Two people have been arrested on assault charges as a gang task force continues its investigation into a shooting Friday in the Fourth Plain Village neighborhood of Vancouver.
Shawn Crawford, 22, and a 16-year-old boy were booked on suspicion of three counts of first-degree assault, according to the Vancouver Police Department. The boy’s name was not released.
The two were arrested by the Safe Streets Task Force following shootings at 2300 Neals Lane and at the intersection of East Fourth Plain Boulevard and Grand Boulevard, according to a VPD bulletin released Saturday morning.
Police swarmed the scene and found a victim with a gunshot wound in his leg, who was taken to an area hospital, according to Vancouver police spokeswoman Kim Kapp. Police described the victim as a 16-year-old with injuries that weren’t life-threatening who was being uncooperative, according to emergency radio traffic.
As of Friday, it was unclear how many suspects there were, how many shots were fired and where. Five bullet casings were found in the area of St. Johns Boulevard and East 33rd Street, about a mile away from where the shooting was originally reported, Vancouver police Cpl. James Burgara said. Patrons of the nearby Rosemere Tavern heard gunshots, but emergency responders didn’t find a wounded victim.
Additionally, a 911 caller reported seeing someone pointing a gun out of the window of a red Honda Civic, which resembled a car reportedly involved in the earlier shooting. The car parked in front of the Clark County Courthouse, and the driver went inside the courthouse, Kapp said. When he came back outside the courthouse, police arrived and transported the driver to the Juvenile Justice Center. Kapp wasn’t sure how many people were inside the car, which was towed.
One video of the abuse that elephants are subjected to — that’s all it took for Sundari SitaRam to decide to sell her Vancouver yoga studio and buy a plane ticket to Southeast Asia.
At the time, SitaRam had spent 25 years as a yogi. She owned her own studio, Shanti Yoga Center in Vancouver, and was as happy as a clam with the family that her classes had created. That was, until one day in December 2012 when she heard the term “temple elephants” on a podcast.
“I sort of spun around,” she said. “(It) had me shake my head in dismay and dig deeper.”
With a few quick clicks on her keyboard, she found a video of Ganga, an elephant kept chained outside the Gangaramaya Temple, a Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka.
Upon seeing it, SitaRam stopped cold.
“I saw the worst abuse in the name of religion. … I couldn’t bear it,” SitaRam said. “They were the people whose books I read and the people I studied.”
After one night of sleep, SitaRam said she woke up and knew that her life had forever changed.
“I knew what I had to do,” she said: find a way to help these elephants.
Months after she found her new calling, SitaRam traveled to Thailand and Sri Lanka to gain a deeper understanding of why some elephants were being killed and some kept in captivity — and to see Ganga for herself.
When she traveled to Sri Lanka and met Ganga, she saw the animal was on urine-drenched cement, unable to lie down or turn around and had no ready access to water. She described the experience as “a crisis of disbelief” that haunted her for the better part of the year.
“I went over there to save the elephants,” she said. “I came back with all of this in my heart.”
In the last two years, Vancouver City Councilor Larry Smith has heard many complaints regarding trash strewn about the city’s parks and highways.
“Initially, I heard about the parks being dirty and not enough trash bins in the parks,” Smith said. “Generally, where the trash is concentrated is right around intersections. I have had several complaints that there’s a lot more trash out there.”
Smith isn’t alone in his impression that the city has become a dirtier place in recent years. Other councilors have heard the message, as well.
But cracking down on litter is only one aspect of how the councilors hope to keep Vancouver clean and cut down on the amount of trash ending up in the wrong places over the next year.
Collecting litter on state highways costs the Washington State Department of Transportation more than $3 million year. Between WSDOT and the state Department of Ecology, about 10,475 tons of litter have been picked up on state and county roads in the last two years.
In Vancouver, the annual cost of cleaning up litter and illegal dumping has hovered around $200,000 for the last three years, said Rich McConaghy, the city’s environmental resources manager. That accounted for about 162 tons of litter and trash collected from parks, roads and public right of ways in the city last year, McConaghy said.
And the total doesn’t include bits and pieces street crews grab off the ground during their regular runs picking up trash bins. Overall, trash and litter collection is on the rise throughout the city, said Brian Potter, the operations superintendent for the city’s grounds maintenance crew.
“Garbage collection continues to increase,” Potter said. “That’s largely because we’re seeing more people using the parks and we’re having more events.”
Part of the problem is the crews that took care of everything from maintaining right of ways, cemeteries and public parks were significantly scaled back during the Great Recession, said Loretta Callahan, a spokeswoman for Vancouver’s Public Works Department.
“The numbers of the staffing there decreased by half,” Callahan said.
Over the years, the familiar clickety-clack of railroad traffic can fade into the background for many people, including Duane Cramer.
But clickety-clunk?
That definitely got Cramer’s attention. As a safety inspector, he had a different perspective on the rail route through the Columbia Gorge.
Now Cramer has still another perspective on railroading in this area, that of a historian. The Vancouver man is part of a new museum exhibit, highlighting the role of railroads in developing the Northwest.
The display — “The Northwest’s Own Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway” — will be unveiled at 10 a.m. Saturday at Vancouver’s historic train depot. While the Clark County Historical Museum produced the display, the depot at 1301 W. 11th street “is the ideal setting for a display to honor the SP&S Railway,” Cramer said.
Cramer, a member of the SP&S Historical Society, listed a railroad all-star team that made stops over the last century at what now is the Vancouver Amtrak station: “The SP&S, Great Northern, Northern Pacific, United Pacific and Milwaukee Road.
“The fact that this depot stands here today is incredible,” Cramer said Thursday as display designer Ed Austin and his volunteer crew added the final touches.
One of Austin’s interpretive panels sets the stage for the exhibit: “By 1908, the SP&S Railway linked Oregon with eastern Washington and the markets beyond. Major freight hauled included grain headed west and lumber headed east.
“Vancouver was at the heart of the SP&S. The Vancouver yard contained its primary shop facilities and most significant passenger depot, designed specifically for the location.”
As local Seahawks fans drive to the University of Phoenix Stadium for the Super Bowl on Sunday, they may see four enormous billboards reminding them to smile. Be joyful.
It also might seem like deja vu for Clark County residents. The billboards were placed by the Vancouver nonprofit The Joy Team, led by founder Michele McKeag Larsen. The nonprofit has placed more than 100 joyful billboards in the Vancouver-Portland metro area.
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Placing billboards promoting positive messages in Phoenix during the Super Bowl was not planned.
“That was a happy coincidence,” said McKeag Larsen. “I got an email from Fred Bentzen of Outfront Media who saw some of the press we got on our 100th positive message billboard. He said, ‘We love what you’re doing. We’d love for you to spread some joy in Phoenix, too.'”
The advertising company had surplus billboards and offered them at a reduced, public service announcement rate. Joy Team board members Heather Strang, Carol McKeag and Patricia Johnson contributed to sponsoring the billboards. Within two weeks, the billboards were up.
These messages will be seen more than a million times during the four-week period the billboards are displayed, Larsen said.
“After it was all set in motion, we realized the Super Bowl is happening at the same time the billboards are up,” Larsen said. “Isn’t that fortunate? Quite a happy coincidence.”
Few professions are as central to the economy — and as unpopular with the general public — as the legal profession. Lawyers write contracts, negotiate real estate sales, help businesses grow, defend criminals, file divorce petitions, protect inventors’ patents.
And they’ve been doing it since ancient times. But as Clark County emerges from its long, deep recession, local lawyers say their industry is changing.
Nationally, the outlook for law firms is for an average 5 percent increase in profitiability, the Wall Street Journal reported recently, citing the latest client advisory by Citi Private Bank and Hildebrandt Consulting LLC, drawn from a database of 205 U.S.-headquartered firms. Lawsuits are down, the report said, but other work for businesses is climbing –though clients are increasingly focused on managing their legal costs.
Locally, firms are reporting similar gains. Revenue is up 68 percent in three years at Vancouver-based Horenstein Law Group. Real estate transactions are climbing at the Clark County office of Portland-based Schwabe Wiliamson and Wyatt. Vancouver-based Greenen and Greenen reports more demand for its business services.
Nearly 800 lawyers are licensed to practice in Clark County, although some may work here only occassionally. The Clark County bar has 455 members, but lawyers are not required to register with the county bar.
As the industry adapts to national changes coming out of the recession, local law offices are adjusting to changes in demand and in client expectations.
Here’s a look at four shifts that are reshaping the business of law in Southwest Washington — and beyond.
