BAKER CITY HERALD • SATuRDAY, JunE 18, 2022 A7
LOCAL
“Every crack you can think of, he went through it. I knew he was going to die if he wasn’t detained
in some manner. Of course I didn’t want to see him locked up, but I felt that he would have a
chance to get the counseling, and proper medication, and to be observed by professionals who
could help him mentally, and maybe even spiritually. The system fails.”
— Carla Koplein, whose son, Raleigh Rust, 46, drowned in the Powder River in May 2021
Raleigh
Continued from Page A1
“I was so worried about Raleigh,”
Koplein said in a recent interview. “I
would rather my son was in jail or
prison and not out on the street in
the middle of the night.”
And so she listened to the scan-
ner, and not just in the predawn
hours of that May day.
She listened obsessively. And al-
ways with trepidation.
Indeed, she heard every min-
ute of the 20-minute episode that
started with that 911 call on May
14, 2021.
She heard Baker City Police offi-
cers Mark Powell and Rand Weaver
talking with a dispatcher as they
checked the report of the wailing
person. Around 2:47 a.m. they saw
a man running east through the
parking lot at the Chevron station at
Main Street and Auburn Avenue.
It was Raleigh.
Months later, Koplein would
watch a surveillance video from the
station showing Raleigh, for a cou-
ple tantalizing seconds, running
past the fuel pumps, followed first
by Powell in his patrol car and then
by Weaver in his.
She initially requested the video
from the Baker City Police Depart-
ment, but was refused. Koplein said
the Baker County Sheriff’s Office
hand-delivered a copy of the video
to her on Nov. 4, 2021.
That was one of several com-
plaints Koplein has about how
Baker City Police handled the inci-
dent and her subsequent requests
for information.
In the video, Raleigh is running
east toward the Baker City Police
Department and the Leo Adler Me-
morial Parkway.
He was also running toward the
Powder River, just a block or so
away and running high and swift to
satiate farmers and ranchers dealing
with severe drought.
The Powder’s flow, augmented
with water released from Phillips
Reservoir, had risen in the previous
week or so from 150 cubic feet per
second (cfs) to about 370.
Koplein didn’t know, as she sat
beside her scanner, that she was lis-
tening to the final minutes of her
son’s life.
She couldn’t know that 18 days
later, an irrigation district official
would find Raleigh’s body wedged
against a diversion dam more than
a mile and a half downriver, about
three-quarters of a mile north of
Hughes Lane.
The medical examination,
and a mother’s concerns
Dr. Clifford Nelson, the pathol-
ogist from Clackamas who did an
external examination of Raleigh’s
body but did not perform an au-
topsy, determined that Raleigh acci-
dentally drowned.
The doctor found no signs of
trauma.
A sample of Raleigh’s blood con-
tained methamphetamine and am-
phetamine, and Nelson’s report lists
one item — “methamphetamine
intoxication” — under “other signif-
icant conditions.”
Koplein said she talked by phone
with Nelson in late December 2021.
She said the doctor told her Raleigh
had taken meth less than one hour
before he died, but that the amount
was not enough to cause an over-
dose.
Koplein doesn’t know how her
son ended up in the cold, swift wa-
ter on a night when the air tempera-
ture dipped to about 40 degrees.
She suspects she might always
wonder.
Dr. Derek Zickgraf, a Baker
County medical examiner who ex-
amined Raleigh’s body before it was
taken to Clackamas, where Nelson
did his examination, wrote in his
report that when Raleigh’s body
was recovered, his jeans were down,
bunched around his ankles.
“Possibly he was urinating in the
river when he fell forward and was
unable to self extricate leading to
drowning,” Zickgraf wrote.
That’s possible, Koplein concedes.
But she criticizes Weaver and
Powell for what she considers their
negligence, in failing to confirm
where Raleigh had gone after he ran
from the brightly illuminated gas
station into the darkness beyond.
“I’m not saying Raleigh would be
alive today if they had done their
jobs properly,” Koplein said. “But
they didn’t take it far enough.”
She wonders whether her son was
in fact heading to the Baker City
Police Department, which is just a
block east of the gas station, at 1768
Auburn Ave.
When she met with Weaver,
Powell and Baker City Police Chief
Ty Duby in 2021, Koplein said she
Carla Koplein/Contributed Photo
Raleigh Rust pushes his daughter, Lily, in a swing at Geiser-Pollman Park in 2015.
asked the officers why they hadn’t
used their authority to have Raleigh
incarcerated temporarily due to his
mental health problems, rather than
pursuing him in their patrol cars
but not following through to see if
he was all right.
“I told them, you were sloppy,”
Koplein said.
Koplein points out that the police
officers didn’t find Raleigh’s cell-
phone, which was beside the Adler
Parkway, near the edge of the bank
leading the river.
A man walking his dog on the
Parkway later told Koplein he found
Raleigh’s phone about 3 a.m., just 13
minutes or so after Raleigh ran past
the gas station.
Raleigh’s second
encounter with police
he had filled a prescription for one
antidepression medication, traces of
which were found in Raleigh’s blood
after his death, on May 12, 2021.
The records showed that Raleigh
had filled prescriptions for seven
separate medications since Feb. 26,
2021, after he returned from the
psychiatric hospital in Idaho.
Among the prescriptions that Ra-
leigh had filled are:
• buproprion, an antidepressant
and smoking cessation aid.
• clonidine, a sedative also used
to treat high blood pressure.
• desvenlaxafine, an antidepres-
sant.
• quetiapine, an antipsychotic
used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar
disorder and depression.
“You would think that someone
actively taking this cocktail of drugs
would be monitored in a mental
hospital,” Koplein said.
As Weaver handed the citation to
Raleigh outside the motel, just be-
fore 10 p.m. on May 13, 2021, the
officer reminded Raleigh that his
court date was June 9.
“He wouldn’t ever make that ap-
pearance,” Koplein said.
Weaver says, “Good luck, Ra-
leigh.”
Koplein noted that Weaver didn’t
use the more formal “Mr. Rust” in
addressing her son, a reflection of
how frequently police talked with
Raleigh, and how familiar officers
were with him.
Raleigh, as he walks away from
the motel, hits his head on a metal
and concrete staircase.
Weaver cautions Raleigh to be
careful.
Five hours later Raleigh was in
the Powder River.
Koplein notes that a little more
than five hours before Raleigh ran
through the gas station parking lot,
Weaver gave him a citation for tres-
passing at the Eldorado Inn motel
on Campbell Street near the free-
way.
That incident started at 9:22 p.m.
on May 13, 2021, and ended just be-
fore 10 p.m. Much of it is on a video
from Weaver’s body cam. Koplein
obtained the video on July 8, 2021.
She also listened to that episode
on her scanner as it happened. She
heard Raleigh’s name.
During his conversation with
Weaver, Raleigh appears to be mim-
icking firing a gun in a direction
away from Weaver.
Koplein said it is clear to her that
Raleigh was hallucinating, possibly
the result of anti-depression drugs
he had been prescribed at New Di-
rections Northwest in Baker City.
“The police should have called
A fruitless search
mental health, the way he was act-
ing at the motel,” she said.
Later that morning, Koplein was
Koplein said Raleigh’s sister had
up at daylight to start searching for
a short conversation with him the
her son.
afternoon of May 13, several hours
She never considered that he
before the incident at the motel,
might have been in the river.
and that he was acting “psychotic.”
And although she was, as always,
He told his sister that he was taking
worried about Raleigh, she also
only prescription drugs.
didn’t seriously ponder the possibil-
Koplein notes that due to
ity that he was dead.
COVID-19 restrictions, the Baker
She went to a storage unit that
County Jail was limiting the num-
she had rented for Raleigh after she
ber of inmates in cus-
evicted him from her
tody. She believes Ra-
home that winter.
leigh went back to the
She left cigarettes
Raleigh
tells
Eldorado, after the
and a $5 bill.
Weaver, during
employee told him
She kept searching.
to leave, because he
looked in places
the incident at that “I he
wanted to go to jail.
previously
Raleigh tells
told me homeless
the motel, “I
Weaver, during the
people slept,” Koplein
trespassed back wrote in a detailed
incident at the motel,
“I trespassed back on
she assem-
on the property, timeline
the property, I proba-
bled. “I looked at the
bly should go to jail.”
motels where he had
I probably
Weaver, while
staying at. Noth-
should go to jail.” been
talking on the phone
ing, not even a clue.
to the manager of the
It never crossed my
motel, refers to “re-
mind that he would
strictions, and what not” at the jail
be dead. I just knew that he desper-
due to the pandemic.
ately needed help, as I heard it all
But due in part to the restrictions,
play out on the scanner.”
Raleigh stayed on the street.
Two days later, on May 17, 2021,
Weaver did tell Raleigh that he
Koplein had to fly to Arizona to
might end up going to jail if he con-
help her sister, who was having sur-
tinued to trespass.
gery.
Koplein later obtained a copy of
While she was out of state she
Raleigh’s prescription records from
called Raleigh’s cellphone repeat-
Albertsons. The sheet showed that
edly, as did many friends and rela-
tives. She also phoned his probation
officer multiple times.
On May 21, 2021, a week after
Raleigh went missing, an employee
from the Baker Truck Corral called
Baker City Police to say the business
had been holding some of Raleigh’s
possessions since May 13. These in-
cluded a backpack with clothing, a
laptop computer, a GoPro camera,
his empty wallet and debit cards.
Koplein said Raleigh’s probation
officer told her on the morning of
May 25, 2021, that Raleigh’s posses-
sions were at the Truck Corral.
A few minutes later she called
Baker City Police to file a missing
person report.
Police pinged Raleigh’s cell phone
and, according to Koplein’s timeline,
it was active.
Less than a week later, on the
morning of June 1, 2021, the irriga-
tion district worker found Raleigh’s
body.
On June 10, Koplein learned that
a woman had Raleigh’s cellphone,
and that the man who found it
along the Adler Parkway had given
it to her.
The man, who Koplein said died
of an overdose of pain medication
in August 2021, took her and her
oldest son, Brian, Raleigh’s brother,
to the place where he found Ra-
leigh’s phones. The site is between
Bridge Street and Auburn Avenue,
less than half a block south of the
Baker City Police Department, at
1768 Auburn Ave.
The man told Koplein that the
two phones were stacked beside a
tree, just off the east (river) side of
the Parkway.
Koplein later placed a memorial
to Raleigh at the spot.
The woman actually had two
phones, and although Koplein be-
lieved Raleigh had only one phone,
the woman insisted that both be-
longed to Raleigh.
Koplein still has the phone she
knew to be Raleigh’s.
“I use it,” she said.
Questions unanswered
Although Koplein said she has no
definitive evidence that someone
killed her son, whether acciden-
tally or intentionally, she remains
plagued by apparent inconsistencies
that to her suggest the possibility of
foul play.
During the incident on May 13,
2021, when Weaver cited Raleigh
for trespassing at the Eldorado
Motel, Koplein said the body cam
video shows Ra-
leigh placing his
ID card into his
wallet, which was
attached to a metal
chain on his jeans.
The chain was
still clipped onto
his pants when his
body was found.
But the wallet,
with debit cards in
it, was at the Truck
Corral.
“The police
never asked me if
they could look at
those things,” Ko-
plein said.
One of the debit
cards looked as
though it had been
run through a
machine so many
times that the se-
curity chip was
damaged, she said.
She checked, af-
ter Raleigh’s body
was found, and learned that the ac-
count for that card had money.
Koplein wonders too about the
two phones, one atop the other, be-
side the Parkway. If the man’s story
is true, it suggests someone carefully
set the phones there.
Koplein calls the Baker City Po-
lice investigation into Raleigh’s dis-
appearance a “farce.”
“The police should have gone
through their own logs, and did a
paper search, as soon as Raleigh was
reported missing,” she said. “I did it,
why couldn’t they?”
Koplein said an X-ray of Raleigh’s
body showed another metal clip in
the area of his pant pocket, but she
said police told her his pockets were
empty.
Although the police department
posted an announcement on its
Facebook page that Raleigh was
missing, Koplein believes police
could have been more aggressive,
not only in the week between when
she reported him missing and when
his body was found, but before.
“They should have started look-
ing for videos of Raleigh at the
truck stop, the minute they got the
call that Raleigh’s stuff had been
left there, I think May 21,” she said.
“It seems to me that as soon as the
body was found and processed, the
investigation was over.”
Mentally ill but intelligent,
kind and musical
Koplein doesn’t blanch at using
the word “crazy” to describe Ra-
leigh.
But she also emphasizes his posi-
tive qualities.
And occasionally she resorts,
with no apparent recognition that’s
she doing so, to present tense.
“Raleigh was a good person,” she
said. “Raleigh was a hard worker.
He’s very intelligent. He’s a charmer.
He would say crazy things but he
was so smart they would sound le-
gitimate.”
But his mental health issues were
glaring, Koplein said.
He would insist that his father,
who lives in Burns, was dead.
When Koplein would tell Raleigh
that wasn’t true, and even suggest
that Raleigh call his father on the
phone and hear for himself, Raleigh
still didn’t believe her.
He also claimed that his father
had bought him the house that’s
across the street from Koplein’s
home.
Raleigh moved to Baker City on
June 1, 2019, from Burns, where he
had been living with his father.
He lived in Las Vegas with a girl-
friend from September 2019 until
June 1, 2020, when he returned to
Baker City, again living in Koplein’s
home.
On the evening of Aug. 10, 2020,
Raleigh was taken by Baker City
ambulance to Saint Alphonsus
Medical Center in Baker City on
what’s known as a police officer
“mental health hold.”
This incident also involved the
Powder River, although Koplein will
never know whether this was mere
coincidence.
Raleigh apparently had been
jumping into the river near the D
Street bridge, then climbing back
out, she said.
Koplein said medical records
from the emergency room after
that incident showed that Raleigh
had marijuana in his system, and
that his blood alcohol level was .24,
which is three times the legal limit
to drive in Oregon.
According to the records, Raleigh
asked police “to shoot him.”
Paramedics administered ket-
amine, a sedative, to Raleigh be-
cause he was “combative,” according
to the records.
Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald
Raleigh Rust’s mother, Carla Koplein of
Baker City, created a memorial for her
son along the Powder River between
Bridge Street and Auburn Avenue,
where he apparently went into the river
on the early morning of May 14, 2021.
He was sedated when he arrived at
the emergency room but “soon be-
came rather combative here again.”
Doctors gave Raleigh 10 milli-
grams of Haldol, an antipsychotic,
by IV.
Koplein requested a copy of the
body camera footage from police
officers who responded to the Aug.
10, 2020, incident, citing the Ore-
gon Public Records Law.
Duby, the city police chief, de-
nied her request in a Dec. 15, 2021,
letter because the footage included
“potentially protected medical in-
formation.” He wrote, among other
things, that “without Mr. Rust’s con-
sent, any information concerning
the protected medical nature of this
call is protected from disclosure.”
Yet Raleigh had been dead for
seven months, and could hardly
give his consent.
Koplein also already had copies
of her son’s medical records.
Continued on next page