Date: 09/26/2012 09:29 AM
OR–2nd NewsMinute/264
Here is the latest Oregon news from The Associated Press
LAKE OSWEGO, Ore. (AP) – Two Northwest commercial community banks are merging. West Coast Bancorp of Lake Oswego and Columbia Banking System of Tacoma, Wash., announced the merger today. West Coast has 58 branches in Oregon and Washington. Columbia has 76 branches in Washington and 25 in Oregon under the Bank of Astoria name.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) – Canadian police have linked a dead Oregon convict to one of 18 women who vanished in British Columbia over several decades. The RCMP says Bobby Jack Fowler, who died in 2006, is a person of interest in 10 of the Canadian cases. An investigator says DNA has linked Fowler to the 1974 killing of a teenage hitchhiker. The district attorney in Lincoln County says Fowler is a suspect in five unsolved murders of female teenagers there in the 1980s and 1990s.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard says he supports Mayor Sam Adams’ effort to appeal a decision requiring the city to rehire a police officer who shot an unarmed man in the back in 2010. Leonard says it’s unlikely the Oregon Court of Appeals will overturn the order, but the matter is worth pursuing because Aaron Campbell’s death was “indefensible.”
COOS BAY, Ore. (AP) – A tip has led federal investigators to do another search of a Coos Bay custom truck business accused of selling phony helicopter parts to the military. A trial is set Jan. 26 for Kustom Products, owner Harold Ray Bettencourt II, several members of his family and two employees. They face federal conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering charges.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.