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Here are several of the stories that drew our readers’ attention this week.
When Larnell Bruce learned about what happened to his son, he had a surreal moment in which he thought he was hearing about an event from the 1960s.
Police told him that a white supremacist got behind the wheel of a vehicle and intentionally ran over and killed his son and namesake. Larnell Bruce Jr. was just 19 years old.
“I felt like what happened to my son is no less than modern-day lynching,” the 51-year-old Vancouver man said. “I’ve never felt hate on this kind of level in my entire life.”
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Thrift store Value Village is closing its Vancouver location after property owner Dick Hannah Dealership declined to renew the company’s lease when it expires at the end of the year. The store will become a Dodge Ram truck dealership and is aiming for a February opening.
“We knew about it a little while ago,” said store manager Steve Calderon. “The lease actually went through next year, but apparently there was an option to terminate early and the landlord opted to take advantage of that.”
The store’s last day is Nov. 12. Store managers announced the closure at a staff meeting before opening Tuesday morning. Many employees said they were devastated by the news and the prospect of facing unemployment before the holidays.
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In his two decades as a code enforcement officer, Kevin Pridemore has never seen anything quite like the house on the corner of Northeast 112th and Rosewood avenues.
During Pridemore’s first trip out to the Orchards house that sits across the street from Covington Middle School, he counted 11 code violations.
“It was the first time in 22 years I had to go photo by photo by photo and count the violations,” he said.
Among those violations: inoperable vehicles in an urban zone, debris in an urban zone, occupied travel trailers, storage containers without permits, building without permits and illegal commercial storage.
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People don’t always understand what First Citizen award-winners are all about, a presenter said Wednesday before handing the 2016 honor to Bob Knight.
“A lot of people think it’s about their day job,” Jennifer Rhoads said.
Knight certainly has a distinguished record there, serving as commander of Vancouver Barracks from 1997 to 2000 and helping the historic U.S. Army post transition into its civilian role.
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Cal Szueber resigned as the head football coach at Fort Vancouver after Friday’s season finale, but he remains frustrated with a series of events that led to his exit from the program.
“I have to stand up to tell the truth. They released medical information (about me) that wasn’t true. It went out to the kids in a football meeting,” Szueber said.
The Columbian has confirmed that a meeting did take place with Fort Vancouver officials and the football team on Oct. 17, and the players were told that Szueber would not be in charge of the football program for the final two weeks of the season.
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Juan Rubio’s family has been scrambling to secure its finances since a hay bale apparently fell on him Sunday in Brush Prairie, leaving him paralyzed.
Apparently, because no one is entirely sure what happened.
“He doesn’t remember much, and they said that’s probably because of the concussion,” said Lindsey Rubio, Juan’s wife.
Lindsey said Juan started work at the Lagler dairy farm that day at 2 a.m. No one was around when he was hurt, and he called 911 at around 4:30 Sunday morning.
Lindsey said he was moving hay bales around, and it appeared one on top of a stack fell and hit him. Some of the bales weigh around 1,300 pounds, she said.
Juan Rubio, 31, broke five vertebrae in his lower back and severed his spinal cord. He’ll never walk again.
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