Are we in for more rain or will the sun hold out? Get a bead on the weekend with local weather coverage.
Here are some of the stories that grabbed readers’ attention this week.
Drivers beware: If you’re a Vancouver resident with out-of-state plates, the city is on the prowl.
The first wave of volunteers from the Neighbors On Watch group patrolled Vancouver neighborhoods last weekend on the lookout for out-of-state vehicles parked in residential neighborhoods. License plates were recorded and vehicles that could be out of compliance received an informational pamphlet on the law.
Some 10 percent of Vancouver residents have failed to register their vehicles in Washington state, and it’s costing the city more than $300,000 annually in Transportation Benefit District funding.
Deva Yamashiro, the Hawaiian native who embodied aloha spirit in her adopted home of Vancouver via dedicated cultural education and joyous celebration, died Monday after a long battle with cancer. She was 62.
“We’ve all been blessed and impacted by this larger than life person,” Yamashiro’s son, Kaloku Holt, posted on Facebook. “We ask that you remember all the great times … and make her proud by carrying on and staying strong. We will continue to be inspired by her.”
Yamashiro’s family and fans were thrilled to swarm Vancouver City Hall during a council meeting last month in order to accept the honor of having her birthday, Sept. 15, declared Deva Leinani Aiko Yamashiro Day in Vancouver. But “Aunty Deva,” as everyone loved to call her, could not attend because of her declining health.
Any other time of day, it takes Diane Hassett about two minutes to drive the two miles between Southeast 164th Avenue and the Interstate 205 interchanges on state Highway 14; but during her morning commute, it’s 20 minutes — and that’s if everything goes right.
When it doesn’t, then her 40 minute, one-way commute can take an hour.
“What makes it so screwed up is if anything happens on I-5 the entire world is on I-205, and it can’t handle it,” she said. That complicates things for all the people also trying to merge onto I-205 and in turn chokes up traffic on westbound Highway 14.
When that happens, all the other drivers trying to make it to work on time get “that deer in the headlights look,” she said.
For the last four years, Hassett has commuted from her home in Washougal to her job in Vancouver. She’s watched the traffic get worse on Highway 14, especially between 164th and I-205.
A homeless man staying in a makeshift shelter had an expectation of privacy under the Washington state Constitution — just like people in traditional homes — when police peeked inside his dwelling. That’s the finding of a Washington Court of Appeals opinion that was published in part Tuesday and could have broader implications on privacy rights for the homeless.
The decision affirms a Clark County Superior Court judge’s 2015 ruling that Vancouver police officers violated William R. Pippin’s privacy rights when they looked inside his tarp, despite him being camped illegally in downtown Vancouver.
Pippin was subsequently charged with methamphetamine possession, but his case was dismissed after Judge Scott Collier granted the defense’s motion to suppress the drug as evidence, because Pippin’s privacy rights were violated.
However, the appeals court also ruled that Pippin’s case should be remanded to Superior Court after reversing part of Collier’s ruling. In the unpublished portion of the opinion, the appeals court found that Collier used the incorrect legal standard for determining whether exigent circumstances of officer safety justified them looking inside Pippin’s dwelling without a warrant.
A Vancouver man was identified as the person killed late Monday night in a wrong-way crash on Interstate 5 in the Salmon Creek area, according to the Washington State Patrol.
Seth J. Cusick, 43, was driving south in the northbound lanes of the freeway about 8:40 p.m. when his 2011 Ford Escape collided head-on with a 2000 Volkswagen Jetta driven by a Woodland teen near the Northeast 134th Street exit, according to the State Patrol.
Cusick was pronounced dead at the scene. The other driver, Chloe Yates, 17, was critically injured and transported to PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center, according to Washington State Patrol spokesman Trooper Will Finn.
