WATCH: Police give update on shooting, AMBER Alert suspect

should M check mic check one two so kind we'll behind the mayor you guys a couple of you on this side come on come on come come over here we'll get the chief right here right second we'll begin in one minute all right good afternoon uh my name is Brent Gary I'm the mayor and CEO of the city of West Richland and today it's with heavy hearts that we're gathered to address the tragic incident that occurred yesterday at Wy Elementary School in West Richland I would like to introduce W rich and police chief Thomas GGO also joined with me today is Dr Shelley readinger superintendent of the Richmond School District we have Eric eisinger of the Benton County Prosecuting Office attorney we have uh Lieutenant Wilson from the Washington State Patrol we also have the FBI supervisor a senior resident agent Peter orth with us this afternoon I'll give you a little format of today's press conference we're going to go ahead and start with Chief grego we'll go to Eric eisinger and then superintendent Dr Shelley reinger and then we will bring Eric eisinger back to the podium to feel questions and direct them appropriately so with that Chief grego thank you mayor I'm sorry to report the tragedy that unfolded in our West rer Community yesterday I'd like to begin by extending my thoughts and prayers to the victims and families and friends and to report that the West Rich Police Department utilizing every available resource to locate the suspect Elias wear yesterday April 22nd 2024 at approximately 3:23 p.m. the West Richmond Police Department responded to a shooting on the grounds of Wy Elementary School in West Richland one adult female was was pronounced deceased at the scene outside of the school the victim of the shooting was a 31-year-old Amber M Rodriguez who was the suspect's ex-wife later in the evening while serving a search warrant at a nearby residence of the suspect the West richond Police Department detectives and our partner agencies discovered a second crime scene a second homicide victim was found inside the residence no information about the second victim's identity is being released at this time as it is still an active investigation at approximately 9:45 p.m. the Washington State Patrol on behalf of the West Richmond Police Department issued an amber alert for a one-year-old Roman Santos and a silver 2009 Toyota Corolla It is believed that the one-year-old was kidnapped by the suspect the Amber Alert was extended from Washington to Oregon as well as additional locations on the west coast we are making progress in locating the suspect and will continue our efforts until he is located the West Rich Police Department would like to thank our regional partnership including the kenck police department the Richland Police Department Pasco Police Department prer police department the Benton County Sheriff's Department the Franklin County Sheriff's Department Washington State Patrol Benton Fire District 4 Benton Fire District 1 the f FBI the US Marshals fish and wildlife and others for their work on this case we are grateful for their assistance I'd like to give the public every assurance that the west richond police department will continue to prioritize this matter with all of our available resources for the benefit of our Crime Victims those affected by this tragedy and our community at large at this time I'd like to ask Eric eisener to come forward the Benton County prosecutor thank you thank you Chief grego my name is Eric eisinger I am the Benton County Prosecuting Attorney last night a nationwide arrest warrant was issued for Elias wear Mr wear is charged by criminal information with first deegree premeditated murder of his ex-wife Amber Rodriguez the charge of murder includes an aggravated circumstance allegation of domestic violence and a firearm enhancement at the time of the murder Mr wear was out on conditions of release on two pending felony matters for rape of a child in the third degree and rape in the second degree the total bail on those two matters was $250,000 it is important for the public to understand that it that this matter is still under active law enforcement investigation and local state and federal law enforcement agents are working diligently to address this matter matter the Benton County prosecut office is working with our Community Partners to provide resources to those who have been affected within our community and I anticipate that as this uh investigation continues that additional criminal charges will likely be filed in this matter thank you I'll turn it over to Dr readinger now there are no words to express how deeply saddened we are by the targeted domestic VI Ence incidents that took place yesterday at William Wy Elementary as well as in the surrounding neighborhood that resulted in the death of one of our staff members and another individual this is a tragedy no Community should have to experience we want to start by acknowledging The Bravery we saw yesterday our students staff members and families showed an incredible amount of courage and strength when faced with immense fear and grief we want to thank our local state and federal law enforcement for the incredible job they have done protecting our community we are grateful to all of our Community Partners and community members who stepped into help yesterday as well as today and plan to help us tomorrow we'd like to say a special thank you to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Who provided a safe place for our Wy families to reunite with their children please know that our schools are a safe place for your children to learn we have highly trained administrators and School staff whose top priority is keeping your children safe lockdown drills are one of the ways that we ensure safety we are grateful that we had the training and were're able to utilize and follow procedures when rare incidents such as this occur we have additional Community Resources for support that can be found on our crisis resources website at rsd.edu crisis resources are there any questions uh Mr Probert um what about Elias's 5y- old son okay um this matter is still under investigation so unfortunately I'm unable to provide a lot of additional details uh or answer that question any idea of who was shot first whether was willamy shooting or the shooting Highlands again we're still active investigating the case it's my understanding that search warrants are still being executed at this point so uh in terms of creating a definitive timeline that is still a work in progress and we should know more in the near future is is the one-year-old that's his son right um the that that is correct with that is correct um and why why do you guys believe he said in Mexico um we uh in these types of situations it's important to be careful when we are looking for the whereabouts of a suspect um and so this is again a very active investigation and we are still working on identifying leads and following those leads this there are multiple law enforcement agencies that are involved in investigating this matter um and so there's there's aot lot of effort being put into locating Mr wear's whereabouts why was yesterday's court appearance cancell uh I'm not familiar with that uh my understanding that he was meant to be in court yesterday following uh the cases that you had mentioned um and that when we were looking on Odyssey it said it had been not skipped but I forget the word there but uh stri okay I I don't I don't have specific information about that I'm sure that's something that we could track down and and find got yeah what kind of resources is your office providing the community right now the prosecutor's office because we don't want to see something like this happen again these domestic violence cases absolutely so my Victim witness supervisor uh joined up with Sark and the chapl Andy to meet with staff from Wy Elementary later this or earlier this morning um and we are going to continue to work with richond school district to provide resources and support for those who are affected by this matter um and then uh can can maybe somebody from the school district talk about some of the um like how how did he get on campus in the first place how that situation all kind of I mean he just came on or um so I could I can turn this over to Dr readinger if you'd like to ask the district yeah so we s just recently sent out a timeline to all of our families and we'll be putting that out for all of the community to see the timeline of his um employment with the Richland School District and other information regarding that so during dismissal we have staff out with students and parents we have a lot of parents that come and pick up their students um he was uh behind a kind of a portable area and um knew that she would be out there apparently and then um shot her there yes and so quickly staff uh it it was definitely a targeted um and then uh we quickly got staff staff acted very quickly and got everybody back inside yes and then we did a lockdown what time is this missile right around oh like 315 310 315 and it's dismissals at our elementary schools can take a while because we do have the Walkers the buses and but we do we have a lot of um fortunately we always have and I've been very proud of our staffs for this a lot of Staff outside during dismissals what resources St yes very good question so uh the Outreach from the community has been amazing from all kwick Pasco Richland um we have therapy dogs we had supports for all of our schools as well and so we have flight teams that are made up of counselors nurses psychologists and they we had them active at all of our schools because we know this isn't just um affecting Wy it's affecting our entire Richland School District family so uh we do have resources today we opened up the uh district office and we had counselors from all across the entire region we did have quite a few families and students come and and we did have therapy dogs there and our entire uh Wy staff met together and we debriefed and um I just can't say enough about the counseling support and ongoing support the local mental health agencies are um making room to make sure that they can help any Wy students um in families as a as a top priority can you talk about the communication this morning I was talking with a Richland mother who who has a young child Elementary School not at Wy but she was upset that she wasn't getting Communications from the school on whether school was open or not open for other schools as well can you talk about that sure yes we so we do have a tool parent Square uh that we utilized and we went to this tool because it is um very fast like when we want to send a text to all of our families or an email it's immediate uh our old systems would take about 5 to 10 minutes so that has that went out on parent Square um and so the only school that was cancelled was was Wy we did have other schools that went into lockdown um and we made sure parents came and uh picked them up it's always better to be much um to be really careful when you don't know for sure what it is going on and so we took the utmost precautionary um terms and we made sure that we locked down other schools as well so all of the information will that we've been sending out internally to parents now we're going to be sending that out to the whole community so the whole whole Community knows the steps that we've taken that's an app on on your phone yes yes can somebody talk about you know we're not dealing with a regular suspect this is a former officer he's trained how worried are you guys um as I said U multiple agencies are involved in this investigation so significant resources are being uh put at this man hunt for Mr wear um obviously we are concerned based on the recent events uh that occurred at y Elementary yesterday uh and as a result we are making every effort to apprehend them as soon as possible I have question yes sir I'm sorry I didn't catch that resp go to school there and I have never seen offic s is any I I think I think Dr readinger can can speak to that so um right now what we have and it's been uh we've both police departments have had a hard time hiring police officers so we do have a long-term plan in place as um officers are available so we do have a full fulltime SRO at Hamford and one at Richland those are Richland PD and then we have um three security guards in addition at both of those schools we have full-time security guards at all of our middle schools and then in West and then the SRO at Richland and Hamford also will come for calls and they during the day will go and and you know look at their area that they have in terms of this Richland West Richland we have have a partnership which I'm very proud of where we have a full-time SRO at both he goes back and forth between Libby and Enterprise and then we have a full-time security guard at Enterprise and a full-time security guard at Libby all of them help out in terms of the elementaries so they will go around and um and help out when we have situations yes some it's definely devastating seeing so much officers site I want to say thank you all for support I really enjoying in this community I continue to be in this community I really appreciate all your guys effort you know I know this is none of your guys fault because this sit here Len to changes any other questions um yesterday neighbors told us that there was a long history at the house can give us more info about that um obviously I indicated there are are two pending charges regarding Mr wee are beyond that I'm not able to provide any other details at this time um and and don't have other information to provide at this moment I think there was a hand in the back yes ma'am so um the question was about the employment so we did send out um to all of our families a very lengthy timeline of the very beginning and um we did our due diligence it's airtight but I and I want to read one comment about this all of his background checks came back positive his reference checks were positive from another school district and there were no red flags when he was hired however on February 14th 2024 we received notice of Mr huser's arrest and learning of the allegations against him we immediately removed him from being able to work or volunteer he at the time his last day of substitute teaching for us was June 14th 2023 so all this year he has not been employed with the school system I do want to make one comment we are extremely disheartened that information about his past was not disclosed to us through the various processes we have in place to vet RSD candidates for employment it is expectation for individuals who apply for employment with the rich School District to be forthcoming and truthful in their applications no pass investigations or allegations appeared in Mr huizar's background checks before he was hired and nothing was disclosed by Mr higher sorry I'm saying we took the process of hiring staff very seriously and pride ourselves on the quality and character of our staff members you tell his H his actual hiring date and the his position title yes on November 19th and this will be on our for all the community to see on November 19th 2021 he started application process with the Richland School District for substitute position in January the Richland School District received a reference from a neighboring School District where he was employed as a school resource officer he was rated very good to excellent in February he completed his drug screen at Lord's Occupational Health his fingerprints were taken at the Educational Service District and were used to run background checks with the Washington State Patrol and FBI both background checks came back clear allowing him to proceed with the employment process at RSD in February 2022 he completed the mandatory 8 Hour sub skills training course passing with a score of 100% February 7th 2022 we initiated the office of superintendent of Public Instruction emergency substitute certification application electronically signed and completed the application asked background questions in the character and fitness partk including have you ever resigned from or otherwise left any employment while allegations of misconduct were pending and are you are you currently or have you ever been the subject of an investigation or inquiry by an employer because of allegations of misconduct both questions he answered no he also signed an affidavit certifying all information included in the emergency substitute application was true and correct February 8 2022 y uh the neighboring School District said the Washington State sexual misconduct disclosure release to ran School District the neighboring District checked the box for no sexual misconduct materials found this document was sent to RSD from that District's District Human Resources Department he completed his new hire paperwork including an I9 form a not notification of reasonable Assurance for employment was sent to him February 9th 2022 I guess I don't need to keep going is that enough do you want me to keep going will there be school tomorrow yes there will be uh we met and debriefed uh Wy families received an email shortly uh few what minutes ago and we will have school at Wally tomorrow that best practice is to go back to our routine routines and that's where all of our resources will be will'll be at the school like the crisis response team yes okay sir could you could you say the two victims the vi that you're able to say and the suspect's name slowly with pronunciation so we get that right so so the the one victim that we can disclose uh which was who was found near Wy Elementary is Amber Marie Rodriguez and uh the the defendant in this matter is Elias and I believe the last name is pronounced wear and I stand willing to be corrected if if anybody wants to correct me on that I believe it's wear it's h UI z r and those are the only related names we can release at this time regarding uh the incident I'm I'm told by Mayor Gary we only have an opportunity for a few more questions Mr poter I'm sorry Mr Po question Dr you might not have answer this but I believe that there I believe his initial crime was on February 2nd I was wondering what happened between February 2nd and February 14th why that that uh was there some sort of breakdown communication or something that's just what we were alerted okay yes yes I was wondering when it comes topd Chief said that you guys are making progress I was wondering what what can you tell us about that progress what does that mean for people wondering and then also uh you know I know you can't say exactly where people are at but uh where should maybe people be looking for the suspect I know that there was the Toyota Cora originally but then I think I read this morning that it might have been a different car spoted in Portland you know what what should people be looking for so so you may be aware that there was an amber alert that was that was last night so at this point we're simply asking that uh the public look for any information that relates to that Amber report that might lead to locating Mr wear um this case is being as I said very actively investigated what I mean by that is I mean there are multiple agencies that are involved there are search warrants that are being conducted many efforts that are being undertaken at the same time by different different personnel and so this is an an all Hands-On deck situation uh every effort is being made uh to continue and conclude hopefully uh conclude shortly this investigation so I I don't have any other information about that at this time so I just rely on the Amber report information yes ma'am in the back so so my office has a victim witness unit and we have victim witness coordinators and assistants that work with Crime Victims and so I would anticipate that our victim witness staff and the staff at the support advocacy Resource Center of SAR will likely work with the Crime Victims in this matter to provide them Services obviously there are a number of people that were affected in the community by this matter um and uh and our office and others will be making every effort to help those folks any final questions yes sirre schools I know for myself gladly myself stud understood so we do have very good Partnerships with our two police departments Richland and West Richland and they they do a good job of patrolling the area they have stepped that up um we are in conversations about adding additional uh resource officers in through the region um we do have two I know um they're not armed but our princip pools are specially trained also to help in times of uh crisis and to be proactive always know who's in their building make sure we're following our safety protocols by not propping doors open and having our single point of entry so just know the partnership with the local law enforcement they've really stepped it up and uh we just have to make sure we're following our policies and procedures to keep our kids safe AR schols this was able to yeah that that is something that is uh more of a board policy and um at this time you know we were in conversations about how to um up our security I have one right question real quick um one and done okay this is it um regarding the bail and him having the two charges can you explain the thought process about why bail was even said at all for how serious these CRI yes Mr wizar was charged with rape of a child in the third degree and rape in the second degree in February of this year and the requested bail amount was $250,000 uh between the two cases that amount was set by the court um and that was based on uh as provided in criminal rule 3.2 which provides the standards for bail settings that was based on the nature of the allegations the two allegations against Mr wear it was based on the fact that there were two victims in the two matters um and uh his connection to the community and lack of criminal history thank you

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Length: 29min 35sec (1775 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2024