Although I’m not a fan of our sue-happy culture, I don’t blame the family of Aron Christensen for filing a $20 million claim against Lewis County after the August shooting of the 49-year-old Portland musician and his puppy, Buzzo.
The family contends the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office damaged the corpse of the 4-month-old dog and sabotaged the criminal investigation into the shooting of Christensen, who was hiking on the Walupt Lake Trail south of Packwood in mid-August last year when he and his puppy were shot.
From all I’ve read, it appears the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office botched the investigation from the start, and a medical examiner for the Lewis County Coroner’s Office cross-contaminated the evidence, so much so that Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer announced in April that his office wouldn’t file felony charges against Ethan Asbach, 20, of Tenino, even though he admitted firing a gun Aug. 19 in the area where the bodies of Christensen and Buzzo were found.
I don’t know Asbach, but I doubt he deliberately intended to kill anyone, yet we’ll never know, because the prosecutor won’t file involuntary manslaughter charges and bring the case before a jury to evaluate. According to Washington state law, “A person is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree when, with criminal negligence, he or she causes the death of another person.”
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