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From a person who staged UFO hoaxes with friends as a teenager to a U.S. Navy radar operator who spotted about 100 objects over 10 days appearing to descend from “low earth orbit,” the speakers at this year’s Chehalis Flying Saucer Party discussed a wide variety of topics related to UFOs.

In 2017, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) disclosed several videos of UFOs — or unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP) as they are now officially referred to by the DOD — encountered by Navy pilots in 2004 along the southern California coast.

Disclosure was the theme of this year’s Flying Saucer Party, which approximately 600 people attended Friday and Saturday in downtown Chehalis to commemorate Chehalis pilot Kenneth Arnold’s historic 1947 UFO sighting, according to Lewis County Historical Museum Executive Director Jason Mattson, who helped organize the event.

The event also featured four speakers, including retired U.S. Navy Senior Chief Kevin Day, who deployed six times over his career as a radar operator, and saw the objects encountered by those Navy pilots in 2004 on his radar screens.

Long before that sighting’s disclosure, it was on June 24, 1947, during a routine flight from Chehalis to Yakima to refuel before heading to Oregon when Arnold saw nine metallic objects flying in an echelon formation stretching nearly 5 miles.

He timed the objects as they flew from Mount Rainier toward Mount Adams to estimate their speed, which he believed to be around 1,500 mph, more than twice as fast as any known conventional aircraft.

In fact, the sound barrier had yet to be broken. That happened later that year in October when the famous U.S. Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager exceeded it for the first time flying his Bell X-1 at 767 mph.

To this day, nobody knows what Arnold saw in the skies above Mount Rainier, which eventually came to be known as “flying saucers” after an East Oregonian article used the words “saucer-like aircraft” to describe them the day after Arnold’s sighting.

Back in Chehalis last weekend, hundreds celebrated his sighting with events including an “alien invasion” costume parade and of course the “saucer drop,” a tradition which is believed to have actually started during Chehalis’ old Krazy Days in the 1960s and 70s. 

Speakers then took to McFiler’s Chehalis Theater’s stage on Saturday, Sept. 14, to share their experiences and thoughts on disclosure. Aside from Day, other speakers included Charlton “Chuck” Hall, Steve Edmiston and Connie Willis.

‘Tin Foil Aliens’ and the spectrum of belief

First to take the stage Saturday was Charlton “Chuck” Hall, a retired psychotherapist and author of the book “Tin Foil Aliens,” in which he recounts his youthful adventures with friends during the 1970s creating UFO hoaxes and pranks.

Hall also discussed what he called the spectrum of belief along with how to discern credible sightings from hoaxes. For him, it all began in October 1973 with the tin foil alien incident, more commonly known as the “Alabama Metal Man.”

“Anybody recognize this picture? That is a friend of mine from junior high,” Hall said. “I’m not going to name names to protect the guilty.”

Their original plan was to prank neighbors by using a balloon as a UFO and dressing someone up in a space suit costume. The costume was made up of mylar blankets and duct tape along with welding gloves and boots.

After the balloon got reported as a UFO, Jeff Greenhaw, who was the Falkville, Alabama, chief of police at the time, responded to the call and saw Hall’s friend standing near the road. He got out of his car and attempted to contact him, which prompted Hall’s friend to panic and run back toward their van that was hidden in the trees.

Greenhaw attempted to pursue but broke his vehicle’s axle attempting to drive across a field, and Hall and his friends were never caught. Even though Hall has admitted to this hoax, Greenhaw believed he really did see an alien being that night, and took several polaroid photos of Hall’s friend in costume before he ran, creating believers in the Alabama Metal Man.

This is where the spectrum of belief comes into play.

“When I start talking about this, people automatically assume I’m saying there’s no evidence for UFOs whatsoever, all that stuff,” Hall said. “All I’m saying is let’s look at the evidence on both sides before we make a decision.”

Instead of believing every reported sighting, he pushed for thorough investigations and remaining skeptical while still being able to accept if a report has no conventional explanation.

As for how to separate what’s real from what’s a hoax, Hall told those in attendance to keep an eye out for things like copy cat sightings, clickbait headlines, influencers trying to increase followers, lack of collaboration with authorities and if the person making the claim is trying to make a profit. 

The USS Princeton radar operator’s sighting

Back in 2004, Kevin Day was approaching the end of a 22-year career in the U.S. Navy as a radar operator. Day had deployed six times throughout his career and cumulatively spent years at sea as part of various carrier strike groups.

“I have to tell you, I have never seen anything like this in all those hundreds and thousands of hours,” Day said. “And oddly enough, this was my very last time at sea.”

While U.S. Navy pilots encountered what would later be described as a “Tic Tac” following the DOD’s 2017 disclosure of footage of the object recorded by those pilots, Hall was also seeing things he couldn’t explain on his radar screens.

The pilots were with VFA 41, a Navy fighter attack squadron that was part of the carrier air group aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. Hall was a radar operator aboard the USS Princeton, a guided missile cruiser that is part of the Nimitz’s carrier strike group which was on a training exercise off the California coast.

“I was a radar operator and I was the flight air intercept controller,” Day said.

During what was supposed to be a training exercise, unidentified objects suddenly began descending from above 80,000 feet, the ceiling of where Day’s radar equipment could see.

“I look up on the screen, and, ‘What in the, what?’ So I went over to the ballistic missile defense guys and said, ‘What do we have here?’” Day said. “And they said, ‘Well senior chief, we have objects coming down from low earth orbit, and we don’t know what they are.’” 

He informed the ship’s captain of the radar contacts and agreed the training exercise needed to be put on hold so the pilots could attempt to intercept one of the objects.

The reason they needed to investigate is the Navy had issued warnings to local civilian aviators to stay away from the area they were training in, as the airspace above a carrier strike group is heavily monitored and guarded for both security and safety reasons. He also considered if his system might have been malfunctioning.

“We brought down all of the systems on the entire (carrier) strike group, recalibrated everything, brought it all back up, and those contacts were even clearer and sharper,” Day said.

Eventually, the F-18 pilots were able to make contact with one of the objects, which easily evaded the pilots’ attempts to follow and track them, then disappearing into the ocean.

Following the first sighting, groups of these objects kept appearing over the next 10 days, appearing to descend from space in groups of five to 10 at a time.

“If you added up all the groups over the course of 10 days, there were about 100 of these objects, there really was. If the data ever comes out, you’ll see that yourself. But every single one of these disappeared off my radar in the same exact spot in the sky, which was about 60 miles north of Guadalupe Island off the coast of Mexico,” Day said.

Following the sightings, DOD officials seized all the recorded radar data and other evidence from the carrier strike group, including the footage released in 2017. Day left the command and retired from the service.

Former DOD official turned paranormal investigator Luis Elizondo checked out the area off the coast of Mexico along with noted musician turned UFOlogist Tom DeLonge following an interview with Day after he retired.

“They went out there and they talked to the fisherman, and the fisherman were like, ‘It’s about time someone came out here and talked to us. We've been seeing these things for 100 years,’” Day said. “According to (the fisherman), they come out of the sky and they drop straight down into the water, don’t even make a splash.”

To this day, Day still wonders just what exactly it was he saw descending from space over those 10 days at sea. He does have his own beliefs about what he saw.

After doing his own investigation came to believe in the theory some believe in the UFO community — that what people think are aliens is actually super-advanced artificial intelligence (AI). With our own AI technology still in its infancy, he thinks these objects could be here to help it advance.

“And I’m speculating, I know this,” Day added.   

Day stated he chose to go public with his story and continues to tell it because he hopes to help push toward full disclosure by the DOD.

Despite this, he believes that disclosure actually isn’t actually in the hands of the authorities at all, but instead in the hands of whoever, or whatever, these anomalous objects are.

•••

Look for recaps on the other speakers — Steve Edmiston and Connie Willis — in the next edition of The Chronicle.

A lawsuit accusing the Centralia School District of improperly isolating and restraining an autistic kindergartener and failing to inform the student’s mother about it in 2021 and 2022 is still active in Lewis County Superior Court following a judge’s decision earlier this month to reverse a summary judgment in the case.

The student’s mother, Ashlee Fitch, and attorneys Lara Kruska and Whitney Hill, of Cedar Law PLLC, filed the 29-page complaint in Lewis County Superior Court on Aug. 4, 2023, accusing the Centralia School District of negligence, violation of state education laws, discrimination,  false imprisonment and assault.

“When (Finch’s son, referred to in the complaint by the initials G.F.) was just a 5-year-old kindergarten student, he was subjected to excessive and traumatic restraint and isolation while attending Oakview Elementary School and then Washington Elementary School within the Centralia School District … during the 2021-22 school year,” the complaint alleges.

The complaint cites information from reports obtained via public records requests and reports the district sent to Fitch, who alleges the reports were sent to an outdated address, so she did not find out about them until after the fact.

“At the start of his kindergarten year, district staff members started physically restraining and isolating G.F. in a locked room with padded walls,” the complaint alleges, adding that “the restraint and isolation became so frequent and routine that by December 2021, G.F. was locked in that room almost daily.”

The complaint further alleges that “G.F. was clearly in a state of significant distress” while isolated, and “would cry in the isolation room and scream for help.”

Fitch’s son, now 8, has since transferred to a school outside of the Centralia School District for students with behavioral or social and emotional difficulties. As of August 2023, G.F. “has not had any behavior difficulties there” and “has not been restrained or isolated a single time” since starting at his new school, according to the complaint.

G.F. has since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder related to the restraint and isolation he experienced, according to the complaint.

Lewis County Superior Court Judge J. Andrew Toynbee approved the Centralia School District’s motion for a summary judgment, a decision in cases where there’s no dispute over material fact and thus no need for a trial, on July 31, 2024. In that initial summary judgment, Toynbee found that the  plaintiff could not legally seek damages in Lewis County Superior Court because the plaintiff signed a separate settlement agreement with the Centralia School District on Dec. 26, 2022.

In that agreement, provided to the court by Superintendent Lisa Grant in May 2024, the district agreed to fund up to $10,000 in tutoring services for G.F., to provide one-on-one summer school support in 2023 if G.F. was still in the district, and to cover all of Finch’s attorney fees related to her special education due process hearing.

The agreement required both parties to withdraw their special education due process hearing requests and required Finch to release “any and all claims … alleging the denial of rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,” according to legal documents.

Finch’s signature on the agreement is dated Dec. 21, 2022.

The plaintiff filed a motion for reconsideration on Aug. 2, claiming that under Washington state law, “parents may not settle or release a child’s claim without prior court approval,” which didn’t occur before the December 2022 settlement. “It was a manifest legal error for this court to decide that the 2022 settlement resolved future state law claims for G.F.,” the motion stated.

Toynbee granted the motion for reconsideration during a hearing on Sept. 6, reversing his previous summary judgment.

“(The) plaintiffs’ claims are not barred under the 2022 settlement agreement,” Toynbee ruled.

The next hearing in the case, which is intended to address a previous motion for releasing protected records, is scheduled for Sept. 27.

Lewis County Fire District Commissioner Gregory Greene was “concerned” about former Fire Chief Paul Patterson’s “decision-making, management skills, judgment, professionalism and communication style” and considered a motion to terminate his employment before Patterson’s resignation last month, according to a letter sent to the former chief.

“I was willing, in my capacity as the Chairperson of the Board of Commissioners, to bring forward a motion to terminate your probationary employment,” Greene wrote on Sept. 3. However, the proposal became a “moot point” when Patterson resigned from his position after less than a year.

Following the resignation, which came via a nine-word statement scribbled onto a piece of notebook paper at an Aug. 22 commissioners meeting, Patterson said he resigned “under duress” following a threat of termination.

“I have been terminated without cause, but they’re going to say he resigned, but it was definitely under duress,” Patterson said in an Aug. 27 interview with The Chronicle. “I didn’t call the meeting. If I was going to resign, wouldn’t I have called the meeting? It doesn’t make any sense.”

A Detroit native, Patterson joined the district after serving as the deputy chief of the Long County Fire Department in Georgia and had begun to put down roots in Lewis County.

According to Patterson, his departure came weeks after he requested a pay increase that would better align his compensation to those in neighboring districts. However, doubts about his authority lingered for months.

“Anytime I bring something to the board, I’ve vetted it,” Patterson told The Chronicle. “But any of these ideas, after minimal review, they get shot down. So that’s the problem that I was having.”

According to Patterson, he has retained an attorney as he considers filing civil rights litigation against the district alleging the district’s policies and procedures were not properly followed. Patterson also filed a report to the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

In the letter, Greene said a “prime example” of Patterson’s communication style was an April 17 email, which Greene called “inflammatory and unprofessional.”

That morning, Greene emailed Patterson and asked him to “identify a good, better and best type of recommendation list for the board” to staff Station 63, which is located at 736 Logan Hill Road and has been a point of consternation for years.

In April, the district received notice from the Washington Surveying and Rating Bureau (WSRB) that understaffing in the Logan Hill area would result in increased insurance rates, and Patterson said he began a search for a solution.

“I would assume one of the recommendations would be your proposal and the other two would be recommendations that would not involve a paid employee living at a station,” Greene wrote.

While Patterson offered to live in the station and staff it, among other proposals to add staffing in the area, the commissioners declined.

In response, Patterson emailed Greene, which Greene then forwarded to his fellow commissioners.

"I get the sense in our meetings that the Board has to always be the smartest people in the room. That is very discouraging,” Patterson wrote on April 17. “If you all feel that the direction that I have been moving toward is not positive, let's shake hands and I will be on my way. If you feel that things are moving positively, please, get out of my way and let me run my department."

After being rebuffed, Patterson sent the April 17 email, which he told The Chronicle was “probably the beginning of the end of me.”

In the letter to Patterson, Greene also cited the former chief’s employee review, which was signed and dated by both Patterson and Greene on June 4. In the review, Patterson received a “needs improvement” for the leadership, organizational management and personal character categories.

Under the leadership section, the evaluation states “Chief Patterson and the Board's communication and/or relationship needs to improve moving forward. We need to be professional and not intentionally try to start conflicts with all communications.”

Patterson failed to score higher than “satisfactory” in any of the five categories.

Following the evaluation, Patterson said he “worked very hard” to try and meet the board’s expectations. As the calendar flipped to August, Patterson felt he and the board had a professional relationship, though Greene disagreed.

“I was not satisfied that you had sufficiently improved upon these areas for me to feel comfortable confirming your probationary employment into regular employment,” Greene wrote.

Under Patterson's contract with the district, the first 12 months of his employment were classified as a “probationary period,” which was meant to allow “both parties to determine whether the chief is an appropriate fit for the position.”

“During the probationary period, the Board shall evaluate the Chief's performance from time to time in such a manner as it determines appropriate,” the contract states.

According to the contract, if Patterson were to be terminated during this period, he would not be “entitled to receive any severance payment if terminated during said probationary period.”

The contract also stated that Patterson was an “at will” employee, which meant “either the employer or the chief may terminate their employment relationship at any time, with or without cause, for any reason or for no reason at all, without prior notice.”

According to Patterson, had he completed a year of service, the district would have been obligated to provide a $30,000 severance package and, had he been terminated, Patterson would have also been eligible for unemployment benefits.

“We appreciate that you have questions about former Chief Patterson and his employment with the district. On August 22, the board accepted a written resignation from former Chief Patterson,” Greene said while reading from prepared remarks during an Aug. 27 board meeting. “On behalf of the board of commissioners, and Lewis County Fire District 6, we wish to thank former chief Patterson for his service to the district and the residents he served. I wish him well in his future endeavors.”

The Huckleberry Ridge Fire, which burned 300 acres on Weyerhaeuser land 20 miles south of Pe Ell, is now 100% contained.

“The Huckleberry Ridge Fire is going to continue to have some areas that continue to smolder.  Some smoke may be observed for a while, but local resources will continue to work the fire and monitor the situation,” the Western Washington Type 3 Incident Management Team said in a news release on Sunday. “Removal of excess equipment is going well including several helicopter sling loads of equipment from some areas. Repair work is nearly complete.”

The fire was officially downgraded from a Type 3 Incident Management Team to a locally run Type 4 Incident Management Team, which will coordinate the demobilization of the base camp and equipment, on Monday.

“The Western Washington Incident Management Team expresses gratitude to the community. and it was absolutely (an) honor to serve you during our visit,” the Type 3 Incident Management Team said in a news release.

No structures have been threatened by the fire. The public is still asked to stay out of the area while crews continue to mop up the burned area. A temporary flight restriction over the fire area is in place.

“Please check with the landowners if you need to know if the road closures are still in effect.  Currently, the roads continue to be closed immediately adjacent to the burned area,” the Type 3 Incident Management Team said Sunday.

A total of 223 personnel, including 11 engines/tenders and five hand crews, were still working the fire as of Sunday afternoon. Those personnel will be released over the next few days.

The cause of the fire, which was first reported at 3:45 p.m. on Sept. 4, is still under investigation.

LAVA FIRE, BOISE NATIONAL FOREST – One of the last things U.S. Army Capt. Bison Carcelli did before wrapping up his 30-day mission helping fight wildfires in Idaho was haul hoses up and down mountain roads to protect evacuated homes near Lake Cascade.

Since Aug. 19, about 250 U.S. Army soldiers from the 14th Brigade Engineer Battalion and 117th Infantry Battalion based out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington have been helping fight a series of wildfires burning near Cascade.

Carcelli, who had never fought a wildfire before, said he loved the entire assignment and learning new skills. But he said it was especially important serving as a last line of defense helping protect people’s homes and property they love.

“It’s just been super exciting being able to have something completely different from our normal job,” Carcelli told the Idaho Capital Sun on Wednesday. “Everyone thinks about how we go overseas to defend our country, but it’s been great to have an impact on home, like back here in the United States. So I think that, for me, has been the coolest aspect.”

On Tuesday and Wednesday, soldiers focused on protecting homes that had been evacuated near the southwest tip of Lake Cascade. As ash rained down on them and the Lava Fire burned on the hillside above them, soldiers and firefighters hauled and connected about half a mile of hoses along Brenda Drive, the farthest west road close to the fire perimeter.

Crews arranged lateral hoses on the ground around homes, cabins and other structures and connected the hoses to giant orange inflatable water tanks called pumpkins. The pumpkins were connected by more hoses to pumps and a nearby creek, creating a connected system that allows them to move water.

“We’re just plumbing this area so we can defend it if necessary,” said Alex Barrera, a U.S. Forest Service fire captain from the Sequoia National Forest who was working with Army soldiers. “The sprinkler systems aren’t for the initial suppression factor. It’s for in the event we actually have to leave this area, we simply engage our system that we installed ourselves, and we got sprinklers here, protecting (these homes and buildings).”

On Wednesday Barrera drove an Idaho Capital Sun reporter in a side-by-side utility vehicle through dense smoke along Brenda Drive to show the work the soldiers had done and how close the Lava Fire was to homes.

“And so, so you can see the importance of how close the fire could potentially get to this community, and why we’re actually out here doing what we’re doing,” Barrera said as he drove past lines of water hoses on Brenda Drive.

U.S. soldiers helping out after Lave Fire exhibited extreme fire behavior last week

With wildfire resources stretched thin across the country, U.S. Army soldiers were called in to support the more than 1,000 people, including U.S. Forest Service wildland firefighters, who are fighting wildfires near Cascade as part of the West Mountain Complex fires and the Lava Fire.

The National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise determines if and when active duty military personnel will be requested to serve as ground firefighters, as authorized by the 2021 Interagency Agreement between the Department of Defense, U.S. Forest Service, and Department of Interior, said Kerry Greene, an emergency management specialist public information officer for the U.S. Forest Service.

The criteria pertain to the national preparedness level, the availability of ground firefighting crews and the amount of time left until fire season in the West is predicted to end, Greene said.

Active duty U.S. soldiers were mobilized in August to ensure that adequate numbers of firefighters would be available to manage all of the complex wildfires and ensure that the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies are able to maintain the capability to address new fires.

“At the time the military was activated we were at National Planning Level 5, or PL5, which means there were no or very limited wildland firefighters available to be mobilized,” Greene said. “Adding 10 handcrews comprised of U.S. Army Soldiers relieved pressure on the system.”

Some of the soldiers have fought the Snag Fire, Boulder Fire, the Middle Fork Complex fires and now the Lava Fire.

“So we started off over on the Snag Fire on the eastern side of Lake Cascade, and we were prepping that line there to control the Snag and stop its progression to the south and to the west,” Carcelli said. “And that was a great success for us. I mean, that line was able to hold, and we were able to see that controlled burn happen.”

The soldiers’ mission was for 30 days, and their last day of work was Sunday. On Tuesday, many will fly home to Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington.

The Lava Fire started by lightning Sept. 2 about 12 miles southwest of Cascade, after the U.S. Army soldiers had arrived to help out on the nearby West Mountain Complex fires, which started by lighting Aug. 5.

U.S. Forest Service officials said the Lava Fire exhibited extreme fire behavior on Sept. 10 and merged with the nearby Boulder Fire, creating one massive wildfire that will take on the name of the larger fire and simply be known as the Lava Fire going forward.

Put another way, on social media posts, public information officers said the Lava Fire ate the Boulder Fire.

The Lava Fire is burning on the Payette and Boise national forests and was listed Sunday at 95,746 acres with 26% of the fire’s perimeter contained, according to the Lava Fire InciWeb report. As of Friday, 746 people were assigned to the Lava Fire.

A new incident command team took over the fire Thursday morning.

Officials with the Boise National Forest and Payette National Forest have issued road and trail closures for the Lava Fire, while officials with Adams and Valley County have issued evacuation orders for specific areas and subdivisions. Check the Valley County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page and the Adams County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page for the latest evacuation orders and notices.

As mission wraps up, soldiers say fighting wildfires had a big effect on them

Sgt. First Class Juan Reaves said fighting wildfires is physically and mentally demanding. Many soldiers were used to working and training near sea level in Washington. Near Cascade, they worked in and around the mountains at 4,800 feet of elevation and up.

“You have to be mentally ready to do the labor,” Reaves said. “It’s 12-plus hours of walking miles of mountainous terrain, so you’ve  just got to be mentally and physically ready.”

Reaves said it was worth it and he would gladly accept another mission to fight wildfires.

Other soldiers agreed.

“I didn’t know how complex wildfire was and how much knowledge goes into it, with the weather analysis and the fire and planning that happens around all of it,” Carcelli said.

Most of the soldiers had never fought a wildfire before, and learned on the job and during training prior to arriving in Idaho.

“I have heavy respect for firefighters,” U.S. Army Specialist Willard Utterback of the 117th Infantry Battalion said. “The stuff that they go through, you know, it’s a lot like the military. They spend a lot of time away from their families. You know, they don’t make the best pay in the world, and they are out here serving their country, just like us.”

CENTRALIA POLICE DEPARTMENT

Criminal trespass

• A 35-year-old Centralia man was arrested for trespassing in the 600 block of Harrison Avenue just after 9 a.m. on Sept. 13.

• A man who was reportedly “bothering customers,” “screaming and yelling while in the restroom and refusing to come out” inside a business in the 600 block of North Tower Avenue was trespassed for life from the business at 6:55 p.m. on Sept. 13.

• A homeless man was trespassed for life from a business in the 100 block of North Gold Street just after 8:25 p.m. on Sept. 13.

• A man who was “being disorderly and yelling at other patrons” inside a business in the 100 block of North Tower Avenue was trespassed for a year from the business just after 9:55 p.m. on Sept. 13.

• A 43-year-old Centralia man was arrested for trespassing in the 1600 block of Johnson Road just before 8:10 a.m. on Sept. 15.

Fraud

• A 22-year-old Rochester man was arrested for knowingly using a counterfeit bill at a business in the 1000 block of Harrison Avenue just after 11 a.m. on Sept. 13. Possible third-degree theft charges have been referred to the Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office.

• An incident reported in the 1000 block of Ellsbury Street just before 7:25 a.m. on Sept. 15 involving a woman who was “scammed out of $20,000” is under investigation.

Theft

• A backpack was reported stolen from inside a business in the 1500 block of Harrison Avenue at approximately 4 p.m. on Sept. 14.

Criminal impersonation

• A 60-year-old Chehalis man was arrested for criminal impersonation and for an outstanding warrant at the intersection of South Pearl and South streets at approximately 9:40 p.m. on Sept. 13.

Drug violations

• A 61-year-old Chehalis woman was cited for knowing possession of narcotics at the intersection of South Pearl and South streets just before 10:40 p.m. on Sept. 13.

• A 44-year-old Chehalis man was cited for a drug violation in the 1400 block of Harrison Avenue at approximately 11:40 p.m. on Sept. 14. He was also arrested and released on a misdemeanor warrant.

Harassment

• Officers responded to a report of a man who went up to someone in the 400 block of North Tower Avenue and “demanded their car keys” just after 9:55 p.m. on Sept. 14. Law enforcement later saw the man and attempted to contact him, but he fled on foot and was not located. The case is under investigation.

Vehicle accident

• A non-injury, two-vehicle collision was reported at the intersection of H and West Fifth streets just after 1:25 a.m. on Sept. 14. One vehicle reportedly struck a legally parked, unoccupied vehicle.

Sexual misconduct

• A sexual assault reported in the 2600 block of Eureka Avenue just after 3:50 a.m. on Sept. 14 is under investigation.

Department assist

• Centralia officers assisted the Washington State Patrol in responding to a vehicle that failed to yield on northbound Interstate 5 just before 2:20 a.m. on Sept. 15. The vehicle was ultimately stopped at the Scatter Creek rest stop, where troopers arrested the driver.

DUI

• A 38-year-old Centralia woman was arrested for DUI at the intersection of Little Hanaford and Halliday roads at 2:30 a.m. on Sept. 15.

• A 28-year-old Oakville man was arrested for DUI after he crashed into a train crossing guard unit at the intersection of Reynolds Avenue and Lum Road just after 11:15 p.m. on Sept. 15.

FIRE AND EMS CALLS

• Between Friday morning and Monday morning, Lewis County 911 Communications logged approximately 68 illness-related calls, 18 injury-related calls, seven fire-related calls, seven vehicle accidents, five non-emergency service calls, one overdose, one hazardous conditions report, one suicide-related call, one medical helicopter request, two 911-hangup calls and six other calls.

JAIL STATISTICS

• As of Monday morning, the Lewis County Jail had a total system population of 160 inmates, including 147 in the general population and 13 in the Work Ethic and Restitution Center (WERC). Of general population inmates, 121 were reported male and 26 were reported female. Of the WERC inmates, 11 were reported male and two were reported female.

• As of Monday morning, the Chehalis Tribal Jail had a total system population of 22 inmates, including 15 booked by the Centralia Police Department, three booked by the state Department of Corrections, three booked by the Lummi Nation and one booked by the City of Elma.

•••

Sirens are compiled by assistant editor Emily Fitzgerald, who can be reached at emily@chronline.com. The Centralia Police Department can be reached at 360-330-7680, the Chehalis Police Department can be reached at 360-748-8605. If you were a victim of physical or sexual abuse, domestic violence or sexual assault, call Hope Alliance at 360-748-6601 or the Youth Advocacy Center of Lewis County at 360-623-1990.