Tri-Cities 10 most-read Herald stories in 2021
From the shocking stabbing of a school bus driver to the fiery destruction in the Yakima River delta near Richland, here’s a recap of the Tri-Cities most-read online stories of 2021:
1. Bus driver attack
Richard “Dick” Lenhart was about to pull away from a downtown Pasco elementary school with a busload of young kids when a man approached the stopped bus.
The Pasco School District bus driver opened the doors to see what Joshua Dian Davis wanted, and soon found himself being asked if he could take the 34-year-old man out to Road 100.
Davis was about to step off the bus when he reportedly pulled out a knife and turned back to stab the driver in front of 35 Longfellow Elementary School students.
During the Sept. 24 attack, Lenhart’s foot slipped off the brake and the bus rolled forward over a curb, stopping as it hit landscaping and a tree.
Davis got off the bus and waited for police to arrive. None of the children were physically harmed by him.
Lenhart, 72, died after being rushed to a Tri-Cities hospital.
Davis, a Richland resident, is locked up on $1 million bail and charged in Franklin County Superior Court with first-degree murder.
He has been sent to Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake for a mental health evaluation. A review is scheduled in early March.
2. Missing girl mystery
A TikTok video out of Mexico last spring brought the 2003 unsolved disappearance of a Kennewick girl into the national spotlight.
Sofia Juarez was last seen on Feb. 4, 2003, after walking away from her family’s home. She was one day shy of her 5th birthday.
Detectives have received hundreds of leads over the nearly 19 years since, including that a Hispanic boy between the ages of 11 and 14 was seen approaching Sofia and leading the crying girl to a nearby stopped van.
But the discovery of the video on the popular social media app brought in 50 tips to Kennewick police due to the woman’s strikingly similar facial features.
The woman being interviewed on camera says she was kidnapped when she was a young child, that she does not like birthdays, and is trying to reach out to her grandmother and grandfather to come find her.
Kennewick investigators have been in touch with people who claim to be the featured woman’s family, but they deny she is Sofia. Detectives have persisted with efforts to talk with the woman, who was homeless, via video chat so they can collect her DNA to compare.
The cold case also was featured last year in People magazine, on Univision and The Vanished Podcast, and on a semi-truck trailer that crisscrosses the country.
3. Top brewery poll
Which local brewery has done the most to earn your loyalty?
Nearly 40,000 votes were cast to determine the Tri-Cities’ favorite brewery. After fierce voting, two breweries commanded a combined 81% of votes. Moonshot Brewing in Kennewick came out on top at 46%.
Ryan Wattenbarger and his wife, Hilary Bird, opened the brewery less than a year before the pandemic hit. They told the Herald it was a battle just to survive, but now they’re growing. In addition to their taproom, Moonshot is selling 32-ounce crowlers. They’re also in the early stages of looking into a second location.
In second place was Sage Brewing Company with 35% of the vote.
Sage Brewing Company is another local favorite that opened their doors just before the pandemic and managed to not only survive, but thrive. They have a brewery in Pasco and another location at Hanson Park in Kennewick, which opened in December.
4. Fishing for cash
If there is anything Tri-City residents like more than fishing, it may be being paid to fish.
It’s no wonder that a January report on the nearly $840,000 paid out for catching northern pikeminnow and turning them in for cash during the previous year’s fishing season drew lots of interest.
The top earner in the program took home $48,500 for the 5,579 pikeminnow he caught in the Columbia and Snake rivers.
Other years have been even more lucrative for top earners. In 2017, one person was paid $84,000.
Northern pikeminnow are voracious eaters, consuming millions of young salmon and steelhead every year.
To reduce the pikeminnow population, the Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Program pays people who register and then turn in the pikeminnow they catch on the Columbia and Snake rivers.
5. & 6. Violent rampage
A 43-year-old Finley man on Aug. 25 went on a fiery rampage that stretched over 20 miles into West Richland.
Ryan Kaufman reportedly attacked his neighbors — killing one and shooting another — before setting their house on fire, along with his own.
He had lived next to Emil “Bob” Zlatich Jr., the former owner of Zip’s By The Cable Bridge, and Bobby Zlatich III for almost 20 years.
Kaufman also killed his parents in their east Kennewick home and tried to burn it down. Vickie Kaufman was a longtime educator in the Tri-Cities and Dan Kaufman was the retired Kennewick city engineer.
Ryan Kaufman worked as an electrician and was a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. During his 2 1/2-hour crime spree across the Tri-Cities, he tried to break open the doors at two Kennewick union halls and set them on fire.
Kaufman’s 1973 orange Dodge pickup eventually was spotted heading toward West Richland by Washington State Patrol troopers and officers. He was wearing “a ballistic helmet and gear” and armed with an assault rifle, said initial reports.
Flames suddenly erupted as Kaufman’s truck came to a stop near a car wash. He then shot several rounds from the truck, with four officers from three different police agencies returning fire.
The truck continued to burn out of control with Kaufman inside.
7. Fiery river delta
A fire in the Yakima River delta along Highway 240 in the Tri-Cities lit up the skyline in orange and red for several nights starting April 28.
It sent smoke over Highway 240 and Interstate 182, disrupting traffic.
The fire blackened 230 acres of wildlands and then smoldered for weeks in marshy areas that firefighters had a tough time reaching.
Some firefighters were waist-deep in mud fighting the fire as dried vegetation burned on top of the wetland, with erratic winds spreading the blaze.
Investigators blamed the fire on a homeless camp with cook stoves, a fire pit, tents and chairs on the west side of the highway.
8. Amazon
Two warehouses under construction in Pasco, each over a million square feet, are expected to bring 1,500 jobs to the Tri-Cities. But what are they going to hold?
One of the biggest mysteries in the Tri-Cities earlier this year was, “What company is behind these massive projects?” It turns out the answer is Amazon.
The warehouses, nicknamed Project Oyster and Project Pearl, are on track to open Fall 2022, straddling South Road 40 in East Pasco, and represent a $200 million investment by the world’s largest retailer.
One will handle smaller goods such as household items, books, toys and technology. The facility across the street will hold larger items such as furniture, outdoor equipment, as well as large packages of paper goods and pet supplies.
Both warehouses are expected to be counted among the top 10 largest in the United States.
9. Ghost cattle scam
The head of one of the largest agricultural operations in Washington state admitted concocting a scheme to defraud Tyson Foods and another company out of more than $244 million.
Cody A. Easterday reached a deal to enter the guilty plea in U.S. District Court on March 31 upon learning that federal prosecutors were about to file criminal charges.
The Mesa man faces up to 20 years in prison on one count of wire fraud. Sentencing currently is set for later this month, though the defense is asking for a more than three month delay.
Federal officials discovered the white-collar crime after looking into business dealings between his family’s Franklin County-based cattle-feeding operation and Tyson.
Easterday had been president and chief executive officer of both Easterday Ranches and Easterday Farms when he charged Tyson and the other company for buying and feeding 200,000 cattle that never existed.
It became known as the “ghost-cattle scam.” The money was used to offset about $200 million lost in commodity futures contracts trading.
The fraud happened over a period of at least four years, though court documents show Cody Easterday’s losses on the commodity market started more than a decade ago.
The scam has led to multiple legal filings, including lawsuits against the Easterday family and businesses and two bankruptcies that have resulted in the Easterday’s selling off large swaths of Eastern Washington land.
10. E. coli outbreak
An organic, family-owned dairy north of the Tri-Cities was suspected of selling yogurt contaminated with E. coli in the spring.
The 17 confirmed cases by May 12 included one in Benton County and one in Walla Walla County.
The majority of cases were in children who ate yogurt from the Pure Eire Dairy near Othello, with some of them so sick they were hospitalized.
The owners of the dairy, Richard and Jill Smith, posted on social media that “if you know us, you know we are beside ourselves at the moment.”
They voluntarily recalled all of their yogurt products and halted yogurt production during the investigation into possible contamination. The dairy closed for good in July, with the owners saying they wanted to focus on family life after 12 years of running the dairy.
This story was originally published January 2, 2022 at 1:35 PM.