LONGVIEW — A La Center man is facing four criminal charges, including two counts of drive-by shooting, for his alleged involvement in two separate shootings last month in Kelso and Woodland.
Keith Ryan Brown, 41, was booked March 3 into the Cowlitz County Jail. His bail was set at $200,000, and a public defender was appointed to represent him.
In addition to the two drive-by shooting charges, he is facing charges of attempting to elude police and second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm.
Brown is subject to a no-contact order with the Woodland victim. He was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday morning.
On Feb. 28, Cowlitz County Superior Court Judge Patricia Fassett issued an arrest warrant for Brown.
Reports from two police departments detailed the events of Feb. 3. According to the Kelso Police Department, at 7:23 a.m. a witness reported hearing gunfire and seeing a shirtless man in jeans holding a black handgun as she looked from a window of a home in the 600 block of North Fourth Avenue.
The witness told dispatchers she saw the man enter a dark-colored sedan. The witness estimated 10 shots were fired. A second witness reported hearing gunfire and seeing the man enter a Chevrolet Malibu and drive off as officers arrived.
Per the Kelso police report, an officer ordered the driver, whom police later identified as Brown, to stop, but the driver sped away.
The Woodland Police Department reported that at 7:53 a.m., officers were dispatched to the 110 block of Meadow Park Court.
Upon arrival, a resident showed police four bullet holes, three on the exterior of the person’s home and one in a parked motor home. Two bullets had pierced the dining room, kitchen and bathroom before lodging into the wall of the resident’s bedroom, according to the report.
The shooting may have happened about an hour earlier. A neighbor reported hearing four shots at 7:05 a.m., and a Kalama police officer who lives two blocks away from the victim’s house heard what sounded like fireworks.
Police obtained security camera footage depicting a dark-colored sedan passing near the victim’s residence on Hollyberry Street at 7:03 a.m., with the driver’s-side window down.
Kelso police notified Woodland authorities about the shooting at North Fourth Avenue and identified Brown as the suspect.
A Woodland officer found one 9 mm shell casing on Hollyberry Street. The casing matched those found in Kelso, and the Malibu was located in the 330 block of Hollyberry Street, the Woodland police report states.
Another witness selected Brown out of a photo array as the person who had ditched the Malibu, according to police.
