LOCAL & STATE
BAKER CITY HERALD • SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2022 A3
OSP sergeant dies of gunshot wound in Joseph
BY BILL BRADSHAW
Wallowa County Chieftain
JOSEPH — An Oregon
State Police sergeant was
found dead in his patrol car
Tuesday, March 29, of a single
gunshot wound to the head,
according to a press release
from Wallowa County Sheriff
Joel Fish.
Fish and WCSO Deputy
Paul Pagano responded to
a 3:41 p.m. call of a possible
medical emergency at the res-
idence of OSP Sgt. Marcus
McDowell on North College
Street in Joseph.
The State Medical Examin-
er’s Office has determined the
manner of death to be a sui-
cide. McDowell was on duty
at the time of his death, the
statement said.
When Fish and Pagano ar-
rived, they found McDow-
ell unconscious in his patrol
car in the driveway. After the
officers made forced entry
into McDowell’s vehicle, they
found him to be dead of a
gunshot wound.
According to a statement
March 31 by the OSP, Mc-
Dowell spent his career at
COVID
Continued from Page A1
But since the county hit a
record high of 183 cases the
week of Jan. 16-22, case totals
have plummeted more rap-
idly than at any other period
during the pandemic.
The March total of 14 cases
— and only one after March
11 — is the fewest in any
month since June 2020, when
there were four.
The recent absence of cases
does not mean no county res-
idents are being tested for
COVID-19, although that
number has dropped too.
For the current measuring
week, March 27-April 2, the
county reported 62 tests — all
of them negative — through
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
Oregon State Police troopers walk up to a Wallowa County Sheriff’s Office pickup Tuesday, March 29, 2022,
as part of an investigation into a shooting death at a residence along North College Street in Joseph.
OSP as a member of the Pa-
“He was respected by all and
trol Division, the Fish and
especially those he has worked
Wildlife Division and as a K-9 so closely with throughout the
handler working in the John
years,” the statement said.
Day and La Grande areas.
Fish said McDowell has
March 31.
For the previous week there
were 131 tests, again, all of
them negative.
For the week March 13-19,
there were 156 tests, one of
those positive.
And for March 6-12, there
were 199 tests, seven of which
were positive.
The Baker County Health
Department announced this
week that starting Monday,
April 4, it will begin posting
case counts on its Facebook
page weekly rather than daily.
The Oregon Health Author-
ity will also cease sending a
daily media release on April 4,
although daily case counts and
other statistics will continue
to be available on the agency’s
website, https://govstatus.egov.
com/OR-OHA-COVID-19.
Trial
case has been scheduled for
April 19.
Continued from Page A1
Baxter said his office is pre-
pared to go the trial.
• Aggravated first-degree
Neither Whitnah nor Moon
theft, $10,000 or more, from cited a reason for withdrawing
Carol or Tim Delsman
as Hackett’s attorney.
• First-degree theft, $1,000
Whitnah in his motion
or more, from Michael Rags- wrote that “I cannot disclose
dale
further specific grounds for
Greg Baxter, Baker County this request without violating
district attorney, said a charge the Oregon Rules of Profes-
can be elevated from first-de- sional Conduct.”
gree theft, a Class C felony,
Moon wrote in his mo-
to aggravated first-degree
tion that “for ethical reasons,
theft, a Class B felony, if the
I cannot disclose the reason
amount is $10,000 or more,
that I must withdraw as the
or if the victim is 65 or older. attorney of record. ...”
Robert Whitnah of Baker
Three other alleged fraud
City was appointed in July
cases reported to Baker City
2021 to represent Hackett.
Police in 2021 were settled by
Whitnah filed a motion
civil action between the resi-
on March 14, 2022, to with-
dents and Hackett, according
draw as Hackett’s attorney,
to a Baker City Police June
and Judge Matt Shirtcliff
2021 press release.
approved that motion the
According to the Oregon
same day.
Contractor Construction
Another Baker City at-
Board, Hackett has never
torney, Bob Moon, was ap-
been a licensed contractor in
pointed on March 16 to rep- Oregon.
resent Hackett.
The agency fined Hackett
Moon filed a motion to
five times between 2009 and
withdraw as Hackett’s attor-
2021 for working without a li-
ney on March 25.
cense, said Leslie Culpepper,
Shirtcliff approved Moon’s communications and educa-
order on March 31.
tion manager for the Contrac-
A status check on the
tor Construction Board.
Snowpack
Continued from Page A1
“There will be less available sur-
face water for instream flows to
support things. There will be
less available groundwater stor-
age because we’re not recharg-
ing our system with our ground
soil moisture and because we’ve
been in a long-term drought
and we didn’t really recover
from that over this winter.”
Union County watermaster
Shad Hattan agrees, stating that
if the area doesn’t get significant
spring rain, “it will be hard on
everything. Agriculture, stream
flows. If we don’t get moisture
for April and May, that’s (going
to be) hard on everybody.”
One silver lining to the early
melt off and continuation of the
drought? Fire season might be
milder compared to last year.
“The biggest thing is how
fast the snow we have right now
comes off,” said Trevor Lewis,
assistant fire management offi-
cer with the Wallowa-Whitman
National Forest. “If we lose our
snow real quick, and it dries
out fairly quickly then our grass
growth isn’t as high, so we gen-
erally see lower rates of spread
with our fires, even if we do
have significant fuel moistures
that are drier. It really depends
on how this snow comes off.”
Lewis said that last year’s slow
runoff allowed for above aver-
age grass and brush growth —
primary fuels for wildfires that
were primed by the heat wave
that pushed temperatures to re-
cord highs in most of Oregon.
That grass growth meant that
fires spread more rapidly, and
in the case of the Bootleg Fire
resulted in one of the nation’s
largest wildfires for 2021.
“It’s kind of a catch-22
for us,” Lewis said. “Does it
come quickly and we have a
drought? Or does it come off
slow and we end up getting the
grass growth?”
Despite being a La Niña
year, the Eastern Oregon
snowpack wasn’t enough
to start turning around the
drought conditions in the
area. As of March 31, most of
Eastern Oregon remains in
severe or moderate drought,
and conditions are expected
to worsen over the summer.
“In order to recover from
that long-term drought we need
successive years and we need
excessive amounts of precipita-
tion, and we’re just not getting
it,” Oviatt said. “It’s not going to
happen this year, we’re going to
have to make some sacrifices
in terms of surface water and
available water.”
lived in Joseph “many years”
and has family in the area.
Units from Enterprise Am-
bulance and the Joseph Fire
Department also responded,
as did three Enterprise Police
Department officers, a total of
three WCSO units and three
OSP troopers. North College
Street between East Joseph
Avenue and East Williams
Avenue was blocked to traffic
while the investigation was un-
derway.
OSP Superintendent Terri
Davie issued a statement in
Fish’s release.
“Thank you to our partner
agencies for their assistance,
compassion and profession-
alism during this tragic time,”
Davie said. “Our heartfelt
thoughts and prayers go out
to the family, friends, cowork-
ers and responding emer-
gency personnel.”
Davie activated OSP’s Criti-
cal Incident Response Team to
provide peer support to other
officers who have been affected
by the tragedy.
“The OSP thanks the mem-
bers of the public and other
public safety partners for their
support during this difficult
time,” Davie said in a separate
statement. “Law Enforcement
Officers have some of the same
struggles as the rest of us and
need help too. Mental Health
is just as important as physical
health in Law Enforcement. It
has only been since 2018 that
The Law Enforcement Men-
tal Health and Wellness Act of
2017 was signed into law rec-
ognizing that law enforcement
agencies need and deserve sup-
port in their ongoing efforts to
protect the mental health and
well-being of their employees.”
Assistance in the investiga-
tion is being provided by of-
ficers and investigators from
the EPD, the Pendleton Po-
lice Department, OSP and the
Crime Lab.
The OSP statement urged
anyone who knows of some-
one struggling with mental
health to speak up, ask for help
or reach out to professionals.
Available resources include the
National Suicide Prevention
Lifeline that provides 24/7, free
and confidential support for
people in distress, prevention
and crisis resources at 800-
273-8255. Crisis Text Line is a
texting service for emotional
crisis support. Text HELLO
to 741741. It is free, available
24/7, and confidential.
Jungle
Continued from Page A1
More recently, though, city
officials have described the
Boys Jungle as an “attractive
nuisance,” a place where juve-
niles went to drink alcohol or
smoke, screened from view
by the dense foliage.
In 2011 the city asked the
former owner, Ben Dean, to
clean up the property and in-
stall private property and no
trespassing signs.
The signs went up and some
of the brush came down.
But Tsiatsos, whose com-
pany, GCT Land Manage-
ment Inc., bought the prop-
erty and the other parcels
from Dean, did a much more
thorough job.
Most of the mature trees
remain, but in between the
ground is largely bare, and vis-
ibility is much improved.
Tsiatsos (his name is pro-
nounced “CHA-chuss”) said
that after he bought the Boys
Jungle he found evidence
that it had been used as a
homeless camp.
Joyce Bornstedt, the city’s
technical administrative su-
pervisor and also its parks co-
ordinator, said Tsiatsos’ efforts
have greatly improved the situ-
ation at the Boys Jungle, which
is one of the more popular sec-
tions of the Leo Adler Memo-
rial Parkway.
That paved path for pedes-
trians and bicyclists, which the
city built about 20 years ago,
runs through the eastern edge
of the Boys Jungle.
“We really appreciate the ef-
fort in cleaning that area up,”
Bornstedt said.
She said the city, which has
a street right-of-way east of
the path, also plans to do some
tree trimming and other work
in that area this year to com-
plement the Boys Jungle trans-
formation.
Bornstedt said the city has
received many comments
from residents since Tsiatsos
started work in the Boys Jungle
this winter, and almost all were
pleased about the changes.
Tom Clement of Baker City,
who spearheaded projects
over the past two years to trim
trees, remove underbrush and
generally spruce up the riv-
erside strip next to two other
sections of the Adler Parkway,
also lauded Tsiatsos’ work in
the Boys Jungle.
Clement said he’s talked to
many people who mistakenly
credited him with cleaning
up Boys Jungle, and the vast
majority were happy with the
results.
Tsiatsos said he realized
when he bought the property
that even though it’s private,
people did trespass, and that
the conditions, with over-
hanging limbs and obstacles
hidden by brush, were poten-
tially dangerous.
“We recognized it to be a
bit of a hazard, and we’re try-
ing to be good neighbors and
get rid of some blight and
still keep its romantic appeal
to the city,” Tsiatsos said as
he strolled through the Boys
Jungle on the afternoon of
Thursday, March 31. “We
tried to keep the feel of what
it was. We’re really happy
with how it turned out.”
He’d also like to be able to
eventually remove the private
property and no trespassing
signs still affixed to several
trees.
Alex Wittwer/EO Media Group, File
Dennis Scudder, an Army veteran, looks over his new neighborhood in La Grande on Thursday, Nov.
4, 2021. Scudder bounced between temporary housing solutions before moving into Veteran Village
Union County, a new community of cottage-style homes.
“We tried to keep the feel of what it was. We’re
really happy with how it turned out.”
— Gust Tsiatsos, owner, talking about cleaning up the Boys Jungle
Tsiatsos said he would
prefer to transfer the Boys
Jungle to the city for use as a
public park.
Bornstedt said Tsiatsos has
suggested a deal by which the
city could make concessions
for utility payments for the
rest of the property he bought,
in exchange for his donating
the Boys Jungle.
That’s not possible, Bornst-
edt said, because of account-
ing issues, since the water
and wastewater departments
are separate funds in the
city’s budget from the parks
department, which is in the
general fund.
Tsiatsos said he under-
stands the potential bureau-
cratic obstacles.
But he still hopes he can
work out an agreement with
the city to transfer the Boys
Jungle.
He said he’s also consid-
ered conveying the land to
the Veterans Administration
for use as a public park
dedicated to veterans.
If neither of the pub-
lic park options is feasible,
Tsiatsos said he probably
would try to incorporate the
Boys Jungle parcel into his
plans to develop residential
housing for the rest of the
property.
“I’d prefer it to be a park,”
he said.
Tsiatsos said he had the
work done this winter, after
the ground was frozen, to
reduce damage to the soil
from the heavy equipment.
He said he intends to
plant native shrubs in parts
of the property.
Veteran housing
Although the Boys Jun-
gle work has been the most
conspicuous evidence of
Tsiatsos’ purchase of the
parcels between D and H
streets, it’s actually a rela-
tively small part of his over-
all plan.
His chief purpose was to
create housing for military
veterans.
Tsiatsos expects construc-
tion to start within 45 days
on the first phase, which
will include 13 rental cot-
tage-style homes and a com-
munity center. Those will be
built in the lot directly north
of Memory Lane Homes
assisted living facility on F
Street just east of Elkhorn Vil-
lage apartments.
(The apartments are not
part of the property Tsiatsos
bought.)
The cottages are in the
“tiny home” style, he said,
covering about 500 square
feet for the one-bedroom ver-
sion (nine of those in the first
phase) and slightly larger for
the four two-bedroom units.
A new private street will
access the cottages, running
north and south between F
and H streets.
The development is simi-
lar to the 10-cottage Veterans
Village Union County that
Tsiatsos built in La Grande. It
opened in the fall of 2021.
For the Baker City develop-
ment, Tsiatsos said he secured
a $1.5 million grant from Or-
egon Housing and Commu-
nity Services to go along with
$350,000 to $450,000 of pri-
vate investment. He said the
Northeast Oregon Housing
Authority would manage the
development.
Rick Gloria, Baker Coun-
ty’s veteran services officer,
said he has met with Tsiatsos
and is excited about the de-
velopment and its benefits for
local veterans.
“It will be awesome,” Gloria
said. “Housing is so hard to
find here, and it will be great
to have another resource.”
He said he can work with
local veterans who might
qualify for a federal voucher
that pays 70% of rental costs.
The second phase of the
development involves build-
ing cottages that would be
available for sale to veterans,
rather than rental units, Tsi-
atsos said. That phase would
be south of the first phase,
nearer F Street.
Tsiatsos also owns the va-
cant lot north of Elkhorn Vil-
lage apartments. The parcel
extends to H Street, with the
Powder River at the west edge
and the Adler Parkway run-
ning through the eastern part.
He said he is considering
a residential development on
that parcel, but he has no spe-
cific plans.
KIWANIS STUDENT
OF THE MONTH
Senior at Baker
High School
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