Commemorative bricks honoring United States veterans are available to order for loved ones looking to honor a service member at the Battle Ground Veterans Memorial.

An engraved and installed brick costs $250. The brick includes the veteran’s name, branch of service and dates of service. They must be ordered no later than March 1 in order to be installed by Memorial Day on May 25.

Proceeds will support the ongoing maintenance of the memorial, in Battle Ground’s Kiwanis Park. The names of 31 local veterans are already engraved on the memorial’s wall.

For more information and to order a commemorative brick, visit www.cityofbg.org/417/Battle-Ground-Veterans-Memorial.

Rainfall amounts locally Wednesday were far more lackluster than I thought as the main precipitation belt remained to our north and also a fetch of heavy rain near Tillamook on the Oregon Coast, where a quick 3 inches fell Wednesday, causing lowland flooding.

Meanwhile, Vancouver received a little less than a quarter-inch of rain Wednesday with higher amounts to the north and west. Today the heavy rain remains northward but eventually we get some rain on Friday. Light rain is possible today, however we keep it in the 50-50 chance range.

Freezing levels do fall Saturday as the main trough of low pressure drops southward. Good news as rain was falling in the Cascades passes. The snow level will drop down to our foothills, generally about 1,000 feet by Tuesday.

Longer-range forecast models indicate we go into a chilly period by midweek next week but things dry out. So, it may end up cold enough for snow here in the lowlands, but no moisture. It is a ways out there so we will see how things develop as we get closer.

Again, we see the trade-off in winter as mentioned earlier, when it dries out temperatures fall. Expect some frost next week and time to switch outerwear attire. Highs drop from 50 degrees or higher to the low 40s.

I forgot to mention on Sunday, Groundhog Day, as is tradition in my family, we watched “Groundhog Day” as we do every year over and over again with Bill Murray. Poor weatherman. I can only imagine the nightmare waking up day after day with the same weather forecast. My favorite movie.

You remember last year about this time locally we were having chilly weather and snow. Even the coast had an inch or two. Walking along the Long Beach Peninsula, I watched the sands of time covered in a winter white enticing the cold ocean waves to come upon the shore. Soon, the snow was gone and was no more. Memories. Weather brings us memories.

Southwest Washington Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler on Wednesday said the entire process to impeach President Donald Trump was flawed, and therefore the results were flawed.

U.S. Senators Wednesday afternoon voted to acquit Trump on two impeachment charges: obstruction of Congress and abuse of power.

Rep. Herrera Beutler, a Battle Ground Republican, is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and therefore did not vote Wednesday. She previously voted against both articles of impeachment when they were before the House, saying Democrats rushed the investigation and relied on secondhand testimony.

She reiterated that opinion Wednesday and said House Democrats should have enforced their subpoenas for firsthand witnesses.

“The House Democratic leadership should have pumped the brakes and taken the time to ask the tough questions and compel testimony from firsthand sources — full stop — so that we aren’t questioning the results,” Herrera Beutler said. “There are real questions Americans have about this and they didn’t get answered, so I don’t think we can trust the results.”

The impeachment trial centered on whether the president withheld nearly $400 million in military assistance in exchange for the Ukrainian government to announce an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

The president ordered administration officials not to testify in the investigation, leading to the obstruction of justice impeachment charge.

Some Republicans, particularly Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, said there is enough evidence to prove that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden. Alexander said those actions, however, do not meet “the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense.” In addition, a leaked copy of an unreleased book by former National Security Adviser John Bolton reportedly claims Trump directly linked the Ukrainian aid in exchange for an investigation.

Nonetheless, Herrera Beutler said Democrats did not effectively prove that the president withheld funds for the Ukrainian government in a pro quid quo agreement, which “made it clear to me a ‘No’ vote was the right choice.”

“They had to prove it. They didn’t even come close,” she added. “Do I think we all still have questions? Absolutely. But they totally forewent the opportunity to get those questions answered in a way that was fair-minded.”

Carolyn Long, a Democrat challenging Herrera Beutler this year, did not comment Wednesday because she was teaching at Washington State University in Vancouver, where she is a political science instructor, according to a campaign spokeswoman.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, said in a statement Wednesday that the vote was about both President Trump and every future president. She voted to convict Trump on both articles of impeachment.

“I am now on the record, representing millions of people in my home state of Washington, in saying it is unacceptable for a president, now or ever, to ask a foreign country to interfere in our election for their own benefit,” Murray said in the statement. “I want every American to know my strong feeling is that we, the people, elect our presidents, they owe their office to the American people, and Americans must be their priority. I am grateful to every senator who stood up for this fundamental American principle today.”

Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici, a Democrat from Northwest Oregon, said she was “deeply disappointed” in the Senate, saying “too many failed to put country before party.”

“President Trump has failed the American people,” Bonamici said in her statement. “He repeatedly put his own self-interest before our country’s national security and the needs of our communities. Trump is impeached by the House forever, a majority of the American public believe he committed an impeachable offense, and new evidence continues to emerge that he abused the power of his office when he asked Ukraine to interfere in the U.S. election by investigating a political rival.”

She added that the House will continue to “fight back against this administration’s anti-democratic agenda and stand up for the rule of law.”

Herrera Beutler said Americans will be able to come together again because the nation has made it through difficult times in the past. However, impeachment “absolutely” further polarized the nation, she said.

“To me, it felt like it turned into a political weapon for one party to take out a president they didn’t like,” Herrera Beutler said. “I don’t think the American people want that. I don’t think people in Southwest Washington want that.”

She said she’s glad the trial ended this week so Congress can focus on other important legislation.

“My opinion is that Southwest Washington is going to be best off when we move past this onto issues they really care about like prescription drugs, workforce training and infrastructure,” she said. “I think the fact that it turned out not to be a fair investigation meant that it ended up wasting a lot of time and resources away from legislation and fixing real problems in our area.”

The Vancouver Police Department is warning citizens about a recent phone scam in which the scammer impersonates a local police officer.

Several people over the last few days have reported receiving a phone message from a “Lt. Michael Knotts,” who instructs them to call back to discuss an “urgent legal issue,” according to a department news release.

An officer by that name does work for the Vancouver Police Department, but he did not make the calls, the news release states.

Vancouver police do not call to solicit funds, including to resolve a legal matter, or request financial or other sensitive information from citizens.

Anyone with questions about the legitimacy of these types of calls, should contact the department at 360-487-7355 or 360-487-7500 during regular business hours. Citizens may call 311 after hours and request a call back from on-duty personnel.

The Federal Trade Commission has information on common phone scams: www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0208-phone-scams.

A man was arrested Wednesday morning after he allegedly threatened a group of passersby with a gun when they asked him if he needed help.

Justin R. Bailey, age unknown, is accused of felony harassment and criminal impersonation. Bailey is currently in custody at the Clark County Jail. The jail’s roster says he also faces a drug possession charge.

Vancouver police officers were dispatched shortly after 6 a.m. to 8700 N.E. Vancouver Mall Drive for a brandishing in progress.

The group told the officers that they were walking through a parking lot and saw a man sitting at a bus stop, Vancouver Police Department spokeswoman Kim Kapp said in an email. When they walked by the man, they said hello and “asked if he needed assistance,” Kapp said.

“The male became enraged, pulled a handgun out and threatened the group that he was going to shoot them,” police reports say.

Bailey also allegedly followed as the group ran away, according to police.

Officers located and arrested Bailey, Kapp said.

Bailey was scheduled to make a first appearance Thursday in Clark County Superior Court.

A 16-year-old boy made a first appearance Thursday in Clark County Superior Court on a murder charge stemming from a 2018 botched drug robbery in Hazel Dell. The hearing followed the negotiation of an agreement with prosecutors to move his case from juvenile to adult court.

Oriley J. Huynh was facing first-degree murder and robbery and second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm in Clark County Juvenile Court. The murder charge carried a sentencing range of anywhere from 180 weeks up until age 21.

Following a “decline hearing” Tuesday to determine whether juvenile court should decline to prosecute and send the case to superior court, prosecutors agreed to move the case and amend Huynh’s charges to a single count of second-degree murder. Absent the agreement, Huynh would have faced a sentencing range of 310 to 393 months in adult court.

Huynh wore shackles as he was escorted into the courtroom separate from the adult inmates. He said nothing beyond confirming his birthday and the spelling of his name.

Judge Suzan Clark kept Huynh’s bail at $2 million, the same amount set in juvenile court. A change of plea hearing is scheduled for Feb. 13.

At the time of his arrest, co-defendants Tristan Alexander Cienfuegos, 16, and Terrance J. Busby, 18, were similarly charged in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Gage Allan Kiser.

Cienfuegos previously pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder and was sentenced in juvenile court to remain behind bars until age 21. Busby was convicted of first-degree robbery and sentenced to a range of 3½ to six years in a juvenile facility.

The three boys planned to rob Kiser of marijuana Dec. 10, 2018, but their plot turned deadly when Huynh shot the Vancouver teen multiple times, prosecutors say. Kiser left behind a daughter, according to his mother Debra Cook, as well as four siblings.

Clark County sheriff’s deputies and medics were dispatched about 2:30 p.m. to Pacific 63 Center, 6204 N.E. Highway 99, following multiple reports of a shooting. The shopping center is home to a number of businesses including a muffler shop and a martial arts studio.

Witnesses pulled Kiser from his still-running Jeep and attempted CPR before first responders arrived. He was pronounced dead at the scene, the sheriff’s office said.

Kiser was struck by gunfire four times. An autopsy found he had entry wounds in his left shoulder and two in his back, and an exit wound on the right side of his chest, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed in Huynh’s case.

Court records identified Cienfuegos as the marijuana buyer, Huynh as the shooter and Busby as the getaway driver. Senior Deputy Prosecutor James Smith said in a hearing last year that he reviewed the evidence and determined Huynh was the most culpable.

Firefighters and police officers responded to the scene of an injury crash in Battle Ground involving a motorcycle and car Thursday, according to emergency radio traffic monitored at The Columbian.

Responders were dispatched at 4:11 p.m. to the intersection of Northwest Onsdorff Boulevard and 10th Avenue (state Highway 503) for a report of a crash.

Witnesses told dispatchers that two people were thrown from a motorcycle when it was involved in a crash with a Honda vehicle.

Both of the riders were injured but conscious; firefighters requested two ambulances to the scene, according to radio traffic.

Officials shut down the southbound lanes of Highway 503.

Further information was not immediately available.

After fears of closure in January due to budget shortfalls, Daybreak Youth Services will keep its doors open.

The nonprofit, which provides behavioral health treatment to teens in Spokane and Clark County, announced late last year that it was facing a $500,000 budget shortfall and the possibility of shutting down. Daybreak leaders said that amount of money in “bridge financing” would keep the organization afloat until March, when its Brush Prairie facility is expected to return to full capacity.

On Wednesday, leaders announced that the nonprofit was able to raise the needed funds to plug its budget hole.

“All of the funds are going to hire necessary staff,” spokeswoman Sarah Spier said.

Individual, group and foundation donations, as well as grants, eased Daybreak’s shortfall. Now, the nonprofit is ready to offer its full range of services, Spier said.

Daybreak’s financial situation followed the troubled expansion of the facility in Brush Prairie, which triggered investigations and prompted the federal government to temporarily cut off Medicaid reimbursements, resulting in a $3 million loss.

Daybreak, which was founded in Spokane in 1978, purchased its Brush Prairie facility in 2016 in an effort to expand its inpatient treatment services for boys.

The state Department of Health began investigating and threatened to revoke one of Daybreak’s licenses after Clark County sheriff’s deputies raided the local facility in September 2018, seizing documents and computers. The sheriff’s office accused Daybreak of failing to report assaults, rapes and other sexual misconduct to law enforcement.

The Brush Prairie facility continued to operate while the investigations were underway. It reached a settlement with the Health Department in November, agreeing to improve its staffing, training, security and reporting policies.

Daybreak sued the sheriff’s office in federal court, calling the allegations baseless and accusing deputies of exposing confidential patient information. The case was dismissed in July but continues in state court, pending in the Washington Court of Appeals.

However, in August, prosecutors filed a complaint in Clark County District Court against the former vice president of compliance at the Brush Prairie facility. Michael S. Trotter, 43, is facing three counts of failure to report child abuse or neglect.

His case is also pending, and a trial readiness hearing is scheduled for March 3.

Hiring underway

As Daybreak grows its capacity and patient count, it continues to hire nurses, substance use disorder counselors and mental health therapists in both Clark and Spokane counties, Spier said.

“Because of the state-wide shortage of mental health counselors these roles have been particularly challenging to fill, and these are a priority in our recruiting process,” she said.

The Spokane location of the statewide nonprofit offers mental health and substance use treatment and counseling for teenage girls ages 12 to 18. Recently, the nonprofit has had waitlists of teens wanting to access their inpatient services but has been limited in what it can offer due to low staffing levels.

The Spokane Daybreak office also offers outpatient co-ed clinics and wraparound teams that work with families.

In Brush Prairie, Daybreak is nearing a census — its total number of patients — of 20 clients for co-occurring mental health and substance use treatment, and will continue to increase the census to 25, Spier said.

In Spokane, both the emergency inpatient beds and co-occurring mental health and substance abuse treatment inpatient beds are not operating at their full capacity due to lack of staff. Only six of the 12 emergent beds for teens can be filled, and 14 of the 24 co-occurring treatment beds can be filled. Spier said Daybreak is actively hiring two substance use counselors and two mental health therapists in order to open up all of the beds and ease the waitlists.

A new art installation will be unveiled Friday evening as part of Vancouver’s monthly First Friday art walk event.

Wind-and-Wave, a stainless steel metalwork piece by husband-wife duo Dave Frei and Jennifer Corio, is at Vancouver Waterfront Park. It will make its debut to the public at 5 p.m. with a ceremony featuring remarks from Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle and Maureen Montague, chair of the city’s new Culture, Art and Heritage Commission.

The duo “are going to say a few words, and then we’re going to unveil the piece,” said Kerry Peck, the commission’s support specialist.

The piece was commissioned by the Kenneth and Eunice Teter Charitable Trust and donated to the city. Corio and Frei are the artists behind Cobalt Designworks, a Vancouver-based studio.

According to the event’s Facebook page, the artists wanted to capture “the Teters’ love of water” with the blue and silver piece. Wind-and-Wave stands 6 feet tall, with a square base 3 feet wide.

The new installation marks the first piece of public art to be unveiled since the city formed the Culture, Art and Heritage Commission over the summer. That was a reincarnation of sorts of the Cultural Commission established in 1994 but suspended in 2005 during what a city official described as “the budget-cutting years.”

“We’re very excited about it,” Montague said. “It’s part of First Friday, so we’re hoping people will come out.”

Fred Meyer has awarded a $30,000 grant to the Legacy Health Foundation.

The grant was awarded through the Kroger Co. Zero Hunger, Zero Waste Foundation and will be used to continue the development of Legacy Health’s Tailored Meals program, according to a Legacy press release.

The Tailored Meals program, which is for patients at Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center and Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center in Portland, supports “the nutritional needs of vulnerable community members,” and focuses on those who are malnourished, and living with diabetes and chronic diseases.

Legacy Salmon Creek provides four weeks of healthy, balanced meals prepared by hospital cafeteria staff. The meals are delivered to the homes of vulnerable adults who were identified as malnourished during their hospital stay, according to the press release. It can be difficult for people to prepare food after a hospital stay, which can lead to further decline in health.

“People who are malnourished have double the chance of dying within four months of returning home from a hospital stay,” the press release reads.

Each meal is tailored specifically for the needs of the former patient.

To learn more about supporting any of Legacy Health’s hospitals or programs, call the Legacy Health Office of Philanthropy & Community Engagement at 503-415-4700 or visit www.legacyhealth.org/giving.

Maybe Clark County Public Health Officer Dr. Alan Melnick needs to advocate for public health in a cuter way? If only he could fit orcas into his advocacy.

From 2003 to 2018, Clark County Public Health’s biennial revenue has dropped by close to $7 million, while the county’s population has risen by about 80,000 people. State foundational support has mostly flatlined at around $3.5 million over the last decade, and total funding from the state, which can include grants and other funding streams, has fallen by more than $3 million.

Local revenue to Public Health has increased by more than $3 million during that time period.

Gov. Jay Inslee’s 2019-2021 budget allotted up to $22 million to public health foundational services across the state, but the actual dollars will fall short of that pledge, Melnick said. There are new bills this session that could help increase funding, but if those bills don’t pass, health agencies across the state will have to cope with another decrease.

“We’ve been dealing with declining funding and revenue streams for many years,” Melnick said.

Public Health’s revenue is made up of fees, state, county and federal funding, and grants. State funding has seen the most drastic cuts, Melnick said, which stems from the fact that if Public Health does good work, its efforts go unnoticed.

Clark County Councilors Temple Lentz and John Blom said it’s difficult to procure funding for Public Health, because it’s not flashy. They compared it to the advocacy last year that led to bills being passed to help protect orcas in Washington. Blom said those environmental bills were important, but mentioned there’s not thousands of people showing up in Olympia to stump for better immunization records, like there are for orcas.

“I don’t know if an orca is cute, but it’s not as cute as an orca,” Lentz said of Public Health. “And it’s not as dire as a wildfire. So it’s easy to continue to push it off. We see that in a lot of our legislation. It’s so easy to pay attention to the shiniest, fastest, most pressing thing when really we should be paying more attention to the underlying layers, because we need them to make sure we have fewer crises.”

Lentz and Blom acknowledged that legislators have many issues competing for dollars. They said there are many Clark County departments having to do more work or the same amount of work with fewer resources.

But given how health costs pile up in the long run, it seems like more foundational health funding would be a good return on investment, Melnick said.

Foundational public health services fund different work depending on the health jurisdictions. Clark County Public Health uses those dollars heavily for work on communicable disease control and epidemiology (relevant after the county’s measles outbreak last year), tuberculosis case management and developing new protocols for investigating hepatitis C, according to an email from Clark County Public Health spokeswoman Marissa Armstrong.

“It’s somewhat invisible,” Lentz said. “That’s part of the reason it doesn’t get as much attention. When things are going well, the community at large doesn’t necessarily know it’s there. And when something like a measles outbreak gets a lot of attention, it’s because something went wrong. Typically, that’s because we’ve systematically underfunded the systems that keep us safe and healthy.”

Coming up short

When Inslee made his budget last year, health jurisdictions and tribes across the state collected data to come up with their budget request. It initially came close to $400 million, Melnick said. That was then reduced to $296 million, but after receiving requests to lower it even more, it ended up at $100 million.

Inslee’s final budget included funding for only up to $22 million for foundational public health services for the county health departments, the Washington Department of Health and local tribes. The amount was $80 million short of their final request.

In the governor’s budget, the $22 million was split between $10 million from the state’s general fund and $12 million generated from the state’s new vaping tax. In July, Melnick told the Clark County Board of Health the vaping tax was likely to fall short of that $12 million. Given the string of lung injuries and bans around vaping products, Melnick said the tax will definitely fall short of the $12 million.

Lentz said the vaping tax is not a sustainable funding solution for Public Health.

“Last year, when we talked about the vape tax, our ideal is that people don’t vape,” Lentz said. “We certainly don’t want to be in a position, where in order to pay for your public health, you need to go out and start vaping. That’s ridiculous. Anywhere we are taxing a sin to help the prevention of it, that’s counter-intuitive.”

New hope

Lentz, Blom and Melnick are in favor of House Bill 2679 and Senate Bill 6451, which would significantly increase funding for foundational health services. The proposed bills would take a percentage of excess surplus dollars from nonprofit health insurers in Washington such as Kaiser Permanente and Premera Blue Cross. Some money from the bill would also help Washingtonians purchase health insurance coverage.

According to the Kitsap Sun, nonprofit surplus levels from nonprofit health insurance companies in Washington have risen to $4.4 billion. Surplus is supposed to be carried in case of emergencies, but the excess has grown too high, Blom and Lentz said.

HB 2679 and SB 6451 propose to take a small percentage of that surplus and use that money to provide an estimated $162 million a biennium for foundational public health services, or $81 million a year, Blom said. That’s almost eight times more than the proposed amount coming from the vape tax.

Blom and Lentz said nonprofit insurance companies shouldn’t be sitting on dollar amounts that large, especially while insurance premiums rise. They feel those nonprofits should either reinvest in their organizations to help the community, or give back to the communities they operate in.

“They are sitting on money that got there from ratepayers in Washington,” Blom said. “That’s money that we have paid to them, and now they’re just sitting on it. This is an opportunity for that money to come back, and really help the ratepayers.”

The Camas School District notified parents that Camas High School was put on lockdown this morning because a parent reported two individuals on campus about 8:20 a.m. that did not appear to belong.

According to an email from the Superintendent Jeff Snell, a parent took a photo of two individuals with backpacks entering campus. The photo was shared with school security.

Officials could not confirm the individuals’ identities and went into lock down, according to an email sent to parents about 8:40 a.m. School buses that had not yet arrived were diverted to the bus barn.

Officials were later able to find the individuals and determined with Camas Police Department that there was no threat to the school or students.

The lockdown was lifted shortly after 9 a.m. Parents were notified that the lockdown was lifted at 9:04 a.m.

“I apologize for any inconvenience this caused.  We take your students’ safety seriously,” Snell said in the email.

Suspected serial killer Warren Forrest, who’s accused in the slaying of 17-year-old Martha Morrison in the 1970s, pleaded not guilty Friday.

Forrest, 70, was arraigned in Clark County Superior Court on one count of first-degree murder in the Portland girl’s 1974 death. Her remains were discovered Oct. 12 of that year, by a member of a hunting party in a densely wooded area of Dole Valley. They were not identified until July 2015.

Friday’s hearing was brief, with Forrest stating his name for the record and confirming his plea. He slid on his eyeglasses to sign paperwork and quietly chatted with his attorney as he walked back to the holding area.

His trial is scheduled for April 6.

Prosecutors filed the murder charge against Forrest in December. The long-anticipated charge came following a breakthrough in Morrison’s cold case. Blood found on an air pistol Forrest used to torture another woman in 1974 was identified as Morrison’s.

The former Battle Ground man is believed to be responsible for the abduction and slaying of six women and girls in Clark County in the 1970s, and he is a person of interest in another missing person case.

Forrest has only been convicted in the murder of Krista Kay Blake, 20, who was last seen July 11, 1974, climbing into his light blue van. He has been serving a life sentence for Blake’s killing since 1979.

After the hearing, Norma Countryman, one of two known victims to survive an attack by Forrest, told news media that it’s difficult for her to attend his court hearings.

“But it’s also a good thing. It’s why I’m here, because I guess I need to go through it. I need to work it out,” she said.

Her feelings about Forrest facing a new murder charge, she said, are “jumbled up.”

“Some days I’m not sure what I feel, except just very emotional,” Countryman said. “I wish that I could just forget it … but I can’t. I’m not the only one that matters. There are so many other people that matter, so many other people who show up for this.”

Countryman said she attends the hearings for herself and also for all of Forrest’s suspected victims and their loved ones.

Update, 4:30 p.m. Friday: The medical examiner’s office reported that the man’s identity has been confirmed. It did not include his name in an updated news release.

Original article: The Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office continues to seek help identifying a man found dead late last month in Orchards.

On Friday, the medical examiner released an artist’s sketch of the man. 

He was discovered in the 10900 block of Northeast Fourth Plain Boulevard in the early morning hours of Jan. 28. The medical examiner is determining how he died, but no foul play is suspected at this time.

The medical examiner believes the man was probably in his late 60s. He is white, 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighs 110 pounds. He has brown eyes and was balding with gray hair. He was found wearing a black and navy blue windbreaker, a green and blue plaid shirt, black pants and brown hiking shoes.

Anyone with information that could help identify the man should call the medical examiner’s office at 564-397-8405.

A Washougal man was sentenced Friday in Clark County Superior Court to 25 years in prison for a domestic hostage call that ended in his wife’s stabbing death.

Robert W. Burdick, 56, began sobbing as Linda Burdick’s family described the suffering her death has caused them. The large family, along with members of Robert Burdick’s family, nearly filled Judge David Gregerson’s courtroom to capacity.

The victim’s mother, Becky Mohagen, said she saw her daughter on Father’s Day 2019, two days before the murder. Linda Burdick, 49, told her parents about some issues at home, but she assured them, “Bobby would never hurt me,” Mohagen recalled.

“The next words we heard were, ‘Help me. He’s going to kill me,’ ” the mother said.

Robert Burdick pleaded guilty to a single count of first-degree domestic violence murder. He faced a sentencing range of 240 to 320 months. Defense attorney Louis Byrd Jr. said his client, family and the state were asking for a mid-range sentence of 280 months, or about 23 years.

In imposing the lengthier sentence, Gregerson described the slaying as “significant savagery.” The judge told the courtroom that public health research shows domestic violence is one of the most serious risks to human life in the state, nation and world.

“It’s hard to think of a more tragic ending,” Gregerson said.

Robert Burdick killed Linda Burdick in the early morning hours of June 18 at their Washougal apartment. He called 911 at 2:05 a.m. from an apartment complex in the 600 block of West Lookout Ridge Drive. He said he was armed with butcher knives and holding his wife hostage in their home, according to the Washougal Police Department.

Court records show he told an emergency dispatcher that he’d been drinking and wanted police to shoot him.

Officers responded to the couple’s residence and spotted a light shining from the window of a third-story apartment. Linda Burdick opened the window and yelled for help as officers approached the building. Robert Burdick, who was holding a knife over his head, pulled her away, police said.

When officers entered the apartment, they heard Linda Burdick yelling for help. As officers ascended a flight of interior stairs, Robert Burdick appeared at the top of the staircase with his hands up, court records say.

Police found Linda Burdick lying on a bed with stab wounds to her neck, chest and arms. A bloody knife was found near her. She died shortly before 7 a.m. at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver after undergoing emergency surgery.

During Friday’s hearing, Matt Mohegan said he spent the morning listening to songs the family played at his sister’s funeral service, and he found himself still in disbelief that she is no longer alive.

“You have changed this family in the worst way ever. … I have watched the strongest people break down. We’re totally lost and filled with anger for you, but we’re trying to keep it together and care for (Linda Burdick’s) children,” Matt Mohegan said.

He added that the family wants nothing to do with Robert Burdick ever again.

Senior Deputy Prosecutor Anna Klein requested, and the court granted, more than a dozen no-contact orders against Robert Burdick for Linda Burdick’s family members.

Unfolding a piece of crumpled paper, Robert Burdick read from notes and told the judge he was sorry for what he’d done. He said he has lost all self-respect and the love of everyone he was connected to through his wife.

“I took your love and walked all over it, threw it away with my actions,” he said. “I miss Linda every day, every day, every day.”

Embattled Camas High School Principal Liza Sejkora has resigned following backlash to social media posts she made about former basketball star Kobe Bryant’s death.

The school district announced that Sejkora, who had been the principal at the school since 2017, submitted her resignation Friday. District staff will form a transition plan and share it with families in the coming days.

“I am working with the Camas leadership to resign my position as principal of Camas High School,” Sejkora said in a district news release. “Students and staff deserve to have a learning environment free of disruptions.”

The former Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard was among nine people, including his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, who died Jan. 26 in a helicopter crash outside of Los Angeles. That same day, Camas High School Principal Liza Sejkora wrote, “Not gonna lie, seems to me that karma caught up with a rapist today.”

Sejkora later apologized, but the fallout from her comments was widespread. Camas Police were assigned to provide security on campus after the district received death threats and other disturbing messages, and hundreds of students walked out of school in opposition to Sejkora’s comments.

“I have accepted Dr. Sejkora’s resignation as principal of Camas High School. Losing a principal during the school year in this way is obviously very difficult,” Superintendent Jeff Snell said in a message to parents. “I ask that you rally around Camas High. Our students and staff did not ask to be put in this situation. They deserve the space to move forward.”

A house fire in Battle Ground on Friday displaced multiple people, according to emergency radio traffic monitored at The Columbian.

Clark County Fire District 3 crews were dispatched at 4:06 p.m. to the 600 block of Northeast Sixth Street for a report of a residential structure fire.

The first arriving crew reported that smoke was visible from outside the single-story, ranch-style home, according to radio traffic.

Firefighters circled the exterior of the house before moving inside. They found a small fire in the living room, according to radio traffic.

The fire was extinguished about 12 minutes after the 911 call, according to radio traffic.

Red Cross was requested to help several displaced residents.

There are a few things to know when you’re sitting down for a formal meal, said Dinh Tran, senior director of dining services for Evergreen Public Schools. Always start with your silverware that’s farthest from the plate and work your way in. There’s no such thing as an oyster fork in formal settings, so don’t ask. Above all, never tell your host if you’re leaving the table to use the restroom.

“There’s always protocol,” Tran said. “That’s why we call it fine dining.”

Yeah, agreed Elijah Uminskiy, 11.

“It’s not like it’s a birthday party,” he said.

More than a dozen Sunset Elementary School fifth-graders were treated Friday to a lesson on proper table etiquette, followed by a practice round in the form of a multicourse meal. The program, At Your Service, is coordinated by the district’s food services contractor, Chartwells.

“It’s amazing to be able to teach these children,” said Tran, who led an hourlong class for the students before their lunch. “It’s a neat thing. If they take away 10 percent, they’ll remember as they go along.”

And 10 percent turned out to be a pretty good estimate. The students’ eyes grew wide as they walked into a library converted into a formal dining room, complete with white tablecloths, dainty folded napkins and paper place cards.

“Austin, Austin!” 10-year-old Shaniya Sharma cried to her friend, Austin Krishtal, also 10, when she found her seat. “You have to pull out the chair for me!”

School board members and district officials joined the students as well as guests of honor, quizzing students on their favorite classes and school lunches.

“I can be kind of a messy eater,” Chief Academic Officer Bill Oman admitted to his table as he unfolded a napkin on his lap.

Hossein Akhtarkhavari, resident district manager with Chartwells, said this may be a rare opportunity for many students to eat a formal meal. He noted that about half, or 51.1 percent, of Evergreen Public Schools students receive free- and reduced-priced lunches, a barometer of poverty in public schools. Between that and families’ busy schedules, “Some of them may not get this experience at all.”

“Etiquette is part of their learning,” Akhtarkhavari said.

Students made their way through a soup and salad course, then on to a dish of lemon chicken and roasted potatoes, and, finally, capped their meal with a brownie and large scoop of vanilla ice cream. Students passed around many baskets of rolls, and downed bottles upon bottles of lemonade.

Bella Sanchez, 10, marveled at the hearty vegetable minestrone soup.

“Usually stuff that’s healthy doesn’t taste that good,” she said.

Though not every 10-year-old’s palette is that discerning.

“It tastes like salsa,” Austin said of the soup (after pulling Shaniya’s chair out for her, of course). “I didn’t really like it that much.”

He still got his fill, though.

“The butter and bread is really good,” he said.

All the while, Tran walked between the tables, gently correcting students’ postures or slurping. “Yes, please” and “thank you” were shared plenty of times, and as the meal ended, students received certificates celebrating their participation.

Kingston Crawford, 11, chatted with his friends as he cut his chicken. His mom will be happy about these lessons; the way he tells it, she takes dinner time pretty seriously. It’s important, he said, that kids use proper etiquette at the table.

“So we have manners and don’t look foolish,” he said.

Washington’s temporary ban on flavored nicotine vapor products is over as of this morning, and local vape shops are preparing for a surge in customer traffic this weekend following months of severe revenue decline. It should be good news — but the shop owners aren’t feeling very celebratory.

“There doesn’t seem to be a future for the industry in the state of Washington,” said Steven Berry, co-owner of the Vancouver vape shop chain Hawaiian Vapor.

The gloomy outlook is prompted by a bill working its way through the Legislature that would create new regulations for vape shops. The original version of the bill would have made the flavored vape ban permanent, but a revised version adopted this week reverses that plan.

Again, that should be good news for the industry, but multiple shop owners who spoke to The Columbian said the new bill would still be a death sentence. The key issue is a section of the bill that would create new restrictions on the allowable sizes of vape-liquid containers. There would be a gap between when the emergency ban expires and the new bill goes into effect, but once that window is over, the shop owners said the bottle-size rules would be even more damaging than the flavor ban.

“This bill is an extinction-level event for the industry,” said Shaun D’Sylva, who owns Fatboy Vapors, a manufacturing and retail company that operates multiple vape shops in Clark County.

Flavor ban

Gov. Jay Inslee instituted the temporary flavor ban in October amid an outbreak of a novel vaping-related lung illness. Several states enacted similar measures around the same time, and the Trump administration briefly considered a federal ban, although the plan didn’t move forward.

The Centers for Disease Control linked the lung illness to vitamin E acetate, a substance sometimes used as a cutting agent in black-market vape liquids, although not typically used in legal flavored products. State officials also cited skyrocketing rates of youth vaping as a justification for the flavor ban.

The emergency ban was put in place on Oct. 10, and it lasted 120 days. It set up the Legislature to take long-term action during the 2020 session.

Senate Bill 6254 was introduced in January and originally would have continued the prohibition, but on Monday the Senate Health and Long Term Care Committee approved an amendment that replaced the total ban with a rule that restricts flavored liquid sales to customers age 21 and older.

Smaller bottles

The revised bill retains a section from the prior version that states that vapor product liquids containing nicotine may only be sold in refill containers of 10 milliliters or smaller. Disposable products, single-use cartridges and refillable vapor product tanks would be limited to 2 milliliters.

Vape shop owners who spoke to The Columbian said those numbers differ substantially from what is currently on the market.

“The vaping industry has never used 10 (milliliters), ever,” Berry said. “That has never been a thing.”

The average bottle size tends to be 60 to 120 milliliters, he said, and most of his product inventory uses 4 milliliter tanks in the vapor devices, which would also run afoul of the new rules.

Justin Rawlinson, president of Vancouver-based Erupted Vapor, estimated that it would take about six to nine months for manufacturers to make the switch to smaller bottles — assuming they’re interested in switching at all.

“They’d have to take a look at Washington state’s entire market and say, ‘Is it worth it?’ ” he said.

FDA challenges

Speaking as a manufacturer, D’Sylva pointed to an additional obstacle: The Food and Drug Administration. Current federal policy drastically limits manufacturers’ ability to get new vape products approved, he said, and the smaller-sized bottles would almost certainly count as something new.

“The only thing you can do is edit the name,” he said.

The current regulatory environment emerged in 2016, when the FDA finalized a rule that designated electronic nicotine delivery products brought to market since 2007 — meaning basically all vaping devices — as “new” tobacco products that would need to be authorized by the FDA through a process called the Premarket Tobacco Product Application.

Products that were already on the market in 2016 were temporarily grandfathered in, but their manufacturers were still required to apply by August 2022 to seek FDA approval to remain on the market. The application deadline was later moved up to May 12, 2020.

The vaping industry’s product lineup has been essentially frozen since 2016 due to the rule, D’Sylva said, making any new bottle sizes virtually impossible.

The application fees are expensive and beyond the means of most manufacturers, D’Sylva added, and he described the May 12 deadline as an entirely separate impending doom for the vaping industry stacked on top of the potential state bottle restrictions.

But even so, D’Sylva said he and other local industry owners have been lobbying against the proposed Washington bill along with the current FDA requirements, in hopes that the industry can be spared from both “extinction” events.

Industry future

All three vape shop owners voiced frustration with Washington’s flavor ban, arguing that vitamin E acetate was already reported to be the likely cause of the lung illnesses even before Inslee and other governors began issuing flavored vape bans.

They all described the ban as a major blow that has substantially reduced customer traffic and put their stores in danger of being forced to close.

Rawlinson commended the Legislature for trying to reduce teen vaping rates, but argued that even the smaller sizes seemed like a step in the wrong direction because smaller vape products would be easier for students to conceal in schools. Juul pods, for example, are smaller than 2 milliliters.

Still, he said the revised legislative proposal was ultimately a step in the right direction, though not as much as the industry would like to see.

“Is it the same dampening effect as a flavor ban would be? Certainly not,” he said.

D’Sylva was more pessimistic, although he attributed the bleak outlook primarily to the FDA policy and the impending May application deadline. But the state regulations would be just deadly to the industry if the current bill is enacted, he said.

“The day it goes into law, I’ll be shutting down all my stores in Washington state because there are no products I can sell,” he said.

It has been about a month since we dropped the Monday print edition, and a while longer since we changed some of our columnists, and I am still getting questions from readers about these moves. Let me begin by reiterating that cost savings were the primary factor behind all of these decisions, and then I will try to address the specific questions that seem to crop up. If you have a follow-up question for me about these changes, or any other subject, please send me an email at craig.brown@columbian.com and I will try to answer it.

Why don’t you print the Monday puzzles and comics on Sundays instead of Tuesdays?

We buy all of our puzzles, comics and other features from news syndicates. These syndicates have a lot of customers around the world. To keep it fair to all, the features are embargoed until their release date. We can’t publish the Monday features on Sunday without breaking the embargo. If we deliberately broke the embargo, the syndicate likely would drop us as a customer.

What happened to Carolyn Hax’s advice column and Michelle Singletary’s personal finance column?

We dropped both of these after their syndicate demanded a substantial price increase and barred us from sharing them with our online audience. We need to continue to grow our online audience, so this felt like we would be paying more for less. Furthermore, we were already getting columns on these topics that we were not printing. So this decision keeps us from creating a dysfunctional relationship with online customers and makes better use of our money. I think Hax and Singletary would agree with that!

I realize there is no more printed and delivered Monday paper, but can I go online to see a Monday edition?

Unfortunately, no, we are not producing a Monday paper either in print or digitally. (This is different from The Oregonian, which produces a Monday online edition and sells printed copies on newsstands.) It would take several people to put out a Monday digital edition, and if we did that, we would have to pull them away from their current duties. I personally don’t think it is worth it to dilute our offerings the rest of the week to offer a Monday digital-only paper.

Does that mean that you don’t put out any news on Sundays?

We are still posting breaking news to our website on Sundays. For example, we had the news of Kobe Bryant’s death on our site within five minutes of the time The Associated Press and CNN confirmed the death. Last weekend, our on-call editor posted multiple reports after three fatal car crashes occurred, and an off-duty sports editor posted the Super Bowl story just a few minutes after the Chiefs came from 10 points behind to win. We are auto-posting nonbreaking news throughout the day Sunday, including some longer stories not appearing in print.

Why aren’t lottery results or the West Coast NBA and NHL scores in the newspaper on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays?

We moved some of our press times earlier three days per week. Unfortunately, this means we don’t get the lottery results in time for Page A2 or late scores for our Sports section. You can see them online that evening, or in the following day’s paper. It’s an inconvenience, I admit.

Will election results still appear in the next day’s paper?

Yes; we will authorize staff overtime as necessary to make sure our print readers receive complete election results. The next election is Tuesday, so if you live in Vancouver, Battle Ground, Hockinson, Washougal or Woodland, be sure to vote.

Are you expecting to make any other changes?

We need to be ready to react to trends in our business, particularly the continued loss of print advertising revenue. But we think the changes we have made already will set us on a course to remain Clark County’s best source of news and information for many years to come.