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Here are a few of the stories that resonated this week with columbian.com readers.
Dolores McClelland is having a problem with Comcast, and it isn’t the reception on her TV.
“I can’t get them out here to take all their wires,” said the 83-year-old landlady of an apartment complex in Vancouver’s Maplewood neighborhood. “They have absolutely destroyed my apartment. The wires are strung here and everywhere, poking holes from my walls, and they never got permission to do that.”
But Comcast says it has at least one customer in the complex and that it did everything by the book.
An under-construction house was destroyed and two adjacent homes were damaged by arson early Thursday morning, according to fire investigators. It was the second Vancouver arson at a construction site in a 24-hour span.
Firefighters were called to 5712 N.E. 47th St. at about 1:30 a.m. Thursday for reports of flames coming through the roof of an unoccupied two-story house that was still being built, according to the Vancouver Fire Department.
Heavy smoke was seen from several miles away, the agency said.
An open government advocate is suing Clark County over Councilor David Madore’s Facebook page.
Arthur West of Olympia is filing a suit in Cowlitz County Superior Court against Clark County alleging the county “silently and unreasonably withheld records” from Madore’s controversial Facebook page.
West filed a public records request with Clark County on July 25, asking for public records concerning Clark County business from Madore’s Facebook page. The county did not provide records after Madore signed an affidavit saying there are no public records on his Facebook account.
Jackson Gleason’s family had planned to meet with doctors Aug. 4 about performing a tracheotomy on the boy, who almost drowned last month in Vancouver and had been on life support for two weeks.
The 9-year-old’s aunt, Stephanie Felion, said the family was bracing for the operation to help Jackson breathe, but he didn’t need it. That morning, the boy woke up, and the doctors took him off his ventilator.
His condition has been improving substantially ever since, Felion said.
“He’s shocking everybody at this point. Every morning during rounds, the doctors say how pleased they are with his progress,” she said.
Authorities say Brent Luyster, a former Vancouver man with a violent criminal past, was standing on the porch of a rural Woodland home when he shot two of his friends to death. He then allegedly barged inside the house and shot two women, only one of whom survived.
What occurred in a few moments now has prosecutors facing weeks of deliberation: Should Luyster face the death penalty if he is convicted of aggravated murder?
Besides demonstrating whether justice is served, their decision could cost local taxpayers more than $1 million. And as it stands now, it’s unlikely a death sentence would be carried out for many years.
