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JUNE 18-19, 2016
140th Year, No. 176
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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