A8
Region
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Details emerge in Hermiston murder-suicide investigation
By Phil Wright
EO Media Group
Jason Huston ired three
rounds from a 9 mm Glock
pistol Thursday into his life-
long friend Ken Valdez at his
Hermiston home, killing him.
Huston also shot Andria Bye
once and, in the end, shot and
killed himself.
Bye was taken to the hos-
pital after telling police what
had transpired, though she
didn’t know the whereabouts
of her son, 14-year-old James
“JJ” Hurtado.
Perhaps no more than an
hour before, Huston is be-
lieved to have shot and killed
Hurtado, to whom he was
something of a father igure,
with the same pistol.
EO Media Group/E.J. Harris
Police investigate the scene of a shooting that
left two dead and one injured at the corner of
Northwest 11th Street and West Madrona Avenue
on Thursday in Hermiston.
Hermiston Police Chief
Jason Edmiston and Umatilla
County Sheriff Terry Rowan
revealed more on Monday
about one of the most violent
crimes in Hermiston’s histo-
ry.
Huston and Valdez, both
45, had known each other as
far back as high school and
had coached wrestling to-
gether since 2013, and Hus-
ton and Bye had previously
been in a relationship. Ed-
miston held off discussing a
motive, calling it premature
while the investigation con-
tinues.
Hurtado had last been
seen Thursday at 10 a.m.
when Huston picked him up
in Umatilla and said they
were going to play disc golf
at McNary Park, according to
Edmiston.
Police around 11:18 a.m.
responded to calls about a
shooting at Southwest 11th
Street and Hermiston Av-
enue. They found the door
open at Valdez’s home at
130 N.W. 11th St., and inside
found Bye and the bodies of
Valdez and Huston.
Edmiston said Bye gave a
detailed statement to police,
but Huston had not told her
he shot her son. Bye was re-
leased from the hospital over
the weekend.
Detectives at a de-
briefing talked about their
search for Hurtado that be-
gan soon after they arrived
at Valdez’s home, Edmiston
said, and also came up with
a “to do” list, including
more places to check for
the teen. They soon learned
of two places Huston was
known to go shooting rec-
reationally.
“When we got that, it was
starting to get dark,” Edmis-
ton said, “so we had to hur-
ry.”
Detectives went to both
sites, he said, and found the
boy’s body off Country Lane
about two miles outside the
Hermiston city limits.
Police found a pickup
that belonged to Huston on
Bridge Road, which is near
Country Lane, but Edmiston
said Huston drove another
pickup into town and parked
it at Foxwood Apartments
near Valdez’s home.
Valdez had a roommate,
Edmiston said, but that per-
son was at work during the
shooting.
Washington county authorizes action against wolves
WDFW stops
‘partial pack
removal’ at 2
By Don Jenkins
EO Media Group
Ferry County commis-
sioners unanimously passed a
resolution Friday authorizing
the sheriff’s ofice to kill the
remaining nine members of a
wolf pack in the northeastern
Washington county, if state
wildlife oficials don’t resume
shooting wolves.
“That pack of wolves
needs to be gone,” Commis-
sioner Mike Blankenship
said. “I feel the sheriff has that
power and that obligation as
much as he would with a wild
dog out there.”
The Department of Fish
and Wildlife halted the search
Thursday for the Profanity
Peak pack 13 days after shoot-
ing two adult female wolves
from a helicopter. Four adults
and ive pups survive.
WDFW initiated lethal re-
moval Aug. 3 after the pack
killed at least four calves and
one cow in less than a month.
The pack probably was re-
sponsible for at least three
other depredations, according
to WDFW.
Blankenship said WDFW
ended the culling of the pack
prematurely. County oficials
have pressed the department
to eliminate the entire pack
since 2014, citing concerns
for humans, pets and live-
stock.
County
commissioners
held a special meeting Fri-
day afternoon at which they
approved giving Sheriff Ray
Maycumber the resources to
lethally remove the pack.
It may not be necessary.
WDFW says it will resume
hunting for the Profanity Peak
Your generous support of the Blue Mountain Eagle Newspapers in
Education program helped to provide hundreds of copies of the
newspaper and unlimited access to our website to schools throughout
pack if more depredations oc-
cur, which is a strong possibil-
ity, Blankenship said.
“An operator has been
losing an animal a day since
their animals were put on the
range,” he said. “Should Fish
and Wildlife fail to, we’re pre-
pared to step up and inish that
job.”
If the county targets
wolves, it would test WD-
FW’s jurisdiction over the
state’s wildlife.
“Maybe that would get
challenged and maybe we
need to have conversation.
I’m sure it would be a fairly
mind-blowing case,” Blan-
kenship said.
The two wolves that were
shot included the breeding
female. WDFW oficials say
they can’t identify different
pack members from a heli-
copter. After the shootings,
the pack withdrew to heavy
timber in the Kettle River
Range Mountains and became
increasingly dificult to track,
even though two wolves wore
GPS radio collars, according
to WDFW.
WDFW also suggested in a
press release that shooting the
two wolves had been effective
in stopping depredations.
“The goal of removing
some wolves from the pack
was to stop wolf attacks on
area cattle herds,” WDFW
wolf policy coordinator Don-
ny Martorello said in a written
statement. “The last conirmed
depredation by the pack was
two weeks ago, but we are pre-
pared to resume operations to
remove wolves if monitoring
efforts conirm new attacks.”
Efforts to reach the ranch
suffering the most losses were
unsuccessful. But others in
contact with the producer said
livestock remains continue to
be found. In some cases, too
little remains of the carcass to
identify whether the animal
was killed by a wolf.
Grant County each week during the 2015-2016 school year.
Without your support, the majority of schools would not be able to
have access to this valuable information that keeps students
informed on important local events.
BAD MOMS R
Three under-appreciated moms ditch their
conventional reponsibilities for a jolt
comedic self-indulgence.
FRI & SAT
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SUNDAY
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MON-THURS (12:45) (4:10) 7:20 9:35
BEN-HUR PG-13
Roderick Kuhn
Elaine Mezzo
Barbara Pollak
Mitch Saul
Barb Sohr-Miller
Lois Wacken
The epic story of Judah Ben-Hur, a prince
falsely accused of treason by his adopted
brother, an officer in the Roman army.
FRI & SAT
(12:45) (4:00) 7:00 9:35
SUNDAY
(12:45) (4:00) 7:00 9:35
MON-THURS (12:45) (4:10) 7:00 9:35
KUBO & THE TWO STRINGS PG
A young boy name Kubo must locate a
magical suit of armor worn by his late
father in order to defeat a vengeful spirit
from the past.
FRI & SAT
(12:45) (4:10) 7:10 9:40
SUNDAY
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$9 Adult, $7 Senior (60+), Youth
04290
Barry Adams
Don & Carolyn
Caldwell
Scott Cotter
Nancy Ferguson
Everett Holladay
Ansel Krutsinger
EO Media Group/E.J. Harris
A pristine gym in the newly finished Washington
Elementary School in Pendleton. The new
building provides the district with a facility
making it easier to comply with the state’s
physical education mandate.
Schools seek
delay in Oregon’s
P.E. requirement
Lack of facilities,
teachers hamper
districts’ progress
By Paris Achen
Capital Bureau
With less than 10 percent
of Oregon’s K-8 schools pro-
viding the minimum number
of weekly physical education
minutes mandated by the Leg-
islature nine years ago, dis-
tricts want lawmakers to ex-
tend the fall 2017 compliance
deadline.
Rather than inching to-
wards meeting the require-
ment, the number of compliant
schools has actually declined,
according to public records re-
viewed by the Pamplin Media
Group/EO Media Group Cap-
ital Bureau.
House Bill 3141, approved
by state lawmakers in 2007,
made Oregon the irst state in
the nation to require minimum
physical education instruction-
al minutes for elementary and
middle school pupils, accord-
ing to the American Heart As-
sociation.
The law calls for a min-
imum of 150 minutes of
physical education instruction
per week for grades K-5 and
225 minutes for grades 6-8.
Schools are required to meet
that standard by fall 2017.
Most schools are so far
from fulilling the requirement
that their advocacy groups are
now asking lawmakers to ei-
ther push back the deadline or
allow for a phase-in. They also
want other tweaks to the law,
such prorating the standard to
account for professional de-
velopment days and inclement
weather, and to add more lex-
ibility in how physical educa-
tion may be deined.
“Everybody recognizes the
pinch we ind ourselves in,”
said Jim Green, deputy exec-
utive director of the Oregon
School Boards Association.
“There are not enough P.E.
teachers. Some of the facili-
ties are inadequate in order to
be able to provide that level of
instruction, and it is going to
take a lot to ramp up to that.”
Out of 1,080 public schools
with some or all grades in K-8,
only 97 schools in 2014-15
provided the minimum num-
ber of weekly minutes out-
lined in HB 3141, according
to the Oregon Department of
Education’s most recent count.
That’s a decline from the 102
schools in 2013-14 that met
the minimum.
Senate President Peter
Courtney, D-Salem, champi-
oned the law in 2007 as a way
to address childhood obesity
and boost pupils’ academic
skills. Along with the mini-
mum instructional time, the
bill offered schools special
grants, known as PEEK-8, or
Physical Education Expansion
K-8, to help hire P.E. teach-
ers or give existing teachers
professional development in
physical education. The grants
provided about $4 million to
schools in the last four years.
“I started this some 10
years ago because physical ed-
ucation had disappeared from
our schools,” Courtney said.
“I understand resources are an
issue, and every school is dif-
ferent. I just hope that together
we can ind a way to continue
to move forward.”
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