TRUMP
MOVES TO
BUILD THE
WALL 6A
36/25
BUCKS
DOMINATE
THE MATS
SPORTS/1B
THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2017
141st Year, No. 73
One dollar
WINNER OF THE 2016 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
Homicide suspect dead after standoff
Wanted Washington man killed himself in Pendleton motel
By TIM TRAINOR and PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
A suspect in a western Washington
double homicide is dead after an hours-
long standoff Wednesday at a Pendleton
motel.
According to the Mason County
Sheriff’s Offi ce, Jared Abernathy was
suspected in a double homicide in
Shelton, Washington. The sheriff’s
offi ce reported Abernathy shot and killed
himself inside his hotel room.
The standoff at the Motel 6, 325
S.E. Nye Ave., started about 1 p.m.
and ended about 8:40 p.m. Dozens
of police were involved, including
several from Oregon State Police and
the Pendleton Police Department.
A Pendleton offi cer just before 1 p.m.
noticed a 2006 Chevrolet Equinox asso-
ciated with Abernathy parked behind the
Motel 6 just off Interstate 84, according to
a written statement from Pendleton police
chief Stuart Roberts. U.S. Marshals soon
arrived to help with the investigation and
apprehension.
Police set up a perimeter around the
hotel, and the Umatilla County Sheriff’s
Offi ce, Oregon State Police and Herm-
iston Police sent offi cers, vehicles and
equipment. They staged a few blocks
away at the Red Lion Motel.
“Trained negotiators were able to
establish communication with Abernathy
at 3:14 p.m.,” according to Pendleton
police. “Communications were main-
tained for almost fi ve hours as Abernathy
spoke to family, friends and negotia-
tor(s).”
Offi cers at Motel 6 concentrated
efforts on a second-fl oor room facing
north over Interstate 84. Multiple police
were in military-style tactical gear and
helmets and armed with assault weapons.
Police shut down I-84 between exits 209
and 213 for a period as a safety precau-
tion. Two state police also cleared people
from the north side of an adjacent hotel,
See STANDOFF/8A
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Police gather on the balcony outside of the hotel room
at the Motel 6 Wednesday in Pendleton after police
stormed the room searching for a man wanted in con-
nection with a double homicide in Shelton, Wash.
Neglected cattle tagged, immunized as part of ongoing criminal case
UMATILLA
Former
chamber
director
indicted
for theft
Second embezzlement case
involving Hutchinson-Talaski
By PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
On
Wednesday,
offi cers
recruited about 15 students from
Blue Mountain Community
College to help round up the cows
The former executive director of the
Umatilla Chamber of Commerce has
been indicted on charges she stole thou-
sands of dollars from the organization.
Karen Hutchinson-Talaski, 60, of
Hermiston, did not immediately return
calls Wednesday. She left the chamber
post sometime in
2016.
According
to public records,
this is the second
embezzlement case
involving Hutchin-
son-Talaski.
Umatilla County
Circuit
Court
documents show a Hutchinson-Talaski
grand jury handed
up the indictment Dec. 6, 2016,
charging Hutchinson-Talaski with one
count of third-degree theft, one count
of second-degree theft, both misde-
meanors, and four felony charges of
fi rst-degree theft. The thefts span from
early July 2014 through late November
2015 and include taking $1,000 or
more on two occasions from bank
cash machine withdrawals as well as
making unauthorized purchases on a
chamber account.
According to Oregon law, third-de-
See CATTLE/8A
See THEFT/8A
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
BMCC student Melanie Sederburg carries alfalfa over a fence Wednesday to give to cattle that were confi scated by the Umatilla
County Sheriff’s department outside of Hermiston.
Herd gets helping hand
Community, police care for sick cattle; charges expected soon
By GEORGE PLAVEN
East Oregonian
Dressed in wool overalls and
carrying a pitchfork, Umatilla
County Sheriff Terry Rowan
looked more like a rancher than
a lawman Wednesday morning
while pacing the snow-covered
pastures at Cedar Creek Cattle
Company in Hermiston.
Two weeks earlier, Rowan
and deputies arrived at this
property on Columbia Lane and
South Edwards Road to discover
more than a dozen dead cattle
and another 15 so malnourished
they couldn’t be safely moved.
Charges of animal neglect will
likely be fi led against the herd’s
owner, 55-year-old Michael
Hockensmith, but in the mean-
time daily care of the animals has
fallen to the sheriff’s offi ce.
More online
For video visit
eastoregonian.com
GOP wants cost cuts in exchange for revenue hikes
State short $1.8B
to maintain services
By CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Driving a
hard bargain one week away
from the legislative session’s
commencement, Republican
state legislators say they’d be
willing to consider revenue
reform — but only if there are
changes to the other side of
the state’s ledger.
Without any new revenue,
the state has $1.8 billion less
than it needs to maintain the
current level of state services,
according to the co-chairs of
the legislative Joint Ways and
Means Committee, which
writes the state’s
budget.
Rep.
Cliff
Bentz, R-Ontario,
vice chair of the
House
Revenue
Committee,
suggested this week
that a “broad-based
consumption tax,”
coupled
with
changes to the state’s income
tax, could be one way to
strike a compromise between
business groups and public
labor advocates.
But he and other Repub-
licans are adamant that
they won’t agree to making
changes to taxes without fi rst
addressing the state’s costs,
including the state’s pension
system.
Democrats
don’t have the
three-fi fths majority
they need to pass
revenue-raising
measures, so in order
to avoid the drastic
cuts to services
they’ve warned of,
they need to craft a
resolution that will
be palatable to lawmakers on
the other side of the aisle.
Senate Minority Leader
Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, says
he would also be amenable
to an increase in the gas tax
to support transportation
funding — which is another
major issue going into the
session that kicks off Feb. 1.
Ferrioli said that crafting
the state’s tax system is, and
“I think there is a relatively simplistic
understanding among some folks in the
business community that there is only one
problem and that cost driver is PERS,”
— Tina Kotek, Oregon Speaker of the House
will be, a balancing act.
“All those things — prop-
erty tax, income tax, business
taxes,
corporate
taxes,
they’re all connected and all
hydraulic,” Ferrioli said. “The
conversation that will occur,
I believe, is how do you fi nd
the sweet spot that sustains
job growth in Oregon and
provides enough revenue for
running our infrastructure,
and also provides some tax
relief in strategic areas?”
Republicans say that
before making changes to
taxes, they want concessions
from union groups on the
costs of the state’s public
pension system — a high
hurdle to leap.
The most recent attempt
to reduce the costs of the
Public Employees Retirement
System, or PERS, in 2013,
was found largely uncon-
See OREGON/8A