officials said.
• Firefighters responded less than three hours after that when a person called 911 to report finding a 13-month-old baby who wasn't breathing at an apartment off West Casino Road in the Westmont neighborhood. The baby was taken to Providence Regional Medical Center but died, officials said.

Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid up to 50 times as potent as heroin, has fueled a skyrocketing number of overdose deaths in Washington and across the country. A record 1,082 people fatally overdosed on fentanyl in Washington last year — a 51% increase over record-setting 2022.

And overdose deaths among children are rapidly multiplying. Washington saw 38 children under 18 die from an opioid-related overdose in 2022 — more than three times as many as in 2019. All but one were tied to synthetic opioids like fentanyl, according to state Department of Health data.

Children are especially vulnerable to overdosing, as ingesting even small amounts of the opioid's residue can be fatal due to their body size and lack of tolerance to the drug. The drug, which is often sold as a small, brightly colored blue pill, can look like candy to babies and children.

     ___

     (c)2024 The Seattle Times

     Visit The Seattle Times at www.seattletimes.com

     Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Two children have now died after the north Spokane house fire that also killed their parents, family members said Friday.

Arielle Desislets, 33, died Sunday evening, according to a family member. Her kids, ages 2 and 7, were transported to the hospital in critical condition when they were pulled from the burning house last week. The 7-year-old was on life support, an email sent by his school principal at Holmes Elementary said.

The father, Robert Desislets, 38, died on the scene. The family of the fire victims started a fund to pay for funeral expenses through gofundme.com, and it's raised more than $17,000. The page indicates some of the family have relatives in Georgia who also are planning on having their own funeral service.

Firefighters responded to a 911 call about a porch on fire at 4:10 a.m. Saturday. They removed the family from the second floor of the burning house at 1717 N. Howard St. and began CPR.

The fire started at the front of the porch, engulfed the nearby garage and quickly spread upstairs.

No functional smoke alarms were found in the home. An investigation determined the fire was accidental and caused by an extension cord used in place of permanent wiring, Spokane Fire said on Monday.

The three-bedroom, one-bathroom house was built in 1905 and sits directly across the street from North Central High School. The Desisletses purchased the home in 2020.

     ___

     (c)2024 The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.)

     Visit The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.) at www.spokesman.com

     Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A 24-year-old Lakewood man who got behind the wheel after drinking at a catering job, then ran a red light in Tacoma, killing a husband and wife in a collision, was sentenced Thursday to nearly three years in prison.

Carlos Alejandro Rodriguez pleaded guilty Feb. 7 to two counts of vehicular homicide for the Aug. 7, 2021 wreck in the city's South End, at the intersection of South 72nd Street and Yakima Avenue. James Wagner, 63, and his wife, Joylene Rae Miller-Wagner, were killed in the incident when their sedan was struck on the passenger's side by the car Rodriguez was driving at 83 mph.

The couple's dog, Snoopy, also perished in the crash, according to prosecutors.

One of Wagner's daughters wrote in a victim impact statement to the court that her father and stepmother had just celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary the day before the wreck. Her father was decapitated, she wrote, and every bone in her stepmother's body was broken. She said she still can't talk about them without crying.

"A lifetime in jail wouldn't be enough justice, two years definitely isn't," she wrote. "It feels like a slap in the face to their families. Because of Carlos's actions that night and carelessness, our lives will never be the same."

Pierce County Superior Court Judge Karena Kirkendoll handed down the punishment, giving Rodriguez 34 months, the high end of the standard sentencing range for defendants prosecuted in similar cases, eight months longer than prosecutors had agreed to recommend.

Rodriguez's blood-alcohol content was recorded as 0.013 by a portable breath test about two hours after the collision, according to court records. He told responding Tacoma Police Department officers he had two to three margaritas while catering a birthday party in Tacoma with his father, and he added additional alcohol to the drinks.

The driver also stopped at a marijuana dispensary after the men left the job at about 11 p.m. Rodriguez claimed not to have smoked any of the cannabis he bought, but a blood draw showed his THC level was about 11 nanograms per milliliter, above the legal limit of 5 ng/ml.

Rodriguez's 51-year-old father was in the passenger's seat of the 2017 Nissan Altima his son was driving, and he was badly injured in the crash, according to court records. Tacoma General Hospital staff told police he suffered severe hemorrhaging.

The defendant was charged with vehicular assault for his father's injuries, but it was dismissed as part of a plea agreement, court records show.

A friend was also in the Nissan, which was registered to him. He told police he felt like he drank too much so he let Rodriguez drive. The defendant was speeding the entire time, the friend reportedly told police, and he was asked to slow down multiple times.

Rodriguez did not initially take responsibility for the collision. Prosecutors wrote in court filings that witnesses saw him trying to coerce his friend into taking responsibility shortly after they walked away from their wrecked vehicle. Rodriguez also told a police officer he was sitting in the back passenger seat, but the officer noted his injuries were consistent with a person sitting in the driver's seat.

The vehicular homicide case went to trial in September, with Rodriguez's defense being that the friend was driving. His former attorney wrote in a trial brief that body-camera footage showed the friend consistently telling a police officer and hospital staff that he was driving, not Rodriguez.

A mistrial was declared after a four-day trial and about two days of deliberations, according to court records. Jurors were deadlocked over a verdict.

A new trial was scheduled, but Rodriguez pleaded guilty about a week before it was set to begin. Prosecutors wrote in court filings that based on feedback from jurors in the first trial, there were evidence issues in the case that gave the state concern that a retrial would end in the same result, if not an acquittal.

     ___

     (c)2024 The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.)

     Visit The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.) at www.TheNewsTribune.com

     Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A Clackamas County judge this week decided to give a hands-on civics lesson to a class of visiting second graders, inviting eight of them to serve as jurors in a hit-and-run trial, swearing them in, allowing them to sit in the jury box and giving them supplies to take notes.

At one point she wondered aloud if they were old enough to know how to write.

Circuit Judge Ulanda Watkins even suggested to the defendant that she would reach a verdict “with the assistance of my special jury.”

Watkins’ decision to enlist elementary school students in the misdemeanor trial appeared to take everyone involved by surprise.

The chief deputy district attorney scrambled to track down the presiding judge when he learned of the extraordinary arrangement. The alleged victim said later that she found the judge’s approach “very unusual.”

Watkins said in an interview Friday that she takes her job seriously and tries to ensure “everyone is heard.”

“I would never ever make light of a trial,” she said.

In the end, Watkins delivered an acquittal without consulting the students — the 7- and 8-year-olds left before the trial concluded. But the judge’s off-the-cuff overture to the school children became the talk of the courthouse in downtown Oregon City.

It began when Watkins took up the case of State v. Varvara, a bench trial over an alleged collision last year on an Interstate 205 off-ramp. A judge, not a jury, reaches a verdict in a bench trial.

The seats of the gallery were filled with second graders from Oregon City when Watkins took the bench.

“I am going to ask if you guys would help me as a judge,” Watkins told them, according to an audio recording of the trial. “I’m going to need some special jurors.”

She went on to tell them to “put on their special listening ears because it’s going to be, like, really, really, really important that you hear everything that is said and you have to pay very close attention because you’re going to sit up here and you can’t talk but you have to watch everything.”

She said eight of them could serve as jurors. She asked her court staff to bring them pads and pens typically given to jurors to track evidence in trials.

“Can you guys take notes?” she asked. “Do you write yet in second grade?”

She went on to describe the duties of a juror.

“These two people need us to pay very, very close attention to everything that’s said because we decide what happened” on the day of the collision, she told the kids.

“I am so happy to have your help,” she said.

Watkins spent about five minutes addressing the students. She had a member of her court staff read the jurors’ oath to the students, asking them to promise to “well and truly try the matter at issue between the state and the defendant according to the law and evidence as given at trial.”

“You have to say I do,” she told the kids.

“I do,” they said.

“So that means you guys are official and you’re going to listen and you’re going to write and if at any time you can’t hear when we start to listen to witnesses you’re going to let us know immediately,” she said.

Then she turned to the defendant, Samuel Varvara, 56, to explain the hearing. He had been accused of damaging the side view mirror of a woman’s car before leaving without exchanging insurance information.

“I am going to be the person — with the assistance of my special jury — to determine whether or not the state has met their burden because it is the state’s burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the facts,” she told Varvara.

Before the state presented its case, Watkins directed the prosecutor to “make sure you walk around the courtroom so that all of the members of the jury can hear you.”

The case was prosecuted by Christa Doerbeck, a certified law student from Lewis & Clark Law School who tried the case under the guidance of more experienced prosecutors from the DA’s office.

As Doerbeck started her opening statement, she addressed the children as “members of the jury.”

At one point Watkins asked that the state’s evidence — photos of the alleged collision — be handed to the students.

“Oh yes, yes, the jury,” Doerbeck responded.

“You can look at them and pass them around,” the judge told the kids, “because they’re in evidence.”

On the recording, Watkins did not appear to consult either side about the children’s participation in the trial.

Varvara represented himself. He faced a charge of failing to perform the duties of a driver in an accident that involved property damage. Reached by phone, he said he didn’t have a problem with the children’s role in his case.

“If I had a concern, I would have said that right there in the court,” he said.

Phil Lemman, deputy state court administrator for the Oregon Judicial Department, said Watkins did not “specifically ask” Varvara or Doerbeck if they objected “but visually looked for any signs of concern or objection, and there were none.”

He called the experience a “well-intentioned effort to give interested, well-behaved students a meaningful experience during their court visit.”

As the trial was underway, a senior prosecutor in the Clackamas County District Attorney’s Office was made aware of the children’s role.

Records show Chief Deputy District Attorney Chris Owen emailed the two more experienced prosecutors in the courtroom that he was trying to contact the presiding judge, Michael Wetzel. He told them he informed another judge, Heather Karabeika, “of the unusual procedure taking place.”

Owen directed the prosecutors to raise their concerns during the trial; twice, they asked Watkins if they could address the court. The judge, according to the audio recording, assumed the lawyers planned to rehash settled issues and denied their requests.

In another email sent later that day, Owen told his staff he had spoken to the presiding judge “about our significant concerns over what took place today.”

It is unclear what happened as a result of that conversation; while Wetzel leads the Clackamas County bench, each judge is elected. They serve six-year terms.

Watkins was appointed to the bench in 2017 by former Gov. Kate Brown. She is up for reelection in the May 21 primary. She is unopposed.

Before the two-hour trial ended, the students quietly filed out of Watkins’ courtroom.

The judge’s decision to engage at length with the children and treat them as jurors represented a “dignity and decorum issue,” said Steven Lubet, a professor emeritus at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.

“Even pretending they will have a role in deciding the case is wrong,” said Lubet, an authority on judicial ethics. At The Oregonian/OregonLive’s request, Lubet listened to the recording of Watkins’ interaction with the students.

“It’s fine to greet the children and explain what’s going to happen,” he said. “That’s part of civic education, but creating a mock jury of 7-year-olds with no indication that they are going to do anything other than help the judge is a failure of dignity.”

Tanya L. Baker, 55, of Oregon City, who had accused Varvara of hitting her car, said she has put the matter behind her.

Still, she found the involvement of children in the case odd. It was her first time in court, she said.

“I don’t feel like the judge conducted herself in a very professional way,” Baker said.

“No one knew what was going on,” she said. “The judge just kind of made this a fun experiment for the kids, I think. So no one was consulted. … They have every right to observe, but the fact that she put them on a mock jury — it was very strange, honestly.”

As a preschool teacher in Happy Valley, she said she understood Watkins’ desire to make court a learning experience.

“But,” she said, “I felt like that wasn’t the time or place.”

©2024 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit oregonlive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.