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Headlight Herald
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2023
TILLAMOOK, OREGON • WWW.TILLAMOOKHEADLIGHTHERALD.COM
VOL. 135, NO. 42 • $1.50
Crime spree affects Air Museum, Sheriff’s Department and others WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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n early morning crime spree on Sunday, October 8, caused tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage and ended with two suspects in custody after five hours spent rampaging through Tillamook. Ryan Woods and Taylor Hulbert were both arrested in relation to the crime spree and booked into the Tillamook County Jail by sheriff’s deputies. Hulbert was released on October 10, while Woods is being held on charges of burglary, criminal mischief, possession of a stolen vehicle, larceny, theft and offensive littering with a $13,000 bail. The incident began at 1:13 a.m. on October 8, when two suspects broke into Burden’s Towing Lot in Downtown Tillamook, burglarizing several cars before stealing a silver Mercury Sable around 1:50 and leaving the lot. The duo dropped off the radar for an hour and a half, at which point they were spotted on security cameras at the South Prairie Store trying to gain entry to a parked vehicle and leaving
after failing shortly later. After leaving the South Prairie Store, the two drove to the Port of Tillamook Bay, where they stole a forklift from a business on Signal Street, using it to damage a car. The pair then returned to the stolen vehicle and set off towards Hangar B, stopping to try to gain entry to another business en route. In security footage that the air museum shared with the Herald, the suspects can be seen arriving at the museum around 4:45 a.m. The Sable can be seen driving into the exterior entranceway to the museum’s lobby before the car’s driver exits the vehicle shirtless. The driver examines the locked museum doors and appears to topple a trashcan offscreen before returning to the driver’s seat and driving the car through the museum’s plate-glass doors. Tillamook Air Museum Director Rita Welch estimated that it would cost between $20,000 and $30,000 to replace the doors and said that the museum would be filing an insurance claim. Once inside the lobby, the passenger can be seen exiting
Clean up begins on Sunday morning at the Tillamook Air Museum after a Mercury Sable crashed through the glass entryway in the middle of the night. PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE TILLAMOOK AIR MUSEUM AND TILLAMOOK SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT.
SEE CRIME SPREE PAGE A3
Bonamici hosts Tillamook town hall WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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ongresswoman Suzanne Bonamici hosted a town hall at Tillamook Bay Community College on October 7, welcoming constituents to ask her questions. Bonamici addressed a wide variety of topics, ranging from her support for continued military aid for Ukraine to the need for comprehensive immigration reform. “Your feedback really does inform what I do in Washington D.C.,” Bonamici told her constituents at the town hall. Bonamici started the meeting by thanking the attendees and addressing the recent ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Bonamici said that she had played a limited role as a Democrat but that the situation still concerned her. “I’m disappointed in the chaos and the uncertainty,” Bonamici said. She said that during the drama surrounding the speaker she had been working to build bipartisan support for bills and remained ready to work on legislation. “We’re ready to work with you, we’re happy to work with you,” Bonamici said to her Republican colleagues, “we can’t just keep spinning our wheels.” Bonamici said that she and other democrats were ready to collaborate with
Republicans on crafting policies and that she hoped whoever was selected as the next speaker of the house would stop “catering to the extreme.” The congresswoman also took time to discuss the issues that she is working to address through legislation, saying that she felt the ongoing fentanyl epidemic and affordable housing and childcare crises were some of the most pressing issues facing the country. In response to the fentanyl crisis, Bonamici is working on the Fentanyl Awareness for Children and Teens in School Act to help educate kids about the risk street drugs pose in the current climate. Bonamici said that the bill is modeled after a program implemented in the Beaverton School District after the overdose death of a former student that has proven highly successful and is being expanded across Oregon. Another bill sponsored by Bonamici aims to address the childcare and housing issues simultaneously by encouraging the colocation of childcare services at
new housing developments receiving government support. Bonamici said that collocating services streamlined access for residents of the developments and that numerous studies had shown that investments in childcare paid off several times over in later savings. Bonamici then began fielding constituent questions, with one of the first being about military and financial aid to Ukraine, which the questioner felt came without sufficient accountability. “I do support funding for Ukraine and I respectfully disagree that there is a lack of accountability,” Bonamici said, telling the questioner that the pentagon was monitoring aid. She said that she supported the aid because she believed that if Russia was not defeated in Ukraine President Vladimir Putin would attack other countries in the region, with the potential to draw the United States into a war to defend a NATO ally. In response to a question about immigration, Bonamici SEE BONAMICI PAGE A3
Commissioner candidates introduce themselves to Tillamook WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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he six finalists for appointment to replace retiring Tillamook County Commissioner David Yamamoto participated in a candidates’ forum hosted by the American Association of University Women on October 12. Doug Olson, Ken Henson, Jerry Keene, Paul Fournier, Paul Levesque and Matt Williams fielded questions submitted by voters and were scheduled to participate in a further interview session with the board of commissioners on October 16. Doug Olson Olson is a native Oregonian who has spent the last 30 years in Pacific City and described himself as independent. Olson has a business administration degree, and after starting his career in sales, moved into governmental work, holding
positions at the Evergreen School District and later with Washington County schools. Currently, Olson serves as the Pacific City Nestucca Valley Chamber of Commerce’s treasurer. He has also served Tillamook residents by helping to prepare a road bond and serving on the transient lodging committee and Adventist Tillamook’s board. The three largest issues facing Tillamook County are securing financial stability, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) proposed biological opinion that would severely curtail development in the county’s floodplains and aging infrastructure, according to Olson. Olson said that he favored investigating alternative sources of revenue to supplement the county’s budget and mentioned the possibility of asking voters to approve a levy to support the sheriff’s department. Olson said that if appointed, he would not run
in next year’s election to fill the position and would come in with the goal of expanding county services and stabilizing its finances. Ken Henson Henson has lived in Tillamook County for two decades and has a business background, currently overseeing a restaurant and lodging consulting business. After growing up in a small town in Ohio, Henson briefly attended university before dropping out and joining the military and returning to finish his studies subsequently. The father of two said that he believes in servant leadership and wanted to use the experience that he has gained in the private sector to help serve the county. Henson said that in his opinion the three biggest concerns for the county were the county’s financial stability, the lack SEE CANDIDATES PAGE A4
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