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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2018
Oregon parents seek changes to hit-and-run law
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Anna Diet-
er-Eckert, 6, and her sister Abi-
gail Robinson, 11, were killed
in a hit-and-run crash while
playing in a pile of leaves in
front of their Forest Grove
home in 2013.
On Tuesday, their parents
asked state lawmakers to close
a loophole in state law that led
the Oregon Court of Appeals
to overturn the conviction of
the woman who hit the girls
and left the scene.
“In making this change,
someone in the future already
trying to survive their per-
fect storm will not be faced
with what we have had to
go through over the last four
years, years of reliving our
tragedy,” said Susan Diet-
er-Robinson, Anna’s mother
and Abigail’s stepmother. “If
the law changes, our girls will
have had a small piece of mak-
ing that happen.”
State Reps. Jeff Barker,
D-Aloha, and Andy Olson,
R-Albany, co-sponsored a bill
this year to modify the state’s
hit-and-run law to require
motorists who collide with
something to stop and investi-
gate what they struck. The bill
also would require a motorist
who has left a scene to notify
authorities once they realize
they had caused an injury or
death.
Forest Grove resident
Cinthya Garcia, then 19, drove
into a pile of leaves at the edge
of a residential Forest Grove
street at the prompting of her
boyfriend and brother, who
were passengers in the vehicle,
Paris Achen/Capital Bureau
Left to right, Tom Robinson and Susan Dieter-Robinson, parents of two little girls killed in a hit-and-run crash while they
were playing in the leaves at their home in Forest Grove in 2013. To their right is Pam Olson, wife of Rep. Andy Olson,
R-Albany, a co-sponsor of a bill to change the state’s hit-and-run law.
according to court documents.
It is believed that the young
girls, who had been playing in
the leaves, may have been hid-
ing from view.
Garcia later said knew that
she had hit something, but she
didn’t know what it was until
later that day. About five min-
utes after the girls were hit,
one of the passengers rode his
bike back to the scene.
“He engaged with my hus-
band who was frantic and in
the process of calling 911,”
Susan Dieter-Robinson said.
“He rode his bike back home
not even a half a block from
the scene and told the driver
and the other passenger what
had happened. They hit two
small children.”
After finding out, they
drove to Walmart and went
and bought ice cream, Diet-
er-Robinson said.
“The next day, they washed
the car, attempting to get rid
of the evidence that may have
still been there,” she said.
Report: Sen. Kruse engaged in
‘unwelcome physical contact’
By CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
SALEM — An outside
investigator has found state
Sen. Jeff Kruse engaged in
a “longstanding pattern” of
“unwelcome physical contact”
with women in the workplace,
despite warnings not to touch
women at work.
The investigator’s report
was made public Tuesday, a
little more than three months
after the first allegations of
unwanted touching, made by
a fellow state senator, came to
light.
Kruse, R-Roseburg, could
not be reached for comment
Tuesday evening.
Two sitting Democratic
lawmakers — Sen. Sara Gelser,
D-Corvallis, and Sen. Eliza-
beth Steiner Hayward, D-Bea-
verton — formally accused
Kruse of unwanted touching
last fall.
Both Gelser and Steiner
Hayward had previously
raised informal complaints —
which remain private — about
Kruse’s conduct in 2016. Kruse
was at the time warned to stop
by legislative counsel and leg-
islative Employee Services.
“What is clear and undis-
puted is that by March 3, 2016,
Sen. Kruse was on notice that
female senators had com-
plained about him, and he was
given specific guidelines about
conduct to avoid with women
in the workplace in the future,”
wrote
investigator
Dian
Rubanoff. “By his own admis-
sion, Sen. Kruse chose not to
make changes in his behav-
ior because he did not know
which females found his con-
duct to be offensive, and he did
not want to change his behav-
ior with everyone.”
The investigator inter-
viewed several other women
who worked in the Capitol who
allege that the senator would
hug them, stand too close,
touch heads with them, and
touch their bodies in ways that
made them feel uncomfortable.
The investigator also inter-
viewed Kruse and his col-
Timothy J. Gonzalez/Statesman Journal
State Sen. Jeff Kruse is under fire for sexual harassment.
leagues in the Senate.
Kruse said he had “no rec-
ollection” about many of the
allegations, including spe-
cific incidents reported by
Gelser, but did not deny cer-
tain other claims. For exam-
ple, he acknowledged that he
may have given a young staffer
in his office “frontal hugs” and
may have told her she was
“sexy.”
The investigator found
that two young women who
worked in his office in the 2017
legislative session had reported
feeling uncomfortable due to
his touching, and that a young
lobbyist reported late last
year that he had “cupped” her
behind at an event at the gover-
nor’s office in September.
“Senator Kruse’s hugging
and touching of women not
only continued after the warn-
ings he received, the evidence
shows that the conduct actu-
ally escalated during the 2017
session, at least with respect to
the two law students assigned
to his office,” Rubanoff wrote.
In the conclusion to the
report, Rubanoff said that she
was “concerned that if Sen.
Kruse is allowed to stay in the
Legislature without specific
conditions that he needs to sat-
isfy, and if there is not a con-
tinuing prospect of serious con-
sequences if he fails to satisfy
those conditions, he may ‘fall
back into old patterns’ again.”
Rubanoff also said she was
worried about the “message
that will be sent to women in
the workplace regarding the
futility of coming forward if
there are not meaningful con-
sequences about Sen. Kruse’s
failure to heed the warnings
he received” from legislative
counsel and the legislature’s
human resources officer after
the first informal reports of
inappropriate behavior were
made in 2016.
Gelser made the first public
allegation of Kruse inappropri-
ately touching her in October,
followed by Steiner Hayward.
Steiner Hayward declined
to comment on the report
through her office.
Prior to the report’s public
posting Tuesday, Gelser said
in an email that she had not
yet read the report and did not
want to comment on it before
reading it.
The four-member Sen-
ate Committee on Conduct,
chaired by Sen. Mark Hass,
D-Beaverton, will convene
Feb. 22. The committee is
tasked with recommending
what action the Senate should
take, if any, and then the Sen-
ate as a whole will vote on the
recommendation.
In a public letter addressed
to Kruse, Gelser and Steiner
Hayward and posted on the
Legislature’s website Tues-
day evening, Hass said that the
committee would take testi-
mony from the investigator as
well as the three senators.
In November, legislative
administration signed a con-
tract with Rubanoff, an attor-
ney with the Lake Oswego firm
Peck, Rubanoff & Hatfield PC
to investigate the allegations
for $290 an hour.
House Speaker Tina Kotek,
D-Portland, said Monday that
she thought that the Legisla-
ture should reassess the way it
handles formal complaints and
investigations of harassment.
“I think what we have seen
in this whole complaint, the
two complaints, is, we have a
process that on paper sounded
really good and is one of the
model processes in the coun-
try,” Kotek said. “It’s clunky.
It’s moving as quickly as it
can, but it’s just, there are some
gaps, and I think we’ll have
to reassess it after this whole
thing runs its course.”
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“With a tip from a neighbor,
the driver and the passengers
were questioned by the police
a couple of days later, and the
truth was revealed.”
A Washington County jury
found Garcia guilty of two
counts of hit-and-run for fail-
ure to identify herself as a
driver in a deadly crash. At
sentencing, Dieter-Robinson
asked that Garcia receive no
jail time. She was sentenced
to three years’ probation and
250 hours’ community ser-
vice. Several months later, she
appealed the conviction.
The Court of Appeals deci-
sion to overturn Garcia’s con-
viction of hit-and-run in May
prompted the lawmakers to
propose “Anna and Abigail’s
Law.”
The court identified a gap
in the existing hit-and-run law
when it issued its opinion, said
Bracken McKey, a prosecu-
tor in Washington County who
prosecuted Garcia.
“Think about Oregon’s hit-
and-run law as the Court of
Appeals has now defined it.
You can be less than a block
away and moments later in
time when you know you have
run over and seriously injured
another person, you have zero
responsibility to help them, no
responsibility to call 911, no
responsibility to take steps that
might save a child’s life or at
the very least lessen the emo-
tional burden on a grieving
family,” McKey said.
“April and Abigail’s Law”
would help the “most vulner-
able, the cyclists, the jogger,
the small child who’s chasing
a ball and maybe the next lit-
tle girl in a leaf pile,” he said.
The Capital Bureau is a
collaboration between EO
Media Group and Pamplin
Media Group.
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