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THURSDAY, 01.15.2015
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EVERETT, WASHINGTON
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No. 1 Lynnwood sends No. 2 Glacier Peak packing C1
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Charges follow teen drinking party 4 boys are accused of felony sex crimes after prosecutors say they raped 2 girls who were incapable of providing consent because they were too drunk.
By Diana Hefley Herald Writer
EVERETT — Prosecutors say two girls were raped at a juvenile drinking party over the summer, and now four teenagers are
charged with felony sex crimes. A boy, 17, is accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl while the two were in the back of his pickup truck. A second girl, 16, was assaulted by three other teenage party-goers, according
to court documents. Prosecutors allege that the defendants had sex with girls who were incapable of providing consent because they were too drunk. Investigators recovered a photograph of one of the girls,
Port preps for heavy cargo
and she appears passed out. They also heard that a suspect uploaded a video of one of the girls to a social media website. Snohomish County deputy See PARTY, Page A7
Remains are of missing teenager
Part of a $3.8 million upgrade will allow for more efficiency
Detectives believe that text messages sent from Summer Smith’s cellphone to her mother were sent by someone else after she died. By Diana Hefley Herald Writer
EVERETT — The Port of Everett has proposed significant changes to its Waterfront Place development that it believes will make it a much more attractive neighborhood. Waterfront Place is the current name of a proposed multi-use development on port property that has been in the works for 10 years. The plan would transform the pier between the North and Central Marinas, now
LAKE STEVENS — Detectives combing the area where human remains were located earlier this month also found blood-stained bedding, a broken knife, women’s clothing and paperwork belonging to a teenager whose family last talked to her in November. Police were notified by the medical examiner last week that the remains are of Summer Smith, 18. No cause of death has been released. Detectives spoke with Smith’s mother, who said she last heard from her daughter Nov. 19. She sent Smith a text message in early December, concerned that the two hadn’t communicated in a couple of weeks. She received replies but told detectives the tone and content seemed out of character for her daughter. One of the last message Smith’s mother received demanded she stop sending texts. She called Smith but was directly connected to voicemail until about Dec. 12 when the phone appears to have been shut off or taken out of service. Detectives obtained a search warrant for Smith’s phone records saying they believe someone other than Smith sent the messages. Evidence suggests that Smith died before that exchange happened, according to the search warrant. Police are investigating her death as a homicide. Smith’s skull and other bones were discovered Jan. 3 near the 12000 block of Seventh Place SE. A man hired to clean up around the property discovered the skull near some heavy brambles.
See CHANGES, Page A7
See REMAINS, Page A2
MARK MULLIGAN / THE HERALD
Work continues Jan. 8 on the South Terminal at the Port of Everett to drive steel piles into the seabed to strengthen a section of the terminal so it can handle larger roll-on/roll-off cargo. The work is part of a $3.8 million upgrade by the Port of Everett.
Herald Writer
the buzz
EVERETT — Construction workers are driving massive steel piles deep into the seabed below the Port of Everett’s South Terminal as part of a $3.8 million upgrade. The improvements will allow the terminal to support the port’s behemoth mobile harbor crane and to handle heavier cargo that can be directly rolled on or off a waiting freighter. The terminal was built in the 1970s by Weyerhaeuser to handle logs. It can support up to 500 pounds per square foot. That might be enough for some of the farming machines that leave Everett bound for China. Or for the occasional Airstream trailer en route to a mining operation in Russia. But it is not strong enough to handle the heaviest roll-on/ roll-off cargo — the 30-foot-long
agricultural combines or tractors built like tanks, said Carl Wollebek, who overseas the port’s shipping facilities. A section of the terminal is being strengthened to support 1,000 pounds per square foot. “There’s only one other place we can do that,” on Pier One’s southside, which is also the port’s busiest terminal, he said. Like others in the shipping industry, he refers to such freight by its acronym: RORO cargo. The Port of Everett is a modest seaport with limited facilities. So accommodating multiple ships requires careful choreography. It doesn’t take much to create a traffic jam, forcing a ship to wait in Puget Sound until another exits. In between Pier One and South Terminal is Pacific Terminal. Two blue gantry cranes tower over the berth. They can clear out a container ship in a
No-help desk For an interminable wait, press 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9, followed by the pound sign: Because of budget cuts, only about half of the 100 million people expected to call the IRS with tax questions this year will get to talk to an actual person. But first they’ll have to wait on hold for at least 30 minutes. And IRS staffers will answer only
simple questions (Page A9). In fact, it’s going to be so bad that afterward you’ll want to cheer yourself up by calling Brad in Bangalore for help programming your DVR. Dodd-Frank? We light our cigars with that: Twentynine Democrats (including Rep. Rick Larsen of Washington) joined with nearly every Republican in voting
few hours. But if there’s a RORO ship at Pier One, “we can’t get another container ship into Pacific Terminal,” which is directly to the south, Wollebek said. Upgrading South Terminal will make the port more efficient and make it easier to keep enough distance between ships, he said. The Port of Everett really got into the RORO business a couple of years ago after overhauling a former log berth at South Terminal. The port handles about 12 to 18 RORO ships a year, Wollebek said. Regular RORO shipments began in June 2012 with a vessel belonging to Russia’s Far Eastern Shipping Company. Two shippers — EUKOR and Hyundai Glovis, Ltd. — come from Asia loaded with automobiles, which usually get See PORT, Page A7
Wednesday to ease the law that reins in the sort of activities by banks and Wall Street that triggered the financial meltdown and the Great Recession (Page A9). The bill was carefully written with the twin goals of loosening regulations on financial firms, and really annoying Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts. At least it’s a true state-
Waterfront Place changes proposed By Chris Winters Herald Writer
ment: The Pinellas County Sheriff ’s Office in Florida laid down a new rug at the entrance at its headquarters, only to notice, two months later, that the rug said “In Dog We Trust” instead of “In God We Trust” (Page A2). The manufacturer needs to make a custom rug for its headquarters that says, “In spell check you cannot trust.”
— Mark Carlson, Herald staff
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