Sunday
Lively lifestyle choices
Rain in today’s Peninsula forecast C10
Healthy Living keeps residents moving INSIDE
PENINSULA DAILY NEWS September 20, 2015 | $1.50
Port Townsend-Jefferson County’s Daily Newspaper
✃ $
LOOK INSIDE!
$
78
$
IN COUPON SAVINGS!
$
new
WILDER TOYOTA 43 Jetta Way, Port Angeles
2, –500 OR –
GET UP TO $
2015 Toyota
0
Prius
%
Liftback
You Can Count On Us!
1-800-927-9379 360-457-8511 www.wildertoyota.com
APR FOR UP TO 60 MOS*
TOYOTA CASH BACK!
+ 1 000 $ ,
TOYOTA CASH BACK!
*UP TO $2,500 TOYOTA CASH BACK OR 0% FOR UP TO 60 MONTHS PLUS UP TO $1,000 TOYOTA CASH BACK, ON APPROVAL OF CREDIT. $1,000 BONUS/SUBVENTION CASH THRU TOYOTA FINANCIAL SERVICES AND MUST BE APPLIED TO DEAL. 0.0% APR FINANCING FOR 36 MONTHS - $27.78 PER $1,000 BORROWED OR 0.0% APR FINANCING FOR 48 MONTHS - $20.83 PER $1,000 BORROWED OR 0.0% APR FINANCING FOR 60 MONTHS - $16.67 PER $1,000 BORROWED. NO DOWN PAYMENT WITH APPROVED CREDIT THROUGH TOYOTA FINANCIAL SERVICES – TIER 1 PLUS AND 1 ONLY. NOT ALL CUSTOMERS WILL QUALIFY FOR LOWEST RATE. PLUS TAX, LICENSE AND $150.00 NEGOTIABLE DOCUMENTARY FEE. OFFER EXPIRES 10/5/2015.
591414982
$
PAID ADVERTISEMENT
Towering problem
CHARLIE BERMANT/ PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
Port Townsend City Council candidates taking part in Thursday night’s forum are, from left, Paul Rice, Amy Smith, Travis Keena and David Faber.
Candidates detail desire to give back KEITH THORPE/PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
The chip loader at the Port of Port Angeles Terminal 7 on Port Angeles Harbor is illuminated in this 2011 file photo.
PA wrestles with unloading chip loader Port plans to see structure taken down, scrapped BY JAMES CASEY PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
PORT ANGELES — Leave it to the Port of Port Angeles to own a white elephant that’s painted robin’s egg blue.
That’s the actual problem: After its last owner discovered the cost to disassemble the chiploading tower at Terminal 7, the company in effect said, “Leave it.”
ing contraption is designed to load wood chips from trucks or conveyors, carry them high above the harbor, then spout them into the holds of bulk carrier cargo ships. Departing soon? For you really old-timers out there, think Rube Goldberg overPinnacle of the port’s skyline dosed on Ovaltine. — absent a visiting oil rig — it’s Daishowa America Ltd. once as unwelcome as it is unsightly. used the loader to pile and But it could be gone as early as export wood chips. The paper May, dismantled and sold at barmill closed its chip plant in 2001. gain-basement prices for scrap. TURN TO LOADER/A6 The deceptively spindly look-
PT City Council hopefuls in forum cite gratitude and help this place that I love so much grow and continue to thrive.”
BY CHARLIE BERMANT PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
PORT TOWNSEND — Candidates for City Council expressed desires of making contributions to Port Townsend as a payback for how the town has enhanced their lives. “I have considered Port Townsend to be the real home in my life,” said Position 6 candidate Amy Smith, 33, who spent time as a homeless youth in Seattle prior to moving to Port Townsend and assuming her current job as executive director of the Boiler Room. “I came to Port Townsend, and it pretty much saved my life, and I’d really like to return the favor
Six take part Smith was one of six candidates — four competitive and two unopposed — who appeared before about 70 people at the Quimper Grange in a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters, the American Society of University Women and the Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader. The debate was moderated by Fred Obee, who retired as the Leader’s general manager earlier this year. TURN
TO
FORUM/A7
Official: PA murderer is found dead in cell Suicide cited in Covarrubias’ death BY PAUL GOTTLIEB PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
MONROE — Robert Gene Covarrubias, the Port Angeles strangler who confessed to raping and murdering 15-year-old Melissa Leigh Carter in 2004, has died of asphyxia by hanging himself at the Monroe Correctional Complex. Covarrubias, 35, died Sept. 2, Heather Oie, a spokeswoman with the Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office, said Friday. “The manner is suicide; the cause is asphyxiation,” she said of the Sept. 3 autopsy.
A Lancaster, Calif., native, Covarrubias was serving 34½ years to life in prison for murdering Carter. The sentence was handed down by then-Clallam County Superior Court Judge George L. Wood on Aug. 5, 2009. Debbie Willis, a spokeswoman for the Monroe Correctional Complex, said Friday that Covarrubias, who used a sheet as a rope and tied it to the back of his shower to kill himself, was discovered unresponsive in his one-person cell during a regular 30-minute check of inmates.
“It was pretty straightforward,” Willis said. “There’s nothing more than a single-cell suicide.” Covarrubias “had some mental issues,” Willis added. He had turned 35 four days earlier, on Aug. 29, Jeremy Barclay, state Department of Corrections spokesman, said Friday. During his incarceration for Carter’s murder, Covarrubias had been housed at correctional facilities in Clallam Bay, Shelton and Walla Walla. At Monroe, he was in the special-offender unit, entering as a maximum-custody inmate and graduating to minimum custody at the time of his death. “There was progress that he
was making,” Barclay said.
2004 murder Carter’s nude body was found Dec. 26, 2004, in a hollow just off a well-traveled stretch of the Olympic Discovery Trail in Port Angeles, about 600 feet east of City Pier, according to court records. Boxer shorts that Covarrubias later identified as his were found nearby. Known as Messa Mae to her friends, Carter was a former honor roll student at Stevens Middle School in Port Angeles, was active in a Sequim Bible youth group and attended Choice Community High School. TURN
TO
Robert Gene Covarrubias
INMATE/A7 Sentenced in 2009
INSIDE TODAY’S PENINSULA DAILY NEWS 99th year, 214th issue — 6 sections, 78 pages
Subaru KOENIG 3501 HWY 101, E. PORT ANGELES
Since 1975
591395077
360.457.4444 • 800.786.8041
www.koenigsubaru.com
PHOTOS FOR ILLUSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY. NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. VINS POSTED AT DEALERSHIP. SEE KOENIG SUBARU FOR DETAILS. AD EXPIRES 9/30/15.
IN STOCK 2016 SUBARU 2016 SUBARU OUTBACK FORESTER
NOW!
2016 SUBARU 2016 SUBARU LEGACY WRX STi
BUSINESS/POLITICS A9 B5 CLASSIFIED COMMENTARY A12, A13 C6 COUPLES C7 DEAR ABBY C8, C9 DEATHS A13 LETTERS A4 NATION A2 PENINSULA POLL TV WEEK
❘
SUNDAY FUN
PUZZLES/GAMES SPORTS WEATHER WORLD
B6 B1 C10 A4