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O CTOBER 17, 2012
S EATTLE , W ASHINGTON
V OLUME XXXV, N O . 2
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C HALLENGING P EOPLE TO S HAPE A B ETTER F UTURE N OW
KIDS’ SAFETY
Vigorous
Debate
on Pot
Leslie Braxton, Steve
Sarich square off with
illuminating results
By Sarah Elson
Special to The Skanner News
PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED
M
Firefighter Cardell Thompson reads ‘No Dragons for Tea’ to a large group of children, their parents and caretakers
Oct. 10 at the Columbia Library. October is fire prevention month, so the Seattle Fire Department is talking to
children and families about fire safety at the city’s public libraries. Check the Seattle Public Libraries’ web
page: /www.spl.org to find out which library is hosting the next “Firefighter Story time”.
County Begins to Bury Indigents
After years of no funding, Yakima plans a mass grave for unclaimed
By Dan Catchpole
Yakima Herald-Republic
YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) —
The ashes of 85 people sit in
cardboard boxes, five urns to a
box, in a walk-in cooler at the
Yakima County Coroner’s
office
The urns — simple, brown
plastic containers — are cheap
and utilitarian. Each is labeled
with the most basic information:
name, gender, dates of birth and
death, and the funeral home that
handled the body.
One of the oldest is Harry
Brockwell. Born in 1911 in Ten-
nessee, he worked as a farm
laborer in the Yakima Valley
before he died at 90. There are a
brother and sister born nearly
two years apart. Both died
shortly after their meth-addicted
mother gave birth. One man was
a fisherman, another a chef and
one woman was a beautician.
With varied lives and deaths
spanning more than a century,
they share this: They had no
money for burial, and no one
came forward to claim their
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remains.
Now, the county will bury
them in a mass grave in Tahoma
Cemetery sometime later this
month or in early November.
The dead deserve a respectful
resting place, but for more than
a decade the county hasn’t had
money for a burial, Yakima
County Coroner Jack Hawkins
said.
Thanks to help from the city
of Yakima, which owns and
operates Tahoma Cemetery, and
local funeral homes, especially
Shaw and Sons Funeral Direc-
tors, the county is burying its
uncollected dead. They will be
buried together under a commu-
nal marker. But the county and
cemetery will catalog the loca-
tion of each person.
Hawkins hopes family mem-
bers or friends come forward to
claim remains. But if not, bury-
ing them together is better than
nothing, he said.
``Before, they were kept in a
drawer here or on a rack at a
funeral home. It’s a way to give
them a final resting place. It’s
See DEAD on page 3
arijuana legalization is on the
Washington state ballot this year,
and a debate over Initiative 502
drew a large crowd at the University of
Washington on Wednesday, Oct. 10.
The event turned out to be highly engag-
ing thanks to the banter between two of the
debaters. Rev. Leslie Braxton is the senior
pastor at New Beginnings Christian Fellow-
ship in Renton, which he helped organize in
2005. The anti-drug pastor also lectures
about police accountability, anti-drug advo-
cacy and racial conflicts.
His opponent, Steve Sarich, is a medical
marijuana activist and dispensary owner
who currently lives in Kent. The two men
represented the extreme sides of the issue.
At one point Sarich even pulled out a mari-
juana plant and plopped it on the desk in
front of him.
Sarich supports legalization but argued
that I-502, which would legalize and tax
sales of up to 1 ounce of marijuana, isn’t
really legalization because marijuana will
still be classified as a schedule one drug. He
also noted the flaws of the new DUI provi-
sion for cannabis impairment that is includ-
ed in I-502.
Braxton is vehemently opposed to drug
use, but he believes the war on drugs is a
form of institutionalized racism and that
decriminalizing marijuana will create a
more just society.
The DUI provision and its per se limit of
5 nanograms of active THC per liter of
blood was the topic discussed most. Seattle
City Attorney Pete Holmes, who supports
legalizing marijuana, said the per se limit
was set because research suggests users will
be impaired once they reach that level and it
is important that users do not drive when
they are impaired.
“Over a certain amount of time the active
THC will dissipate in your bloodstream,”
See DEBATE on page 3
Longview Soldier Committed Suicide
Report shows Mikayla Bragg had tried to kill herself in the past
LONGVIEW, Wash. (AP) — A 20-year-
old soldier from Longview killed herself in
Afghanistan last December as she served
alone in a guard tower, where she was sta-
tioned despite a long history of mental-
health issues that was not communicated to
her supervisors, according to a new report.
An Army investigation determined that
Spc. Mikayla Bragg’s commanding officers
were never told she had made an apparent
previous suicide attempt while serving
stateside in Fort Knox, even though officials
at the Kentucky base knew of it, The Daily
News of Longview reported. The newspa-
per obtained the investigation report
through a Freedom of Information Act
request.
``I found out after her death she had been
seen (at Fort Knox) for issues like this. Of
course the information was never provided
to her commander (in Afghanistan),’’ wrote
one frustrated Army captain, whose name
was redacted. ``Real effective policy they
have in place.’’
Among the findings were that her superi-
ors weren’t told she had spent 45 days in an
Army hospital at Fort Knox for mental-
health treatment just months before she
See SUICIDE on page 3