A2 THE BULLETIN • TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 2021
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INFORMATION
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
DESCHUTES COUNTY
COVID-19 data for Monday, June 14:
Deschutes County cases: 9,940 (9 new cases)
Deschutes County deaths: 80 (zero new deaths)
Crook County cases: 1,276 (2 new cases)
Crook County deaths: 23 (zero new deaths)
Jefferson County cases: 2,357 (zero new cases)
Jefferson County deaths: 38 (zero new deaths)
Oregon cases: 205,154 (127 new cases)
Oregon deaths: 2,730 (zero new deaths)
COVID-19 patients hospitalized at
St. Charles Bend on Monday: 29 (7 in ICU)
129 new cases
110
103 new cases
7-day
average
(April 23)
(July 16)
90
(June 10)
74 new cases
80
(April 10)
50
new
cases
70
60
50
40
*State data
unavailable
for Jan. 31
31 new cases
(Oct. 31)
16 new cases
30
(Sept. 19)
20
(May 20)
1st case
10
(March 11)
March 2020
100
85 new
cases
(Nov. 14)
9 new cases
EMAIL
120
(May 8)
(Feb. 17)
8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri.
bulletin@bendbulletin.com
(Jan. 1)
(Nov. 27)
130
115 new
cases
47 new cases
28 new cases
ONLINE
(April 29)
108 new cases
90
new
cases
BULLETIN
GRAPHIC
125 new cases
(Dec. 4)
Vaccines are available.
Find a list of vaccination
sites and other information
about the COVID-19
vaccines online:
centraloregoncovidvaccine.com
If you have questions, call
541-382-4321.
541-382-1811
www.bendbulletin.com
SOURCES: OREGON HEALTH AUTHORITY,
DESCHUTES COUNTY HEALTH SERVICES
New COVID-19 cases per day
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December January 2021
Febru-
March
April
May
June
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2nd lawsuit alleges Gresham Police arrest
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Lottery results can now be found on
the second page of Sports.
Physical evidence from the
scene was maintained, and a
No one would stop to help.
recent DNA profile match led
That’s what haunted family investigators to Plympton.
members years after a beloved
Plympton was a 16-year-
daughter was bludgeoned to
old student at Reynolds High
death.
School when the crime oc-
On the night she was killed curred, but the district at-
in 1980, 19-year-old Barbara
torney’s office said he will be
Mae Tucker frantically tried
charged and tried as an adult.
to flag down passing cars.
He pleaded not guilty during
The sophomore
his arraignment
had been walking to
Wednesday .
an evening class at
Court records
Mt. Hood Commu-
show Plympton was
nity College when
arrested in 1997 and
she ran onto NE
accused of attempted
Kane Drive. Wit-
sodomy and assault
nesses told police that
in an attack on a
Tucker
many drivers had to
woman. Investigators
swerve and brake to
believed Plympton
keep from hitting her,
drove her to a se-
and one car almost
cluded place and at-
hit Tucker. One wit-
tacked her. The case
ness remembered
was dismissed due to
seeing blood and
insufficient evidence.
mud on her face.
“These ‘cold cases’
But no one pulled
are not lost or forgot-
Plympton
over to check on
ten for our depart-
her, even as a man
ment,” said interim
grabbed her arm and pulled
Chief Claudio Grandjean.
her off the road and back into “Each one represents a per-
the woods near the campus.
son to our officers, and their
Some witnesses even
tragic stories are passed down
thought it was a college prank through the generations in
or a youthful game of dodging hopes of one day bringing
traffic.
honor to their names and a
That next morning, Barba- sense of justice and closure to
ra’s body was found by a fel-
their cases.”
low student in the shrubs. She
The Outlook ran a story
had been sexually assaulted
Feb. 27, 2003, recounting the
and beaten to death.
murder that had occurred
“It’s unreal that people care
more than 22 years earlier.
so little about another human In that article, Tucker was re-
being,” Louise Tucker, Barba-
membered by loved ones as
ra’s mother, told The Outlook “a free spirit; strong-willed;
a year after her daughter’s
spiritual but not religious;
death.
It took four decades, and
assistance from a break in
DNA technology not avail-
able at the time, for an arrest
to be made. Robert Plymp-
ton, 58, of Troutdale, was
taken into custody by the
Gresham Police Department
on June 8 for the alleged
rape and murder of Tucker.
He was booked into the
Multnomah County Jail.
very hardworking; and very
dedicated.
She was the youngest of
seven siblings, and often was
thought of as the ‘baby’ of
the family despite growing
up to be a 5-foot-11, inde-
pendent young woman. She
played basketball at Cleveland
High School, and was very in-
volved with the Distributive
Education Clubs of America
(DECA) that prepped students
for careers in businesses.
On the day she died, Tucker
called her mother. She was
planning to stop by a friend’s
apartment for ice cream if her
evening class got out early.
Tucker never made it.
Neither of Barbara’s parents
saw justice for their daugh-
ter. Her father, Albert Tucker,
died in 1989. He could never
bring himself to talk about his
daughter’s death.
“He always leaves the room
when I talk about her,” Louise
said in 1981.
Louise died in 1995, but she
never stopped seeking justice
despite many signs pointing
to the case never being solved.
Through the years she stayed
in contact with the Gresham
Police Department and the
Multnomah County District
Attorney’s Office, refusing to
let the case slip through the
cracks.
She kept an informal, hand-
written record of her attempts
to find answers.
“If it takes 10 years, I
don’t care,” she wrote several
months after the murder. “I
just can’t let it rest.”
BY CHRISTOPHER KEIZUR
Pamplin Media Group
BY ZANE SPARLING
Pamplin Media Group
Allegations of race-based
bias and hostility are piling
up at the state agency charged
with investigating unlawful
employment practices.
The Portland Tribune first
revealed that Oregon’s Bureau
of Labor & Industries hired an
outside law firm to scrutinize
its own workplace — and the
independent audit has grown
after a second ex-employee
filed a lawsuit claiming she was
forced out.
Former Civil Rights Division
investigator Shaina Pomerantz
says she experienced “a culture
of disparate treatment and racial
hostility” that included a higher
workload than white employees
and a six-month extension of
her probation that was not ap-
plied to other new hires.
“When Black employees, in-
cluding Ms. Pomerantz spoke
up, made suggestions, or asked
questions, non-Black (Civil
Rights Division) employees shut
down these investigators and
told them their questions were
not relevant, wrong, and/or in-
consistent with CRD practices,”
according to the litigation.
Pomerantz, who serves as
vice chair for Portland’s police
review committee, resigned
from BOLI Dec. 31 and now
seeks $750,000 in damages.
Her suit bolsters the ac-
count of her former boss, Carol
Johnson, who left a $10,300 a
month job as division head last
July, citing intolerable condi-
tions in a separate lawsuit.
Pomerantz, 45, says the Civil
Rights investigators, who are
mostly white, turned their
cameras off during virtual
meetings with Johnson, who is
Black, and stayed silent when
Johnson acknowledged the
death of George Floyd.
The Civil Rights Division “of-
ten dismissed race discrimina-
tion complaints at a dispropor-
tionately high rate,” the suit says.
BOLI’s elected leader, Com-
missioner Val Hoyle, appears
to have corroborated some
of the claims raised by John-
son, according to snippets
of her emails included in the
first lawsuit. But a bureau rep
pushed back more forcefully
on Pomerantz’s claims, saying
BOLI extended employees’
probationary periods during
the unusual circumstances of
the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before taking the state
job, Pomerantz was offered a
$27,000 settlement after she
filed a workplace complaint
against her former employer,
Concordia University but re-
jected the cash because it
was contingent on signing a
non-disparagement agreement,
according to her lawyer. BOLI
dismissed the complaint in
2019, and the school declared
bankruptcy the next year.
“BOLI has dismissed many
cases that have gone on to get a
verdict from a jury,” said the at-
torney, J. Ashlee Albies, noting
as examples the bogus arrest
of Michael Fesser, as well as
the $1 million awarded to two
Portland Public Schools main-
tenance workers who faced ra-
cial harassment on the job.
A former chief of staff for
ousted state Rep. Diego Her-
nandez, Pomerantz raised
concerns during a sexual ha-
rassment investigation that the
lawmaker had promoted a staff
member due to their romantic
relationship, but that particular
complaint wasn’t substantiated
after both parties denied being
intimate.
Albies says her client dis-
agreed with the finding, and
later was offered an apology by
a co-chair after testifying be-
fore the state committee inves-
tigating Hernandez.
“The fact that she has made
protected complaints of dis-
crimination,” said Albies, “I
think it shows that this is some-
body who stands up for herself.”
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