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Wednesday, December 4, 2019
Serving Columbia County since 1881
Columbia County Law Library opens to homeless on cold night
JULIE THOMPSON chronicle1@countrymedia.net
On Saturday night, Nov. 30, the weather outside in St. Helens was quickly getting colder. On a local Facebook community page, local Brandee Dudzic saw a friend posting for donations to get a room at Motel 6 for two people they’d seen walking down the highway. Dudzic responded saying she would pick up the remaining tab, but then the conversation turned … what was everyone else going to do? The Columbia County Warming Center was not scheduled to open until Dec. 1, and the night would soon see temperatures below freezing. Dudzic considered opening her home for the night, but that wasn’t a viable option considering she has children at home, so she considered other spaces she had access to. Immediately, she thought of the Columbia County Law Library. “The Law Library is such a special place to me and it made all the sense in the world to me to open it for the night,” Dudzic said when The Chronicle reached out to her to ask her about opening its doors on Saturday night. Dudzic said she went through the appropriate channels to get permission to open for the homeless. She made it clear it was a one-time thing – we have a warming center she’s grateful for, she said, they just weren’t open, and she wanted to fill the gap. She laid out plans to call the St. Helens Police Department ahead of time to let them know and make sure they were available for some extra rounds on South 1st Street in case they were needed. She would stay awake and remain in complete control of the entire operation and lean on her formal training in bystander intervention and de-escalation. “I am confident in my ability to de-escalate moments of intense emotions and even violent behaviors,” Dudzic said. “I knew what I was getting into. I knew I’d have people who may be emotional and dysregulated, some might have substance abuse
In the statement that was released Tuesday, Dec. 3, Auxier said he and investigators found the use of force was “overwhelmingly justified” and almost certainly saved lives as 32-year-old Michael Thomas Veatch was actively trying to kill innocent civilians when Officer Elijah Merkwan intervened. Active shooter in St. Helens
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Ichabod’s giving tree.
SHMS student team selected as state finalists for STEM project proposal
Christine Menges/The Chronicle
Some members of the STEM team stand with posters that helped inspire the project. CHRISTINE MENGES chronicle2@countrymedia.net
Vol. 137, No. 49
thechronicleonline.com
‘Almost certainly saved lives’: DA says SHPD use of deadly force was justified
JULIE THOMPSON chronicle1@countrymedia.net
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A team of students at St. Helens Middle School (SHMS) has been selected as state finalists for a Samsung Solve For Tomorrow project proposal submitted by the students in Ashely Baylor’s STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art and Mathematics) class. The team is one of four Oregon State finalists who will advance to Phase 2 of the STEM competition. They also received a Samsung tablet as a prize. Phase 2 will require the students to outline an Activity Plan, showing how they will execute the project. For Phase 2, roughly 100 state winners will be selected to win a $1,500 video kit, as well as a $15,000 prize package. The team was notified on Nov. 16 that they were selected to be fi-
Christine Menges/The Chronicle
The website showing the code that students will use to create their app.
nalists. The group comprises seven students in grades 6 through 8, not all of whom are allowed to be publicly identified in a newspaper or online, per agreement with parents and the school district. Baylor said she initially found out about the project through a science teacher at SHMS, and it was a little bit late for the students to complete a project from scratch, but they had just completed one that was pretty similar to what the project was requiring. “So I just went in the cabinets and grabbed their ideas and kind of combined a couple and submitted a few ideas,” Baylor said. The ideas she combined ended up making up an altogether new proposal: an app that helps connect
students to support. That support can be anything from mental health support, to potential buddies for students, to practices that will alleviate stress and depression. “In a perfect world, the app would send out daily/weekly/etc. notifications with helpful, relatable facts about diet, statistics, and perhaps ‘open house’ events at the local mental health organizations,” the proposal states. The project is meant to alleviate problems caused by bullying, which the project proposal identifies as the biggest issue faced by the school community. “A student of mine told me
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Merkwan and SHPD Sgt. Matthew Molden were the only officers on duty for the entire county when they responded to the reported shooting at the St. Helens Chevron at approximately 5:26 a.m. on the morning of Oct. 9. Witnesses reported a person who was later identified as Veatch had entered a restricted area between the food mart and a storage shed claiming he was looking for a lost cat. When an employee declined to engage with him further and returned to the store, Veatch confronted him in the doorway, pointed a black handgun at his chest and yelled, “I’m looking for my [expletive] cat.” Veatch turned to head for his truck, but moments later, employees and witnesses heard gunshots and the sound of shattering glass just before Veatch’s truck was seen headed down Highway 30 with sparks flying from a blown rear tire. As Merkwan and Molden were responding in separate vehicles to the first 911 call, dispatch received additional reports of gunshots near McBride Elementary School on Columbia Boulevard. One caller reported Veatch had shot at him while he was seated in his car and decided to follow the truck. The caller reported seeing Veatch shooting a firearm randomly while driving, and while he was still on the phone with 911, he said Veatch exited his vehicle and began firing upon the caller with an AK-47. The caller’s account was later corroborated by bullet damage to his vehicle, witnesses and multiple shell casings recovered from the area. Merkwan and Molden caught up to the truck shortly after the second incident near McBride as Veatch drove down Gable Road towards the highway, driving on his rim. Merkwan reported he believed he could see Veatch handling a box of ammunition as if reloading his firearm. As the truck approached milepost 35 north of Deer Island, where the incident would ultimately come to an end, Veatch’s truck was emitting a considerable amount of smoke. Veatch stopped in the middle of the road, got out and fled on foot after returning briefly to the cab as if to retrieve something. Merkwan reported losing sight of Veatch through the smoke but heard multiple gunshots shortly after. Investigators would later learn the shots the officer heard were from Veatch’s attempt to “car jack and apparently murder” two bystanders, according to the statement. The first victim said Veatch approached his passenger door, pointed a black semiautomatic handgun directly at him and tried to enter his car. The victim sped away but Veatch allegedly fired two shots that struck the victim’s dashboard console and front passenger seat. The second victim was forced to come to a stop behind the first victim’s vehicle, and moments later, Veatch approached the hood of the car and reportedly pointed his gun at the second man’s face as he tried to enter the car. Again, the second would-be victim accelerated, and Veatch fired one round at the car as he fled, striking the center console. Detectives said they discovered bullet holes and bullets in both vehicles that were
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