News-Times Whidbey
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SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 2015 | Vol. 125, No. 27 | WWW.WHIDBEYNEWSTIMES.COM | 75¢
Prosecutor: WGH incident was ‘simple assault’ By JESSIE STENSLAND Staff reporter
Photo by Jessie Stensland/Whidbey News-Times
Island County Deputy Prosecutor Jacqueline Lawrence shows the jury how Linda Gipson, chief nursing officer at the hospital, allegedly grabbed a patient.
The prosecution and defense laid out their arguments Thursday afternoon in the criminal case against a Whidbey General Hospital administrator accused of assaulting a patient last summer. Jury selection took up most of the day in what the judge has said may be the longest trial at Island County District Court in three decades. Linda Gipson, the 63-year-old chief nursing officer at Whidbey General
Hospital, is facing one count of fourthdegree assault, a misdemeanor charge, for allegedly grabbing a mental-health patient by the face May 13, according to court documents. In opening statements, Island County Deputy Prosecutor Jacqueline Lawrence said Gipson “charged” into the room, grabbed the patient and told her, “You have lost your rights, you have lost your privileges.” Lawrence emphasized over and over that the patient was in “four-point,
locked, medical restraints” and that she had no way to protect herself. She mimed for the jury how Gipson allegedly grabbed the woman by the jaw, calling it “a simple assault.” “What happened after that simple assault is where it gets complicated,” she said. One of the nurses who was caring for the patient confronted Gipson about the assault. Gipson came up with “a litany SEE TRIAL, A13
Larsen says his support of Navy will not change By JANIS REID Staff reporter
A tense room full of passionate constituents was about evenly divided when it came to the subject of jet noise Tuesday night. And while Navy jets on Whidbey Island were the most discussed topic, it wasn’t the only thing on the minds of constituents who packed the Coupeville Rec Hall and grilled U.S. Congressman Rick Larsen on the issue. The Town Hall meeting was part a series held by Larsen throughout his district in late March and early April. “What are you doing to make sure the Navy complies with the National Environmental Protection Act?” asked Ken Pickard, a member of Citizens of Ebey’s Reserve, a group that sued the Navy over jet noise last year. A woman who said she lives “under the flight pattern of OLF” invited Larsen to her home to experience the sound. “I’d like to invite you to my home so you can hear what we are living under,” the woman said to a round of applause. “As you can see, I’m an old lady. How can you support the Navy and the (Outlying Field Coupeville)?” Frank Scharwat told the group that the Navy jets have caused $13,000 in damage when they blew out the windows on his Keystone Spit home during touch-and-go flights at OLF. “They’re lazy, they don’t care or they’re bad neighbors,” Scharwat said of the jet pilots. “If that’s not damage I don’t know what is.” Harry Toulgoat encouraged an “intelligent SEE LARSEN, A20
Photo by Ron Newberry/Whidbey News-Times
Retired Cmdr. Harvey Lasell, a World War II veteran, exchanges greetings with Rich Pelletier, right, while Lasell’s Oak Harbor neighbor Lesley Robbins looks on at the opening of the aircraft display exhibit at the PBY-Naval Air Museum Wednesday. Lasell was a fire control division officer aboard the USS Yorktown during the Battle of Midway.
PBY unveils aircraft display
By RON NEWBERRY Staff reporter
Bud Zylstra can still remember the roar of the PBY engines over Oak Harbor. He shared some of those memories during the opening of the PBY-Naval Air Museum’s new aircraft display exhibit Wednesday. “When we were sitting in church and the preacher was preaching, when the plane came over he’d just have to quit,” said Zylstra, a graduate of Oak Harbor High School’s class of 1941. “As soon as it went
by, he started in again.” Zylstra and Harvey Lasell, both World War II veterans in their 90s, attended the opening to represent the PBY Memorial Foundation as well as to get a closer look at the PBA-5A Catalina and other artifacts that now rest in the new display across from the museum on Pioneer Way. The plane, once stationed at the Seaplane Base in 1945 at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, is still missing its outer wings. They
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