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About Keizertimes. (Salem, Or.) 1979-current | View Entire Issue (June 8, 2018)
SINCE 1979 • VOLUME 39, NO. 36 SECTION A JUNE 8, 2018 $1.00 Bullet from Polk County shooting range pierces Keizer home By ERIC A. HOWALD Of the Keizertimes Shots fi red from an old quarry being used as a makeshift shooting range across the Willamette River made their most invasive presence known in Keizer Saturday, June 2. Four men were cited for reckless endangering and are expected to be in court later this month. At 10:06 a.m., Keizer police responded to a home in the 1300 block of Raphael Street North. Offi cer Jeremie Fletcher recovered a bullet, be- lieved to have been fi red from the shooting range, after it penetrated the home exterior wall and col- lided with a granite backsplash. “The bullet came to rest on a kitchen counter inside,” said Deputy Chief Jeff Kuhns of the Keiz- er Police Department (KPD). One of the home- owners was in the kitchen when the bullet came The foursome is scheduled to appear in Polk through the wall. KPD coordinated with the Polk County Sheriff ’s County Circuit Court June 26 at 1:15 p.m. Kuhns added that Keizer police are continuing to Offi ce that dispatched offi cers to the quarry. investigate the incident and additional “We went out there and found charges may be forthcoming. four people target practicing. All co- The incident follows a similar one operative and remorseful,” said Polk that occured in September 2017. On County Sheriff Mark Garton. Sept. 10, a hail of bullets drove visitors Emmett and Wyatt Davis, 18 and out of Sunset Park and residents out 20, respectively, of West Salem; Noah of their homes. Police offi cers con- Murayama, 22, of Keizer; and Austin fronted a group using the shooting Williams, 27, of Salem were all cited range and led offi cers to a car with an for reckless endangering and released in lieu of arrest. — Mark Garton AR-15 inside it but no one confessed Garton said even if the bullet had Polk vounty Sheriff to using it. Offi cers could not prove the AR-15 had been fi red or who had not traveled into a home, the four sus- done so, but they suspect someone pects were negligent. “The way they were shooting was not safe and we was using it to shoot at clay targets tossed into the air. could still have charged them,” Garton said. Please see BULLET, Page A5 “The way they were shooting was not safe.” McNary grad accepted to Stanford Llanos leading for valifornia this fall By DEREK WILEY Of the Keizertimes Crystal Llanos thought she might be hallucinating. So the McNary senior brought her laptop and showed the letter to her sister, the one congratulating her for being admitted to Stanford Univer- sity, which at 4.3 percent had its lowest admission rate in the school’s history. Lower than Harvard (4.59), Princeton (5.5) and Yale (6.9). Linda confi rmed the letter. It was real. “I honestly never thought I was going to get in from the start,” Llanos said. “I didn’t think that was a possibility for me.” Llanos’ dream school was the University of Southern California. She only applied to Stanford because two of her close friends did. But Llanos still worked hard on the ap- plication, spending an hour to two every night for three weeks, writing and then re- writing her answers. “I still don’t know exactly why or what inside told me to make this the best you possi- bly can, even with the mental- ity that I wasn’t going, that I wasn’t getting in,” Llanos said. “I’d like to think that it was just out of respect for the in- stitution. I knew that they re- ceived many applications and I kind of didn’t want to waste their time with not my best work. So I worked really, really hard on that. And I felt good about what I’d written. It was SALEM-KEIZER PUBLIv SvHOOLS/Bryan Anderson McNary senior vrystal Llanos, with her brother Luis, a second grader at Weddle Elementary, returned to her former elementary school in cap and gown last week for the parade of honor. exactly what I wanted to say and I was answering it in the most honest way possible.” In early December, Llanos met with her friends for din- ner to celebrate how hard they had worked on their Stanford applications. When her friends read they had not been accept- ed, Llanos didn’t think she had a chance. She waited hours to open her email from Stanford. After building up the cour- age, Llanos discovered she was deferred and Stanford was still considering her application. “It was a huge surprise,” Llanos said. “It felt like they had said yes because I was ex- pecting a no. I was expecting a Please see GRAD, Page A5 veltics graduate June 8 at fairgrounds McNary High School will say goodbye to the class of 2018 with a graduation cer- emony on Friday, June 8 at 2 p.m. at the Or- egon State Fairgrounds Pavilion. Louis Tiller, a math teacher at McNary for 19 years and a 2017 Crystal Apple award winner, is the keynote speaker. Senior Samuel Hernandez will also address the graduates. McNary has 16 va l e d i c t o r i a n s — S a m u e l Hernandez, Matthew Albright, Kailey Doutt, Austin Epperly, Sydnie Gould, Noah Grunberg, Jonas Honeyman, Crystal Llanos, Beau Reitz, Michael Reyes, Jenna Robbins, Madesyn Samples, Megan Schneider, Jessy Shore, Emma Snyder, and Casey Toavs; and four salutatorians— Sydney Hamilton, Josiah Metz, Sophia Salinas and Madeline Weathers. McNary’s band will play Pomp and Circumstance and The Star Spangled Banner. Principal Erik Jespersen, assisted by teachers Gary Bulen, Dawn Reichle Bailon, Laura Reid, and Joshua Rist, will present the graduating class. Keizer veteran celebrated as liberating hero Submitted George Thompson, a U.S. Army deteran, takes part in a Liberation Day parade in Pilsen, vzechia, last month. By ERIC A. HOWALD Of the Keizertimes U.S. Army Pvt. George Thompson never expected to return to the country he helped liberate from Nazi oc- cupation 50 years later. He never imagined that he would deliver a speech in Czechia following one by then-Sec- retary of State Madeline Al- bright and then meet the oldest son of Gen. George Patton, the man who led his fellow troops to victory in Eu- rope during World War II. However, Thompson has done all those things as a 14- time guest of honor during Liberation Day, the country’s annual celebration of tossing off the Nazi yoke in 1945. “There were 20,000 people standing shoulder-to-shoulder listening to little old me,” said Thompson, coyly. In 1945, Thompson was a 20-year-old tank mechanic with Lightning Power, the 16th Armored Division. He’d grown up in north-central Kansas and planned to enlist with the U.S. Army upon his high school graduation, but he was drafted two weeks before he could claim his diploma in person. “I was a tough, young country boy and they sent me to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for a tough and thorough training,” Thompson said. “The city boys couldn’t hack it. They would fall out of march and I never did.” Thompson, now 93, still re- tains a midwestern drawl when speaking even though he is sev- eral decades removed from that part of the country. After years of helping his father work on Skyline helps fund scoreboard PAGE B1 Gates scholar gets pick of schools PAGE A2 Teens moving on from Keizer Chamber PAGE B7 Downer to Clackamas PAGE B2 Please see VET, Page A7 ENHANCED COLLEGE STUDENT BONUS CASH PROGRAM GRADUATE TO A NEW SET OF WHEELS GET YOUR $750 BONUS CASH REGISTER at FordDrivesU.com Keizer 3555 River Road N, Keizer (503) 463- 4853 • www.skylineforddirect.com *Program #36236 – $750 Bonus Cash for current college students and recent college graduates who purchase or lease an eligible new 2017/2018/2019 model year Ford Fiesta, Focus, Fusion, EcoSport or Escape. Includes Hybrid and Fusion Energi models. Take new retail delivery from an authorized Ford Dealer’s stock by August 31, 2018. Not available on Focus RS. May not be used with other Ford private offers. Limit of 5 new eligible vehicle purchases or leases. U.S. residents only. Offer may differ by Region. See dealer for complete details and eligibility.
