After nearly two decades, police have arrested a former Vancouver man wanted in connection with the death of a Portland man.
Omar Jose Vera Mendiola, 49, was booked into the Clark County Jail on Tuesday on suspicion of controlled substance homicide, stemming from the death of 39-year-old Scott Alan Deck on Nov. 6, 1995. Deck died from an apparent heroin overdose at a Rose Village home after using drugs that Mendiola allegedly supplied.
Mendiola is scheduled to appear in Clark County Superior Court today to face that charge and other drug-related charges from the 1995 case. He also faces an allegation of bail jumping. He is being held at the jail in lieu of $1 million bail, court documents said.
Court records state that he will be appointed an attorney to represent him and will be assigned a trial date during the Thursday hearing.
Mendiola, formerly referred to as Vera, posted bail Nov. 17, 1995. He failed to show up for an appointment with a probation counselor two weeks later, according to Columbian archives, and had not been heard from until recently.
He has been living at a residence in Beaverton, Ore., for the last two months, court records indicate. The records did not say how he came to be in custody after so long.
A co-defendant in the case, Elizabeth Ann Miller, 39, of Vancouver, was sentenced in January 1996 to 25 months in prison. She pleaded guilty to being the intermediary in the drug buy. Miller had also agreed to testify in Mendiola’s trial if and when he was found, according to a Columbian story published in 1996.
An acquaintance of Deck had contacted Miller and asked to purchase some heroin. Miller allegedly paged Mendiola and offered to buy a half-gram of the drug for $50. Deck, the acquaintance and Deck’s friend reportedly drove Miller to a residence near 39th and H streets in Vancouver, where she purchased the drug from a man named “Omar,” according to a probable cause affidavit filed in Superior Court.
Miller then gave the drug to the acquaintance. The three men reportedly went to a tavern on Main Street, where Deck took the heroin, “after which he appeared to fall asleep,” the affidavit says.
Deck’s friend drove his pickup to his girlfriend’s apartment and left Deck sitting upright, snoring in the passenger’s seat while he visited with his girlfriend. Deck’s girlfriend arrived about 45 minutes later, checked on him and found he was dead, court records said.
An autopsy conducted the next day revealed Deck had died from a drug overdose, according to court documents. Miller was arrested that day.
Mendiola was arrested soon after the death during an arranged drug deal by Vancouver police, the affidavit says.
