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THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, MAy 18, 2019
Former Oregon Ducks star wrestles armed suspect to ground
By JIM RYAN
The Oregonian
Parkrose High School’s
football coach wrestled a
suspect to the ground Friday
amid a report of a man with
a gun near the northeast Port-
land school.
No one was hurt. Parents
and students reported Coach
Keanon Lowe, one of Ore-
gon’s most prominent high
school and college football
players of the past decade,
tackled the armed male sus-
pect, who was later taken into
custody.
“I’m just happy every-
one was OK,” Lowe said as
he walked out of the school’s
stand-alone Fine Arts build-
ing into a school parking lot.
“I’m happy I was able to be
there for the kids and for the
community.”
He said he was tired and
wanted to go home to his
loved ones. Several people
greeted him in the parking lot.
Two men shook Lowe’s hand
and one woman hugged him
and told him, “Thank you.”
Lowe, also Parkrose’s
head track and field coach,
apparently works as a secu-
rity guard at the school.
Police said there are no
additional suspects.
Senior Alexa Pope said
she was in her government
class in the Fine Arts build-
ing when Lowe came in look-
ing for a senior classmate, an
18-year-old male student,
who wasn’t there.
About 10 minutes before
the end of class, the student
appeared in the doorway in a
black trench coat and pulled
out a long gun from beneath
his coat, said senior Justyn
Wilcox, who also was in the
room.
The student didn’t point
the gun at anyone, Pope said.
Classmates were stunned,
Trial: Expected to close next week
some screamed and others
ran out.
“We all couldn’t process
this,” she said.
Wilcox yelled “Run!” and
grabbed Pope’s arm. They
fled out the classroom’s back
door, which leads to another
classroom. The armed stu-
dent was at the classroom’s
main door.
“As I was running, I was
just like, Lord don’t let this be
it,” Pope said.
She said the suspect stu-
dent had told classmates that
he could buy guns when he
turned 18 and she knew he
owned one.
Chinook: Hope for environmental restoration
Continued from Page A1
Continued from Page A1
Copell allegedly helped
Wilkins bludgeon 71-year-
old Howard Vinge to death,
stuff his body in a bag and
dump it down an embank-
ment along U.S Highway 30
east of Astoria.
The couple allegedly
absconded with Vinge’s
RV, with a car in tow. They
abandoned the RV after it
broke down on U.S. High-
way 26 near Hamlet and
drove Vinge’s car to Ari-
zona, where they were later
apprehended.
Alexander
Hamalian,
Copell’s defense attorney,
had her recount a life of
physical and sexual abuse
leading to a similar dynamic
of subservience in her rela-
tionship with Wilkins.
“You did as you were
told,” he said repeatedly in
court on Friday.
The couple met Vinge in
2016 in Newport, where he
offered them a place to stay
in the RV in exchange for
labor. They lived with Vinge
for about two months before
his murder, which allegedly
occurred following an argu-
ment between Vinge and
Wilkins in Astoria over
moving the RV.
Vinge died of blunt-force
trauma from a driftwood
Colin Murphey/The Astorian
Adeena Copell testifies in court
Friday during a murder trial in
connection with the death of
Howard Vinge in 2016.
club. Copell testified to hav-
ing heard and seen part of
the attack, but not taking
part. After having beaten
someone to death in front of
her, Wilkins made her fear
for her life, Copell said.
Copell had initially cor-
roborated a story with
Wilkins about Vinge’s
death, but later confessed to
police that he killed Vinge.
While in custody, she
attempted to recant her con-
fession and say Wilkins had
killed Vinge in self-defense
after he attacked the couple.
She passed notes back and
forth with Wilkins in jail in
an attempt to corroborate a
story.
Hamalian,
describing
Copell as trapped between
a dead friend and a lover,
asked Copell what made her
ultimately choose to come
clean.
“Because it was the right
thing to do,” Copell said,
at points breaking down in
tears. The police “told me
that somebody had dropped
Howard on the side of the
road like garbage.”
“That was the breaking
point?” Hamalian asked.
“Howard wasn’t gar-
bage,” Copell said.
In his cross-examination,
Deputy District Attorney
Beau Peterson recounted
the chain of events before,
during and after Vinge’s
death, and how Copell
had initially not admit-
ted to authorities what had
happened.
Peterson also pointed out
how Copell had attempted
to clean the motor home
after the disposal of Vinge’s
body.
Peterson asked Copell
about her comment that
Vinge was not garbage. “Yet
that is how you guys treated
Mr. Vinge after he was mur-
dered,” he added.
Copell’s trial is expected
to close next week.
Subdivision: ‘I don’t see how we can
approve something that is substandard’
Continued from Page A1
hearing on the matter, the
Smith Lake residents could
provide testimony, he said.
One of the sticking
points in Caplinger’s appeal
involves a condition upheld
by planning commissioners
to require the construction of
a secondary access road to
Ridge Road for emergency
vehicles.
The Clear Lake subdivi-
sion would be developed at
the end of what is already a
long, dead-end road. Previ-
ous development along Kal-
mia Avenue required vari-
ances to extend the road. Gil
Gramson had to seek a third
variance to extend the road
even farther to create the
new subdivision, as well as
a variance to develop in the
wetland.
A secondary access road
was an important safety
measure, planning commis-
sioners argued in April. Cro-
nin suggested commission-
ers require Gil Gramson to
improve an existing gravel
road that crosses several
other properties. Gramson
will need to get agreements
from the other property own-
ers to fulfill this condition.
Planning Commissioner
Christine Bridgens was the
sole vote against the project,
concerned primarily about
the quality of the proposed
access road. Commissioners
Paul Mitchell, Ryan Lampi
and Mike Moha voted in
favor of the project.
The road, even after
improvement, would not be
up to the city’s standards
for new roads, Bridgens
contended.
“I don’t see how we can
approve something that is
substandard, I don’t get
that,” she said.
In his appeal, Caplinger
noted: “The likelihood
of obtaining an easement
and building this second-
ary access road was not
explored in the staff report
or properly conditioned in
the approval, and the con-
tinuing unresolved second-
ary access is materially det-
rimental to public welfare.”
Improving the road could
also impact surrounding
wetlands, which are valu-
able community assets, he
argued.
“Allowing a string of sub-
divisions over locally signif-
icant wetlands, when there
are other locations available
for residential development
is neither a reasonable nor an
environmentally responsible
exercise of due diligence by
staff and the Planning Com-
mission,” Caplinger wrote.
Skip Urling, a former
city planner, represented
Gil Gramson in April and
argued that the project will
not impact much of the
wetlands. He also argued
against the requirement
to develop the secondary
access in full. Given the mix
of ownership along the road,
the Clear Lake subdivision
developers did not want to
get stuck building a “road to
nowhere,” he said.
Caplinger
and
Rod
Gramson
also
argued
against allowing more vari-
ances in an area that has
already required variances
for past development — a
point Lampi and Bridgens
noted during the Planning
Commission‘s discussion
about the project in April.
Caplinger wrote that city
code indicates prior vari-
ances allowed in a neighbor-
hood should not be consid-
ered by city boards like the
Planning Commission when
making decisions about new
projects. But that’s exactly
what the Planning Commis-
sion and staff did, he wrote.
He and Rod Gramson
continue to have concerns
about what development in
the area could mean for the
neighboring property now
owned and preserved by
the North Coast Land Con-
servancy. The land con-
servancy had asked that
the developer be required
to build a wildlife fence to
keep people and dogs out of
protected areas.
Dave Killen/The Oregonian
Parkrose High School in Portland was under threat from a
gunman on Friday afternoon.
Pulling them together
To the north of the Tansy
Creek property lives Roble
Anderson, whose family
had owned the land since
the 1950s, but who always
felt as if he was living on
Chinook land. Rather than
sell to a developer, he and
his sister, Mergrez Stratton,
offered the land two years
ago to the Chinook at sig-
nificantly
below-market
value.
“I understand what they
went though and what’s
happened since and their
struggle to be recognized
and so forth,” Ander-
son said. “I thought that it
would be a thing that would
help pull them together
more, if they had a piece
of property on this historic
site.”
The Chinook Tribal
Council voted to pursue
the purchase and began
fundraising. They gathered
around $125,000 in grants
from organizations such
as the Oregon Community
Foundation, Meyer Memo-
rial Trust, Collins Founda-
tion and others. Another
$75,000 came from indi-
vidual donations, many
gathered from screenings
of the new documentary,
“Promised Land,” about the
tribe’s struggle for federal
recognition.
The Chinook plan a cul-
tural center similar to the
Cathlapotle
Plankhouse
built in the Ridgefield
National Wildlife Refuge
at the site of a former Chi-
nookan village once visited
by the Corps of Discovery.
“We are putting in grants
for building structures out
there, like a plankhouse
and a utility structure,”
said Rachel Cushman, sec-
retary and treasurer for the
tribe. “Hopefully, we can
do some environmental res-
toration work out there as
well (and) not just have it
be another building site, but
stream restoration and hab-
itat restoration.”
How that restoration
looks is yet to be deter-
mined, Johnson said. The
Chinook continue fundrais-
ing through a GoFundMe
page titled, “Preserve Tansy
Point Treaty Grounds.”
The Chinook will also
reach out to Warrenton and
the Port of Astoria about
expanding access to local
plants such as basketgrass
and other natural resources,
Johnson said.
The Tansy Point site is
the first in the Clatsop ter-
ritory the Chinook Indian
Nation owns, aside from
individual property own-
ers. The acquisition is bit-
tersweet, given the group’s
history of disenfranchise-
ment by European settlers.
Battle for recognition
Dart’s original charge
was to move the Chinookan
people east of the Cascade
Mountains, Johnson said.
“We were able to con-
vince him that was not
the right thing to do,”
he said. “We were say-
ing what we’ve said all
the way through to today,
which is, ‘We’re going to
stay with the bones of our
ancestors.’”
But the Tansy Point
Treaty, meant to give the
Chinook a reservation
including Willapa Bay and
running south to the mouth
of the Columbia River, was
never ratified by Congress,
thus beginning a continual
struggle for payment and
recognition. The Chinook
briefly gained recognition
near the end of former Pres-
ident Bill Clinton’s admin-
istration, but had their status
rescinded shortly thereaf-
ter under former President
George W. Bush.
The Chinook have gone
to court multiple times
seeking proper payment
and recognition. The most
recent lawsuit, filed in 2017
against the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, is still ongoing.
The tribe’s lawsuit
argues that the Chinook
should be recognized
because of the Tansy Point
Treaty, along with more
than a century of legal bat-
tles. Recognition provides
more access to money for
cultural preservation and
health care.
The lawsuit seeks access
to a trust, created in 1970
and now totaling more
than $500,000, to compen-
sate the Lower Chinook
and Clatsop people for sto-
len land. The tribe received
regular account statements
until 2015, when John-
son was informed that as
an unrecognized tribe, they
did not have the right to get
information or access.
The battle for recogni-
tion is a particularly sore
subject for Johnson, who
works as education director
for the federally recognized
Shoalwater Bay Tribe and
has helped create linguis-
tic and archaeological pro-
grams for other tribes. The
Chinook face suicide, sub-
stance abuse and other sim-
ilar issues as other tribes,
albeit without recognition,
a reservation or the related
services, he said.
“For us to be able to sur-
vive here in the end, we
need to be able to have land
that’s ours that we have the
right to manage and gov-
ern,” he said.
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