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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (June 18, 2016)
WEEKEND EDITION RUSSIAN TRACK TEAM BANNED FROM RIO OLYMPICS ADVENTURE AT WALLOWA LAKE PACIFIC AG ACQUIRES CALAGRI SPORTS/1B LIFESTYLES/1C REGION/3A JUNE 18-19, 2016 140th Year, No. 176 $1.50 WINNER OF THE 2015 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD MILTON-FREEWATER Teen father charged with murder of infant son By PHIL WRIGHT East Oregonian Photo contributed by Allicia Stapleton In this undated contributed photo, Abby Smart poses with her son Dominic. Abby Smart, 17, was still wearing her McDonald’s uniform as she cried over the body of her infant boy in a hospital room. Abby’s sister, Allicia Stapleton, said she arrived minutes later to the emergency department at Providence St. Mary Medical Center, Walla Walla, and heard Abby wailing. Stapleton said she found her sister alone and clutching her 5-month-old baby, Dominic. He was in a little white blanket and was dead. Stapleton, 28, said is speaking for her sister because talking about the death of her son was too hard for her. Abby was a good mother, even for someone so young, she said, and the boy was the center of her life. “She’s broken,” Stapleton said. “Everybody’s kind of just broken.” The boy’s father, Evan Freel, 16, of Milton-Freewater, now faces charges of murder by abuse and fi rst-degree criminal mistreatment for the baby’s death. A Umatilla County grand jury on Wednesday indicted Freel, and the Umatilla County District Attorney’s Offi ce arraigned the teen Friday morning in circuit court in Pendleton. The state accuses Freel of infl icting deadly physical injury to the baby. Freel appeared via video from the juvenile jail at the Northern Oregon Regional Correctional Facilities, The Dalles. His court-appointed attorney, Herman Bylenga of Pendleton, entered pleas of not guilty for his client. Circuit Judge Christopher Brauer set Freel’s bail at $5 million and set July 8 at 9:30 a.m. for a bail hearing. No one from Freel’s family was in the Pendleton courtroom. Barbara Freel, Evan Freel’s grandmother and legal guardian, See INFANT/10A PENDLETON Fire dept. ignites talk with station options By ANTONIO SIERRA East Oregonian On Friday, Fire Chief Mike Ciraulo began the long process of selling the public on a new fi re station. About six people attended the fi rst in a series of meetings at Pendleton Fire Station No. 1, with Ciraulo presenting some of the potential sites for a new fi re station and why the current loca- tion and building are inadequate. To elaborate on the latter point, Ciraulo dispatched staff members to give attendees a tour of the fi re station. Alex Baty showed off the station’s decontamination room, which ironically also holds the facility’s bio-hazard waste bins. Jeff Perry went up to the workout room, which Ciraulo said he is on the verge of closing because of carcinogenic expo- sure. Perry said the gym’s prox- imity to the vehicle bay means occupants are directly exposed to exhaust from fi re trucks, as is a fi refi ghting student who uses the room’s couch as his sleeping quarters. With the department growing to accommodate the rising See STATION/10A Staff photo by Kathy Aney Anita “Cele” Westlake and Donna Henderson embrace as they meet each other for the fi rst time Friday at a family gathering in Pilot Rock. Westlake, raised by adoptive parents, also met her brother Ed Johns with whom she connected after they both took DNA tests through the Ancestry.com website. Siblings meet for fi rst time in their sixties Parents gave eight children up for adoption By KATHY ANEY East Oregonian Anita “Cele” Westlake is happily climbing her family tree for the fi rst time. Westlake fantasized about her biological family for most of her 66 years. Adopted by a Washington couple, Westlake grew up in a happy home, but always wondered about her roots. She’s wondering no more. The Orcas Island woman recently traveled to Pilot Rock to meet two biological siblings and dozens of cousins, aunts, uncles and other family members who she hadn’t known existed until a few months ago. Late last year, Westlake read an article about a woman who found her birth parents. “The article gave instructions about how to obtain an original birth certifi cate,” she said. In February, she applied and received a birth certifi cate that gave her parents’ names as Verna Etta Russell Fry and Robert Clair Fry. The space for the baby’s name was blank. Armed with her parents’ names, Westlake searched Ancestry.com for connections and found postings from Donna DeGraw, of Pendleton, who listed Verna and Robert on her family tree. Westlake and DeGraw exchanged a fl urry of messages and fi nally DeGraw wrote, “We are cousins.” The news sent Westlake spinning. See SIBLINGS/8A HERMISTON Brand new U.S. citizen details immigration process By JADE MCDOWELL East Oregonian Contributed photo by Francesca Gossler Francesca Gossler poses with her children, Jonathan and Monica Smith, outside of the Portland courtroom where she took the oath of United States citizenship Thursday. In the political battlefi eld of illegal immigration, one set of voices that often gets lost is those who immigrated to the United States legally from start to fi nish. One of those voices belongs to Francesca Gossler, a Mexican-born U.S. citizen living in Hermiston. She said after years of fi ghting her way through the immigration process it is hard when people assume she is undocumented. “Some of us worked hard to be here,” “I never, ever thought I would live in the United States.” — Francesca Gossler, a Mexican-born U.S. citizen living in Hermiston she said. “It’s frustrating because they categorize you.” Gossler traveled to Portland on Thursday to be sworn in as a citizen. Hers is just one path of many to citizen- ship, she said, so she is only telling her See CITIZEN/10A