Category Archives: Regional News

Articles, Crescent City, Crime, Emergencies, Law

Three Children Are Safe After Law Enforcement Arrest Male Suspect Following Hours-Long Standoff

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Thumbnail photo: Law enforcement with the Crescent City Police Department, Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office, Pelican Bay State Prison’s CERT Team and others secure the scene after an hours-long standoff ended with four children being taken into protective custody and a male and female suspect arrested. | Photo by Heather Polen

Four children are in protective custody Monday evening after officers from multiple agencies engaged in a standoff with a 50-year-old man that lasted more than seven hours.

Three of the youngsters, ages 1, 2 and 4, were in the Crescent City apartment with Robert William Thraen when officers responded to the area to conduct a welfare check at about 10:30 a.m., Police Chief Richard Griffin told Redwood Voice Community News. 

Griffin said they were able to get the children to safety and arrest the suspect after he decided to have his officers break the window to open the front door — a technique he called a breach and hold. 

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Articles, Community News, Emergencies, Klamath, Tribal Affairs

Del Norte Ambulance Will Station A Vehicle, Crew In Klamath

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Thumbnail photo courtesy of Del Norte Ambulance

(Updated at 5:07 p.m. to clarify that it was Walter Lara Jr. that helped facilitate a partnership between the Yurok Tribe and Del Norte Ambulance to open a station in Klamath.]

Del Norte Ambulance’s operations manager confirmed a statement District 5 Supervisor Dean Wilson made earlier this month — the emergency medical provider will have an ambulance and a crew stationed in Klamath.

“We are working with the Yurok Housing Authority on a partnership for securing housing for us on a trial basis of one year while we place one of our four ambulances there,” Charles Tweed told Redwood Voice Community News on Thursday. “Two people will be staffed in that ambulance at any given time.”

This news comes about two weeks after an independent consultant, EndPoint EMS Consulting LLC, delivered an analysis of Del Norte County’s emergency medical system, finding that Klamath residents often waited up to 45 minutes for an ambulance to arrive during an emergency.

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Articles, Community News, Crescent City, Local Government

Blake Inscore To Be Guest Speaker At Sister Cities International Summit in Japan; Delegation Will Visit Iwate Prefecture

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Thumbnail photo: A delegation from Rikuzentakata celebrates the inaugural Kamome Festival in Crescent City in 2023. | Photo by Jessica Cejnar Andrews

Blake Inscore called his guest speaker role at a Sister Cities International Summit in Japan his “last big push for tourism as well as for our community” before he moves onto the next chapter of his life.

Part of the World’s Expo 2025 in Osaka, Inscore said every U.S./Japan Sister City was invited to attend the summit, which will be held from Sept. 16-19. His opportunity to re-tell the story of Crescent City’s evolving friendship with Rikuzentakata not only puts it on as large a world stage as the Tokyo Olympics did back in 2021, it represents what many Sister Cities don’t have.

“Sister Cities International has been very intrigued and they want us to show how a Sister City can work together with government-to-government relationships,” Inscore told the Crescent City Council on Monday. “[Many Sister Cities] don’t have a city council or a mayor or anybody else that’s engaged with wanting to see this happen. And, frankly, this is a win for us.”

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Articles, Community News, Crescent City, Curry, Environment

Crescent City Leaders Reaffirm Support For Permanent Mining Ban On North Fork Smith River

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Thumbnail image shows map of the proposed 58,000-acre expansion of the Smith River National Recreation Area. | Image courtesy of Sen. Jeff Merkley’s office.

More than eight years after the Obama Administration issued a 20-year mining ban for the North Fork Smith River in Oregon, the Crescent City Council reaffirmed its support for legislation that would make that prohibition permanent.

Four councilors on Monday agreed to draft a letter to U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkely and Ron Wyden, who represent Oregon, reminding them that the Smith River is where Del Norte County’s drinking water comes from and that they’ve advocated for protecting its headwaters for more than a decade. Councilor Daran Dooley was absent.

But though Grant Werschkull, executive director of the Smith River Alliance, said such legislation is necessary for the January 2017 mineral withdrawal order to be permanent, he’s not sure if it will be approved this year.

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Articles, Crescent City, Crime, Curry

CCPD Helps Curry County Sheriff Apprehend Man Suspected Of Abusing Children

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Thumbnail photo by Ken Lund via Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons License

Crescent City Police Chief Richard Griffin credited the purchase of a Cellebrite Forensic Analyzer for being able to help the Curry County Sheriff’s Office track down a Texas man suspected of abusing children.

Appearing before the Crescent City Council on Monday, Griffin said that Curry County Sheriff John Ward had posted a press release to his agency’s Facebook page, thanking Crescent City for helping with the forensics in a recent Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce case.

According to Ward’s press release, he and Sgt. Zane Van Zelf arrested 32-year-old Matthew Arthur Anderson at his home in the central part of Curry County on Aug. 7. Gold Beach Police Sgt. David Vershall assisted them.

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Articles, Crescent City, Infrastructure, Local Government

Crescent City Council Recap, Aug. 18, 2025

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Thumbnail photo: Construction began on the Fred Endert Municipal Pool’s roof on Monday. | courtesy of Andrew Goff

Councilman Daran Dooley was absent. Among the items discussed at Monday’s Crescent City Council meeting:

CDBG grant: City Councilors authorized staff to establish a new fund for the $1.8 million it received in 2024 Community Development Block Grant dollars.

According to City Manager Eric Wier, about $300,000 of that money will go toward the Family Resource Center of the Redwoods for its Pacific Pantry program while another $1.5 million will be used to establish a business loan program.

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Articles, Arts & Culture, Crescent City

LRT Shows Del Norte A Loverly Time; My Fair Lady Opens Friday

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Thumbnail: Rebecca and Phillip Dyke are Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins in LRT’s production of “My Fair Lady.” | Photo by Heather Polen

(Updated at 2 p.m. to correct an error. General admission tickets to My Fair Lady are $20, NOT $70.)

Rex Harrison may be iconic as Henry Higgins, having played the phonetician into the 1980s, but Phillip Dyke says his version will be different.

“I’m more of a singer than he is, that’s one major difference,” he told Redwood Voice Community News. “It’s always hard to critique your own work, but one of the things I try to do as an actor for any role is not spend too much time looking at the work of other actors who have performed the roles previously because I don’t want to be copying the work they’re doing.”


Dyke will star alongside his wife Rebecca in Lighthouse Repertory Theatre’s production of My Fair Lady, which will open on Friday. LRT’s interpretation of Lerner and Lowe’s musical will be a return to the organization’s old stomping grounds at the Crescent Elk Auditorium, it’s also the first time LRT has taken on such a large-scale production since their performance of Honk in 2016.

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Articles, Curry, Local Government

Oregon State Bar Dismisses Sheriff’s Complaint Against Curry County Counsel

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From left to right: Former Curry County Commissioner Brad Alcorn, Director of Operations Ted Fitzgerald and current Board Chairman Jay Trost. | Courtesy Curry County

The Oregon State Bar Association has cleared Curry County Counsel Ted Fitzgerald of professional misconduct and told Sheriff John Ward it would take no further action related to the complaint he submitted nearly a year ago.

Curry County Board Chairman Jay Trost announced the outcome of the State Bar Association’s investigation into Ward’s allegations in a press release Wednesday. According to the release, the State Bar informed Ward of its decision in a letter on July 3. Trost said he and his colleagues on the Board of Commissioners wanted to wait until an appeals window had passed before making the outcome public.

Sheriff John Ward

“We’re happy to find a resolution,” Trost told Redwood Voice Community News. “This has been going on since September.”

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Articles, Curry, Elections, Local Government

Recalls Filed Against Hollinger, Trost; Petitioners Claim Curry County Commissioners Created a ‘Culture of Fear’

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Friday’s special Curry County Board of Commissioners meeting

Jay Trost and Patrick Hollinger went on the offensive against the chief petitioners seeking to oust them from the Curry County Board of Commissioners.

After spending about 45 minutes of a special meeting Friday touting their accomplishments, Trost and Hollinger went through each petition, taking issue with both the grievances they raise and the individuals raising them.

Trost said he viewed the petition against him, filed by Curry County jail commander Lt. Jeremy Krohn, as opposition to the Board’s “not adhering to a mentality of status quo.”

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Articles, Arts & Culture, Community News, Crescent City, Infrastructure

Crescent City Council Approves Small But Significant ‘Kick Off Moment’ For Tolowa Cultural Trail At Beachfront Park

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Thumbnail photo: The canoe node will be one of the first interpretive elements to be constructed as part of the Tolowa Cultural Trail feature at Beachfront Park. | Image courtesy of Crescent City

Crescent City councilors on Monday approved an agreement with the contractor that will lay the groundwork for the Tolowa Cultural Trail at Beachfront Park.

The city’s agreement with Tidewater Contractors to do the excavation, grading and improvements needed to install the first three interpretive elements seems small, especially after the City Council accepted a $2 million grant from the Mellon Foundation earlier this month.

But Public Works Director Dave Yeager pointed out that it’s taken roughly five years of collaboration, public outreach and pursuing and cobbling together funding from eight different grants to get the city to the “kick off moment” for the project.

“We’re breaking ground as we say with this project,” he told councilors, adding that Crescent City is managing eight grants connected with the Tolowa Cultural Trail. “This is a very small segment, but as the city manager also mentioned, we need to get some of this installed by Nov. 30.”

Continue reading Crescent City Council Approves Small But Significant ‘Kick Off Moment’ For Tolowa Cultural Trail At Beachfront Park →