Slaying suspect appears in court

Bail was set at $500,000. However, Russell will be held in the jail indefinitely because he has two no-bail warrants for probation violation.

Chelsea’s grandmother, Sylvia Johnson, 67, attended the hearing and spoke to reporters afterward. “I just wanted to see what an animal like that looked like,” she said.

Johnson also said she had no idea what her granddaughter was doing at Russell’s home the night of her death.

More details about events leading up to Chelsea’s death emerged Monday in a report by the arresting officer.

The report, based on interviews with witnesses, says that Chelsea and a group of friends cruised around after school on the afternoon of Nov. 1 until deciding to stop by Russell’s house, a well-known party house for teens. There, witnesses told police, Russell, Chelsea and two other teens played a drinking card game where they had to take a drink based on the turn of the cards.

Beer and spirits were consumed and two hours after arriving, police were told, “Chelsea appeared intoxicated.”

Witnesses described a sexually charged climate at Russell’s house. During the drinking games, Russell was sitting next to Chelsea and was “flirty and touchy” with Russell, at one point rubbing Chelsea’s abdomen and wiping her mouth with a napkin.

He had cooked fried chicken for the group.

During the drinking, Russell also expressed a sexual interest in one of the girls who attended an Oct. 29 party at his house, but he refused to say who. Chelsea was at the Oct. 29 party. The police report also said Russell received Chelsea’s phone number on Oct. 31 and called her a couple of times.

According to the documents, Russell told police that late in the evening, most teens had left and Russell, a vacuum cleaner salesman, was leaving the house to go to his office to pick up toilet paper. Chelsea was outside talking to friends who were going to give her a ride home, but returned to the front door and asked Russell to let her back in so she could get her belongings and use the bathroom.

Russell told police he left her alone but returned to find her lying in the shower of a downstairs bathroom, surrounded, witnesses said, by bedding.

Police said little about the circumstances surrounding her death. A report by the Clark County medical examiner said she died from “mechanical asphyxiation,” which means she was suffocated.

But the medical examiner and Vancouver police provided few other details or whether she sustained any other injuries.

“There were no obvious signs of trauma that would cause death,” police spokeswoman Kim Kapp said.

A memorial service Saturday drew about 250 people, Johnson said. Chelsea will be taken to Southern California for burial. She was born in Huntington Beach, Calif., and her biological father lives in California.