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Smith is sentenced 26 months in Bandon killing BY THOMAS MORIARTY The World
By Alysha Beck, The World
Bert Davis practices his Muttley Crew routine Tuesday with a group of rescue dogs he trained to perform in rodeo and stage shows.
The clown with all the dogs BY ALYSHA BECK The World
MYRTLE POINT—It takes a little extra oomph for Bert Davis to put himself together before a show these days, especially since he said duct tape doesn’t work so well anymore to hold himself together. But at age 57, and after decades of punishment, the veteran rodeo clown can’t imagine a life doing anything else. And he still lives for the applause of a crowd. Davis, also known as “The Coppertown Clown,” is a seasoned professional with a resume two pages long of accomplishments spanning 40 years in the rodeo entertainment business. He will perform Saturday night at the Coos County Rodeo with the Muttley Crew, a group of rescue More online: dogs who travel around the See The World’s country with him. photo galleries Davis said he has always worked with animals in his acts after he and videos from got some advice from a legendary rodeo clown named Wilbur the fair at Plaugher. theworldlink.com. “He told me back in 1974, ‘I’m going to give you a little bit of SEE DOGS | A10
Bingo, a collie cross, jumps through Bert Davis’ arms while practicing for their performance Saturday night at the Coos County Rodeo.
Program helps English learners catch up
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ASTORIA (AP) — The halls of John Jacob Astor Elementary School overflow with tiny chairs, desks, tables and other classroom furniture. Maintenance crews install carpet, wash the walls, paint the gym and otherwise spruce up the school. But while most students take a break for the summer, about 85 to 90 migrant and English Language Learner, or ELL, students spend much of their July in the basement of Astor during the five-week ELL/Migrant Summer School.
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They try to catch up academically to create a level playing field when classes restart in the fall. “The majority of the students have parents working in the fish canneries,” said Veronica De Ortega, a home and school liaison for the Migrant Education Program of the Northwest Education Service District, which administers the federally funded program. Eighty percent of students, she added, have parents in the seafood industry. She recruits students, visiting their parents at fish processing plants. Similar schools serve dairy workers around Tillamook, those
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in logging around Nestucca and farm and nursery laborers in Washington County. Students must have moved in the last three years because of their parents’ employment to qualify for the school. “Some of these parents work 12 to 16 hours a day,” said Ortega, adding that it’s sometimes a mixed bag whether some employers will let her talk to parents about the program, which only accepts students entering kindergarten to sixth grade. If it included all grades, she added, it might have 150 students. On Wednesday, after a writing
William Bryant, Ajo, Ariz. Carl Jennings, Coos Bay Wallace Robbins, North Bend Donnie Brown, Coos Bay
lesson in Astoria kindergarten teacher Kellie Clay’s class, incoming second-grader Martina Hernandez did the math. She wanted two horses, but didn’t have enough area to include the six required squares of pastureland for each animal. Clay, filling in for another instructor, teaches her students math and vocabulary by having them build and purchase parts of a farm. Students write rhymes and stories about their farms, and watch videos showing real-life animal husbandry. SEE ENGLISH | A10
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Obituaries | A5
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DEATHS
BY EDWARD STRATTON
COQUILLE — Coos County’s chief prosecutor says drugs were a factor in the events leading up to the killing of a California man near Bandon last fall. Coy Daniel Smith was sentenced June 30 to 26 months in prison after pleading guilty to criminally negligent homicide. The homicide sentence will run consecutively with a 26 month sentence he’d already received for burglary and first-degree theft — a total of a little more than four years. Smith will also have to spend 36 months under post-prison supervision and pay $3,530 in restitution. Smith, 40, originally faced first-degree manslaughter charges in the Coy Smith Oct. 3 death of 42-year-old William Drews following an altercation involving Smith at a residence on Bill Creek Lane. Coos County District Attorney Paul Frasier said Drews’ estranged wife had lived in the trailer with two other men, and been in onagain off-again relationships with all three. He said that members of the group had been using methamphetamine the night of the murder, and had been trying to get more shortly before Drews’ death. “The victim had a very high level of meth (in his system),” Frasier said. “Coy Smith was the one bringing the meth.” By the time Smith arrived, a fight had broken out between Drews and one of the other men, Jeremy Perry. Smith joined the fray, and at some point in the altercation, kicked Drews in the head. “The injury that killed this guy I don’t think I’ve ever seen,” Frasier said. An autopsy later determined that Drews died of blunt force trauma to his head and neck. Frasier said that when Smith kicked Drews in the head, the blow severed arteries that ran along the man’s spine to his brain stem. Drews was pronounced dead on arrival at Southern Coos Hospital. Smith fled the scene, but later turned himself in at the Bandon Police Department. Had the case gone to trial, Frasier said, he would have presented the death as unintentional. “There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind Coy did not intend to kill this guy,” he said. As of Friday, the Oregon Department of Corrections hadn’t calculated an estimated release date for Smith, who’s currently held at the Coffee Creek Intake Facility in Wilsonville. Reporter Thomas Moriarty can be reached at 541-269-1222, ext. 240, or by email at thomas.moriarty@theworldlink.com. Follow him on Twitter: @ThomasDMoriarty.
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