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THURSDAY, AUGUST 21, 2014
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Details of shooting raise more questions As investigators release more details about the timeline of events leading to the shooting at Bastendorff, big questions remain
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headed back out on another family outing, this time to picnic in the Middle Creek area. But, when the family returned to Dillard, Zachary stayed behind to camp. Investigators were told the family departed on good terms. But, then came the phone call that set everything else in motion. Frasier said Zachary called at about 8:30 or 9 p.m. to say his car had broken down and he needed assistance. It’s believed that it took his father, Ray Brimhall, at least an hour to get to the location where his son was waiting. Investigators believe that, sometime around 10 p.m., Zachary Brimhall shot his father multiple times as soon as he got out of his vehicle. SEE SHOOTING | A8
Average scores on college prep test
Thinking inside the box
Oregon students have comparable scores, but fewer students take exam ■
BY CHELSEA DAVIS The World
By Alysha Beck, The World
Oregon first lady Cylvia Hayes puts together a raised garden bed with help from Ryker Pruett, 4, and other Head Start children at Oregon Coast Community Action’s building in Coos Bay on Tuesday while she was in town for an economic development forum.
Oregon students may have eked out better ACT scores than the national average, but the majority still aren’t ready for college classes, a new report says. The ACT released its annual Condition of College and Career Readiness report Wednesday, which breaks down this year’s graduating high school seniors’ ACT scores in every state. Oregon’s average ACT score this year was 21.4, barely higher than the national average of 21. A perfect score is a 36. The SAT has always been the college readiness assessment of choice on the West Coast, which was reflected in that only 36 percent of Oregon’s class of 2014 took the ACT, compared to 57 percent nationally. The majority of Oregon ACT test-takers didn’t meet the benchmarks in the four core subjects (English, reading, math and science): ■ 67 percent met the English benchmark. ■ 49 percent met the reading
SEE ACT | A8
Foley’s death isn’t changing views in Congress BY BRADLEY KLAPPER Associated Press
WASHINGTON — For all its horror, the beheading of an American journalist in Syria appears unlikely to change lawmakers’ minds about military intervention against Islamic State extremists. It’s equally unclear whether the Obama administration will be asking them to back a new U.S. approach. President Barack Obama said the United States wouldn’t scale back its military posture in Iraq in response to James Foley’s killing.
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But he offered no specifics Wednesday about what new steps he might take to protect additional captives and other Americans, and ward off what he described as the al-Qaida offshoot’s genocidal ambitions. The initial response from members of Congress was mixed, reflecting the divide of the American people. While all decried Foley’s death, hawks, particularly Republicans, continued to assail the Obama administration’s limited airstrikes in Iraq and its refusal to target Islamic State bases in neighboring Syria. The president’s
supporters voiced support for the current, cautious intervention in Iraq. No tea partiers or dovish Democrats who have cautioned against military action publicly changed position. “The president’s rhetoric was excellent, but he didn’t outline steps to stop the slaughter,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of Obama’s harshest foreign policy critics, said in a telephone interview. “The strategy should be to launch all-out air attacks in Iraq and Syria to defeat ISIL,” he said, using an alternative acronym for the Sunni militants.
Bodies recovered Ellis Davies, Coquille Robert Shepard, North Bend
Obituaries | A5
Three climbers were found in an area of Mount Rainier where a party of six vanished in May. Page A5
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SEE LOANS | A8
CHARLESTON — Investigators have begun to narrow down the timeline of events that led Zachary Levi Brimhall to kill his father and a stranger, before turning the gun on himself. They were acts of violence that, at this point in the investigation, appeared to erupt out of thin air. Coos County District Attorney Paul Frasier has been leading a massive effort, involving multiple agencies and investigators, to reconstruct two separate homicide scenes that unfolded more than 50 miles away from each other. While the shootings at Bastendorff Beach were the first to be reported, early Tuesday
morning, it turned out to be the second crime scene. Frasier said the first indication of another crime scene started to emerge when investigators contacted Brimhall’s family to inform them of his death. When his mother was told, he said, she immediately asked about her husband, as well. As they worked the scene at Bastendorff, investigating the death’s of Zachary Brimhall and David Hortman, who had been sleeping in a car that Brimhall had fired into, attention quickly turned to a remote area of Coos County, about 50 miles to the east. According to his mother, Frasier said, the family had spent Sunday, Aug. 17, in the Powers area before returning home to Dillard. Then, on Monday, Aug. 18, they
NATION
ROSEBURG (AP) — Former students at a community college in Oregon’s long-suffering timber region are defaulting on loans at such a high rate that the school could lose access to federal aid used by nearly half of those now in the classroom. The default rate among former students at Umpqua Community College has been well above a 30 percent threshold for two years running, the Roseburg NewsReview reports. If the rate stays above that threshold another year, students in the fall of 2015 face losing access to Federal Pell Grants and Direct Loans. At least 40 percent of the college’s students now get the aid. Oregon has 17 community colleges, and the default rate at Umpqua is the highest, followed by those at the Klamath and Lane schools, both in timber areas. Students at the Umpqua college have defaulted on at least $9 million in loans. The school’s website says more than 15,000 people take one or more classes a year, the equivalent of 3,000 full-time students. Losing access to federal aid would have a far-reaching impact, said Elizabeth Cox Brand, director of student success and assessment for the Oregon Community College Association. “You may lose a lot of your student body,” she said. She said she knows of no Oregon college that has been cut off from the programs. Sophomore James Stokes, 24, told the News-Review he relies on the two programs. If Umpqua students can’t get the federal financial aid, he said, “It would make it so I couldn’t go to school.” School President Joe Olson said jobless workers took out loans to go back to school during the Great Recession but now can’t repay them. “I don’t think it necessarily reflects on Umpqua,” he said. “It just reflects on the state of the economy.” Some saw the aid as a source of income, said Kristapher Yates, president of the student association. “They’re in the same situation now, only worse with a bunch of
The World
DEATHS
Umpqua students default on loans
BY TIM NOVOTNY
Philip Balboni, CEO of the Boston-based GlobalPost, told reporters Wednesday the company had spent millions on efforts to bring Foley home, including hiring an international security firm. Foley was doing freelance reporting for GlobalPost. When asked at a news conference about a ransom purportedly demanded by the kidnappers, Balboni said the price tag involved both financial and political demands, and that it was “substantial” and always remained the same. SEE CONGRESS | A8
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