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About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (April 17, 2019)
BMEVG2019 Explore Grant County visitor guide :BMEVG201 9 3/28/19 12:53 PM Page 1 INSIDE Blue Mountain The EAGLE Grant County’s newspaper since 1868 Wednesday, April 17, 2019 151st Year • No. 16 • 20 Pages • $1.00 BlueMountainEagle.com Shining the light on child abuse By Richard Hanners Blue Mountain Eagle Recent child abuse statis- tics in Grant County may show a slight improvement over the previous year, but the county still ranks near the bottom in Oregon. April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month and was recognized by the Grant County Court in an April 10 proclamation. The county has seen a shrink- ing population and declining economy, and Tracey Blood those condi- tions could be related to child abuse or other social conditions. According to fi gures from the Children First for Oregon nonprofi t, Grant County saw 21.9 abuse and neglect victims ages 0-17 per 1,000 in 2018, which was down from 32.1 in 2017. But the county still ranked 25th out of 36 counties. The percentage of children in foster care increased slightly from 2.5 in 2017 to 2.7 in 2018, and Grant County ranked 30th in the state. The percentage of children in poverty fell slightly from 26.4 to 24.6, leaving the county ranked 28th in the state. Tracey Blood, a prevention advocate and Grant-Harney County CASA volunteer, attri- butes the unfavorable fi gures to social determinants of health, which include economic fac- tors such as local job opportu- nities and pay scales. Child abuse is defi ned by the state through statute and a 2016 senate bill. By statute, child abuse includes negligent treat- ment or maltreatment, phys- ical abuse other than reason- able discipline, sexual abuse or exploitation, mental injury caused by cruelty, threat of harm, exposure to controlled substances, buying or sell- ing of children and permitting a child to enter or remain in a place where methamphetamine is being manufactured. Senate Bill 1515 expands on this defi nition for children residing in or receiving services from a child-caring agency by adding involuntary seclu- sion, verbal abuse, wrongful use of a physical or chemical The Eagle/Richard Hanners Alea King and Casey Myers paddle a canoe on the pond that formed at the former Oregon Pine mill site on April 11. AFTER THE FLOOD State highway crews anticipate fl ood repair work By Richard Hanners Blue Mountain Eagle R ivers and creeks running over onto state highways were obvious to travelers in Grant County on April 8-10, but the real damage was taking place sight-unseen beneath the surface. Oregon Department of Trans- portation crews will be busy inspecting and repairing stream banks, bridge abutments and highway shoulders scoured or undercut by fast-moving streams during the recent fl ood, Assistant District Manager Jeff Berry told the Eagle. Crews were aware of shoulder rock missing along Highway 26 in Picture Gorge, which remained closed until Thursday afternoon. The highway reopened to one lane with a pilot car and then later to two-lane travel. ODOT was concerned water from the John Day River got See Repair, Page A12 Canyon City, Grant Union deal with fl ood impacts By Richard Hanners Blue Mountain Eagle round zero for fl ood- ing concerns in Grant County April 8-9 was Canyon City and Grant Union Junior-Senior High School. Canyon Creek, confi ned within a man-made chan- nel left by gold miners and fed with runoff from lands burned during the 2015 Canyon Creek Complex fi re, roared like a fi re hose through Canyon City and G right along the boundary of the school complex. The fl ow was so intense that the gauge at Adam Road was removed to prevent it from being damaged, Grant County Emergency Management Coor- dinator Ted Williams told the Eagle. The Canyon Creek chan- nel is expected to safely handle 850 cubic feet per second, but a manual measurement upstream from Adam Road determined See Impacts, Page A12 Contributed photo/Dennis Reasoner Flood waters from the John Day River surround farm buildings and a residence at a ranch east of Dayville on April 8-9. See Abuse, Page A12 Vogt sentenced to jail, probation after kidnapping charge dropped Judge: Case not ‘horror story’ police originally believed By Tommy Simmons Idaho Press A judge last week sentenced Andy Vogt of Mt. Vernon to 15 years of probation — with prison time possi- ble — after he admitted to meeting a 15-year-old Eagle, Idaho, girl online and taking her back to his home last fall. Idaho’s Fourth District Court Judge Jonathan Medema acknowl- edged the case against Vogt, 48, was not the “horror story of charges” police and prosecutors once believed it was. Initially, police believed Vogt in October contacted the girl online, drove to her house a week later, forced her into his truck at gunpoint and drove her back to his home in Mt. Vernon. Vogt initially faced two Andy Vogt felony charges, includ- ing kidnapping, which carries a possibility of up to life in prison. Yet as Tanner Stellmon, the case’s prosecutor, said in court April 10, police were unable to corroborate that story. Instead, as Vogt’s attor- ney Charles Peterson pointed out, they learned the girl, who lives with schizophrenia and has a pre- scription for antipsychotic medi- cation, claimed to be 19 years old online when she messaged Vogt. She sneaked away from her parents’ home at about 8 p.m. that night, met up with Vogt and went to Oregon vol- untarily, Peterson explained. The kidnapping charge has since been dismissed, and he instead pleaded guilty to lewd conduct with a child younger than 16. “She portrayed herself as a young woman from Eagle, Idaho, who lived here but was looking for dates and was, in fact, 19 years old,” Peterson said. Nevertheless, Peterson acknowl- edged Vogt should have known the girl was not 19 years old. As the adult, he said, Vogt still bore the respon- sibility in the situation; Stellmon agreed. “The defendant was more con- cerned in this case with the victim’s willingness to engage with him sex- ually than he was with her age,” Stellmon said. “She was willing and that was enough for him.” Despite that, neither Vogt nor the girl claimed they engaged sexu- ally during the days they spent at his home. They said they watched old movies and played video games. Deputies from the Ada County Sheriff’s Offi ce worked to fi nd the girl once her father reported her miss- ing, and they worked with the Grant County Sheriff’s Offi ce, the Oregon State Police and the FBI to trace her to his home. “It turns out she comes to the door and suddenly she’s not 19. ... It turns out she’s 15 and she wants to go home and he tells detectives, ‘I didn’t know that,’” Peterson said. Medema, too, said the charge Vogt See Vogt, Page A12