WEDNESDAY, MAY 30, 2018
HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A3
NEWS
Standoff ends with arrest of suspect
Man sought in
shooting held off
police for 4 hours
By PHIL WRIGHT
STAFF WRITER
Alex Ahumada
A Boardman man, sus-
pected in a recent shooting,
is in custody Thursday after
a long standoff with police.
Local and Oregon State
Police worked together to
bring in Alex Luis Ahumada
after he barricaded himself
Wednesday inside a Board-
man home.
Police wanted to ques-
tion Ahumada, 33, about the
May 19 shooting of Carlos
Ramirez. Hermiston Police
Chief Jason Edmiston said
Thursday that Ahumada is
no longer a person of interest
— he’s officially a suspect.
“Ahumada did not want
to talk to us, which is fine,”
Edmiston said, because his
department will compile evi-
dence and reports for prose-
cutors to charge Ahumada.
The moves that led to
the capture began after an
anonymous caller at 2:49
p.m. told the Boardman
Police Department that Ahu-
mada was at the residence
at 70072 Kunze Lane, just
outside the Boardman city
limits, according to a writ-
ten statement from the Mor-
row County Sheriff’s Office.
Boardman police immedi-
ately alerted the sheriff’s
office because the loca-
tion was in county jurisdic-
tion. The sheriff’s office in
turn told Hermiston police,
according to Edmiston.
The sheriff’s office
Local districts
discuss sexual
harassment policies
By JAYATI
RAMAKRISHNAN
STAFF WRITER
As Oregon’s largest
school district deals with
fallout from a sexual abuse
scandal, other schools
explained their own poli-
cies and the cultures in their
districts.
Portland Public Schools
have recently come under
scrutiny for the way they
have
handled
sexual
harassment
complaints,
with a report revealing that
for decades, the district
ignored or didn’t properly
deal with complaints about
teacher Mitch Whitehurst
sexually abusing students.
Many local administra-
tors said they feel their pol-
icies adequately address
reporting and complaint
procedures.
David Marshall, Herm-
iston School District’s
human resources direc-
tor, said the district investi-
gates every complaint they
receive.
“Typically, it will start
with the principal,” he
said. “They’ll kind of do
an investigation. If a com-
plaint like that comes
in, everything else gets
dropped.”
He said one of the first
things the district will do is
determine if they need to
involve law enforcement. If
so, they will let officers con-
duct the investigation, and
the district will step back.
“If charges are pressed,
it’s pretty straightforward,”
he said. “But if law enforce-
ment doesn’t do anything,
we review it.”
He said sometimes, even
if the complaint doesn’t rise
to the level of law enforce-
ment, the district will dis-
cipline the staff member
according to its own policy.
He said all staff receive
annual online training
about sexual harassment,
both a general training and
one specific to grooming,
and reporting other staff
members.
Umatilla School Dis-
trict Superintendent Heidi
Sipe said the district keeps
investigatory files for-
ever, for both founded
and
unfounded
com-
plaints. Complaints are col-
or-coded based on the dis-
cipline enacted.
“Staff can request (by
contract) that items be
removed from their per-
sonnel file,” Sipe said via
email, noting that file is
separate from investiga-
tory files. “However, I’ve
never removed, nor ever
been asked to remove, any-
thing related to discipline
for a situation regarding a
student.”
Stanfield Schools Super-
intendent Beth Burton
said that as per House Bill
2062, upon hiring a new
staff member, the district
requests information about
whether the person was
ever the subject of a sub-
stantiated report of child
abuse or sexual misconduct
in their previous jobs.
She said all staff are
also required to take sev-
eral annual trainings online,
which range from general
safety issues and manda-
tory reporting, to trainings
specifically about sex-
ual harassment. Staff are
tested on the subjects, and
required to pass.
“We actually provide
paid time to complete the
trainings, because they are
important and staff mem-
bers need the information,”
Burton said in an email.
Additionally, she said,
students are given instruc-
tion about the school’s sex-
ual harassment policies.
Burton said the district
has not been compiling
complaint numbers on a
yearly basis, but may begin
doing so to better review
complaint practices and
procedures.
John Larson, a former
Hermiston teacher who is
now the president of the
Oregon Education Asso-
ciation, issued a statement
last week condemning the
inaction of Portland Public
Schools, and encouraging
other schools to revisit their
own policies.
Larson said the OEA
itself does not set policies,
and that is up to individ-
ual school districts. He said
districts typically also offer
their own trainings about
sexual misconduct and
mandatory reporting.
The Teachers Standards
and Practices Commission
has an online database of
all the complaints that have
been substantiated against
teachers, dating to at least
1997. In 2018 so far, six
teacher licenses have been
revoked statewide. Of
those, four had to do with
sexual harassment or abuse
of a student. The incidents
had all taken place in pre-
vious years, but the license
revocations were not
enacted until 2018.
reported it confirmed Ahu-
mada “was barricaded inside
the residence at the Kunze
Lane address.” Edmiston
said Morrow County law
enforcement arrived first
and secured the area, and
Hermiston police at about
4 p.m. sent its two general
detectives, the drug task
force detective and Randy
Studebaker, the investiga-
tive lieutenant.
Edmiston said Ahumada
had a felony parole violation
warrant and 15 arrests and
43 citations to his name.
And he was not alone in
the residence. The sheriff’s
office therefore asked Ore-
gon State Police to send its
By JADE MCDOWELL
STAFF WRITER
Hermiston’s new farm-
ers market was buzzing with
activity on opening day.
The Maxwell Market —
with a new name, new man-
agement, new date and new
location — opened Thursday
under a large shade canopy
on the corner of South First
Place and West Locust Ave-
nue. About 16 vendors were
there when it opened at 4
p.m., selling produce, flow-
ers, crafts, jewelry, meat,
cheese and other items.
Some of them were first-
time farmers market ven-
dors. Teresa Horn of Eastern
Oregon Mobile Slaughter,
selling specialty smoked
meats, said she had been
thinking about coming for
years but never done it.
“It’s already been worth
coming,” she said about
half an hour into the market.
“We’ve sold several pack-
ages and people seem to like
it.”
The
farmers
mar-
ket almost didn’t happen.
Mitch Myers, who had
been approached by the city
about taking over the mar-
ket, briefly canceled the
event after a dispute with
the city caused a delay in
the opening of a permanent
shade structure that was to
be the market’s new home.
But after the city offered to
host the market downtown
instead, Myers put together
a new plan to host it on a dif-
ferent site.
Teresa Engbretson of Pat-
erson, Washington, was sell-
ing fresh flowers Thursday
through her business My
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Hermiston Farmer’s Market vendor Chris Finley, of 3rd
Generation Farms, holds out a bunch of radishes Thursday
night for her customer to see.
Garden Overfloweth. She
said the switch from Satur-
day to Thursday was a little
tricky for her since she has a
major market to attend Fri-
day mornings, but she loved
the new location.
“There seems to be a lot
of traffic along here,” she
said.
The addition of a mas-
sive shade tent was a new
development that was a big
hit with vendors and shop-
pers as temperatures reached
near 90 degrees.
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“I’m in love with this,”
said Rod Frerichs, point-
ing upward. “This is totally
nice.”
Frerichs’ booth was
called Homemade Happi-
ness, featuring home decor
by him and sewing crafts
from his wife. He said he
had a booth on the last day of
the farmers market last year
and decided to commit to the
entire summer this year. He
said he had liked the market
being in the heart of down-
town and on a Saturday, but
he could also see the benefits
of the new arrangement, par-
ticularly since some vendors
had commitments to larger
markets on Saturdays.
“I’m optimistic,” he said.
Live music was sched-
uled to start around 5 p.m.
but by 4:30 p.m. the market
was already busy.
The Walchli Farms booth
was doing steady business
selling bundles of fresh
asparagus for $1.50 apiece.
Like many of the pro-
duce stands, as the growing
season progresses the farm
plans to add more produce
options such as watermelon.
Shoppers Jeanie Blood-
sworth and Sherry Thomp-
son said they were looking
forward to more produce
as the season goes on, but
were excited for the mar-
ket’s opening. Thompson
was waiting on a bouquet
of flowers from My Garden
Overfloweth.
“I always get some for
me and some for Mom,” she
said.
Bloodsworth said she
thought the shade tent on a
busy corner of First Place
was the “best location so
far” for the farmers market.
“I saw them putting up
the tent the other day and
thought, ‘That’s so nice,’”
she said.
The Maxwell Market is
set to run Thursdays from
4-8 p.m. through the rest of
the summer.
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Vendors offer their wares Thursday evening at the first Hermiston farmers’ market of the season.
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hours, the sheriff’s office
reported, before the SWAT
team arrested him.
Turner said he did not
want to talk about the tac-
tics the team used, but Ahu-
mada came out on his own.
Edmiston said the team was
there to ensure the safety of
everyone involved.
State police booked Ahu-
mada into the Umatilla
County Jail, Pendleton, a
little after midnight Thurs-
day, but police remained at
the Boardman home until
almost 3 a.m.
Edmiston said the Uma-
tilla County District Attor-
ney’s Office should get the
case by Friday morning.
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SWAT team to help.
Lt. Mike Turner, com-
mander of state police out
of Pendleton, said about 20
team members responded.
The team is statewide, he
said, with troopers in Pend-
leton, La Grande and else-
where, and coordinated with
the Morrow County Sheriff’s
Office and Hermiston police.
“We can call on them, and
they respond without ques-
tion and are always willing
to assist,” he said.
SWAT team members
started to arrive around 6:15
p.m. and trickled in over the
course of several hours.
Ahumada was in a stand-
off with police for four
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