Top Stories: Body-cam footage from police shooting: Hazel Dell homicide; Warren gets life in prison

• Vancouver police released body cam and drone footage from the Sept. fatal shooting

2. Woman’s death being investigated as a homicide in west Hazel Dell

The Clark County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a suspicious death as a homicide after a woman was found dead inside a home in west Hazel Dell Tuesday night.

Deputies and Clark County Fire District 6 responded about 9:40 p.m. to a medical call for an unresponsive person at a home near the intersection of Northwest 26th Avenue and 99th Street, north of Vancouver.

• Clark County Sheriff’s office called the death suspicious
• Update: 78-year-old retired nurse identified as victim in west Hazel Dell homicide

3. Boy, 12, assaults bus driver, climbs on top of school bus, says Clark County Sheriff’s Office

A 12-year-old Battle Ground boy allegedly assaulted a school bus driver and climbed on top of the bus after school Monday.

Authorities did not release the boy or the bus driver’s names.

• Deputies talked the boy off the bus after about a half hour

4. Kirkland Warren gets life in prison in murders of Meshay Melendez and daughter Layla Stewart

Although Kirkland Warren will serve a life sentence in prison, friends and family of the Vancouver mother and daughter he shot to death in March 2023 say they don’t feel justice was served.

No sentence, they told the judge, would bring back Meshay Melendez and 7-year-old Layla Stewart, nor match the pain and grief caused by their deaths.

• Warren maintains his innocence even after pleading guilty last month to murder and entering an Alford plea to child molestation charges

5. Former ‘eyesore’ Smith Tower is getting its first major interior and exterior renovation in decades

Smith Tower Apartments goes by many names: Vancouver’s beer can. The Capitol Records Tower of Vancouver. Mid-Columbia Manor.

The cylindrical building, most often referred to simply as Smith Tower, will be renovated for the first time in many years.

• 15-story Vancouver building has 170 studio and one-bedroom apartments