Author: Kim Kalliber

Michael Boysen’s grandparents picked him up from prison Friday, took him to his probation officer, helped him get his identification card and held a welcome-home party for him. He paid them back, according to the King County Sheriff’s Office, by killing them.

By Christine Clarridge, Seattle Times

It was Michael Boysen’s grandparents who picked him up from prison when he was released Friday.

The elderly couple had prepared a bedroom for him in their Renton-area home. They spent most of that day driving their 26-year-old grandson around town, taking him to meet his probation officer and getting him an identification card from the Department of Licensing, according to King County Sheriff John Urquhart.

That night, they held a welcome-home party for him. They were “getting him set up to go back into society,” after he had served time for a 2012 conviction for attempted residential burglary, the sheriff said.

Boysen paid them back, Urquhart said Monday, by killing them and stealing their car.

A multistate manhunt is under way for Boysen, who is named in a warrant and who Urquhart’s investigators believe is seeking weapons and poses a significant threat to law enforcement and the community at large.

Deputies are searching for the dead couple’s vehicle, which Boysen is believed to have stolen. Urquhart said his office is working with gun dealers in hopes of keeping him from getting weapons.

Detectives learned that Boysen was conducting online searches of gun shows across the Pacific Northwest and Nevada just before or after his grandparents were slain, Urquhart said.

The bodies of Boysen’s grandparents, 82 and 80, were discovered in their home by Boysen’s mother Saturday evening, according to the sheriff’s office. Boysen is believed to have killed them sometime after the party, Urquhart said.

The King County Medical Examiner’s Office has not released their identities or the cause of death, but KING 5 reported their names as Robert and Norma Taylor.

Urquhart said they did not die by gunshot.

The sheriff said investigators learned after the slayings that Boysen — who also goes by Chad or Chadd — had discussed a plan to obtain a gun and kill family members and authority figures, potentially including law-enforcement officers and corrections officers.

Urquhart would not elaborate on how investigators learned about the threats Boysen is reported to have made, but said it was not until after the slayings that citizen sources came forward with information.

The “extreme risk” Boysen poses to the public cannot be overstated, he said.

“We need to catch this guy. We need the help of the public ’cause we have no idea where he is,” Urquhart said.

Boysen had served nine months of a 16-month sentence at the Monroe Correctional Complex after the 2012 conviction for attempted residential burglary.

Chad Lewis, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections (DOC), said Boysen was not a problem inmate and that he had earned a minimum custody level through his compliance.

All the same, DOC considered him a high risk to reoffend nonviolently.

“We take threats very, very seriously,” Lewis said. “There was no indication that he had plans to do anything like this.”

Boysen had previously served five years at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center after he pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree robbery, two counts of first-degree robbery and possession of stolen property.

Court documents indicate he was arrested in 2006 after his mother called police after she found prescription bottles and a robbery demand note in his room. Boysen’s sister told her mother that Boysen had confided that he and friend had robbed a pharmacy, according to the court papers.

After his arrest, Boysen told police he was addicted to OxyContin, a narcotic painkiller, court documents show.

Boysen is white, 5 feet 10 and 170 pounds. The missing car is a red 2001 Chrysler 300 with license plate 046-XXU.

Detectives are urging anyone with information about the vehicle or Boysen to call 911 immediately.

By Rick Kearns, Indian Country Today Media Network

For some indigenous people of Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez was someone they could count on and love and many indigenous Latin Americans expressed those same feelings last week.

Indigenous people in Venezuela and throughout Latin America were among the millions of people mourning the death of President Chavez of Venezuela, a man who helped change the nation’s constitution to protect indigenous rights and who returned more than 4 million acres of land to many tribes among other accomplishments.

Messages of solidarity and condolences came quickly after the news of Chavez death on Wednesday, March 5, after a two-year battle with cancer.

On that same day, the most famous indigenous leader in this hemisphere, his friend and ally, President Evo Morales of Bolivia stated, “It hurts us. We are devastated.”

“My brother in solidarity,” Morales continued in a government press release, “a revolutionary Latin American compatriot who fought for his country, for the big country of Simon Bolivar, a comrade who gave his life for the liberation of the Venezuelan people, of the people of Latin America.”

Indigenous leaders from other countries such as Ecuador and Brazil sent condolences through traditional and social media.

“I feel enormous sadness,” stated Humberto Cholango, President of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE in Spanish), the largest indigenous coalition in that country.

“He will live on as an example of the struggle against imperialism,” Cholango added.

Another indigenous Ecuadorean leader, Delia Caguana, President of the Indigenous Movement of Chimborazo, issued a strongly worded press release through Facebook.

“Our deepest feeling of solidarity for his family and the Venezuelan people,” Caguana stated, “for the loss of a valiant leader such as the Comandante Hugo Chavez Frias…his vocation to seek a change for the most vulnerable people of his beloved country, his clear and firm ideas of revolution deeply touched the hearts of Venezuelans, Latin Americans and even the whole world for his confrontations with and questioning of the groups in power that sought their own profits with no concern for the destruction of Pachamama (Mother Earth).”

Marcos Terena, an internationally known indigenous activist from Brazil also posted on Facebook that, “From our hearts, respect and solidarity to the people of Venezuela and the Indigenous Peoples on the death of Chavez.”

While these messages of solidarity and condolence came from various Indigenous Peoples, there were also articles and essays published by indigenous Venezuelans, also through traditional and social media.

Jayariyú Farías Montiel, editor of the award winning indigenous newspaper Wayuunaiki, published a column entitled The Indigenous People Weep for Chavez on Thursday, March 6th, recounting the history of Chavez advocacy for indigenous people starting in 1998.

“During the presidential campaign of 1998, diverse indigenous leaders exposed the situation to him, of the exclusion of the Indigenous Peoples from power, he was very moved by this,” Montiel wrote, “and he was clear in his ideals for justice and promised to change that reality.”

Montiel noted that upon reaching the presidency in 1999, Chavez named an indigenous woman, Atala Uriana, as his Minister of the Environment, “…putting her into his cabinet leaving the entire continent perplexed by this.”

His first act as president was one of inclusion, she continued, but his second act would leave a strong imprint on the country: the creation of a constituent assembly that would go on to create a new Constitution. It was in this new document that indigenous rights were protected. Article 119 of the new constitution for instance, recognizes the social, political, and economic organization of indigenous communities, as well as their cultures, languages, rights, and lands. Specifically, land rights were defined as collective, inalienable, and non-transferable.

Montiel also pointed out that “The political participation was solidified in an immediate way following the new Constitutional precepts and three indigenous representatives…initiated, along with the president a legislative path that opened the way for other laws.”

The new laws also allowed for the granting of land titles, over 12 years, of 4,472,589 acres of land to indigenous communities throughout Venezuela.

But for Kenami Padron, a Jivi member of the National Assembly, Chavez accomplishments had an emotional impact. On Facebook, Padron published a photo of her then 5-year-old cousin being held by Chavez who was wearing indigenous necklaces and smiling (at an event in the Amazonian town of Alto Orinoco in 2003).

When asked for permission to use the photo, Padron said, “yes, but I hope it will be used in a way that shows the work of love that Chavez did for the indigenous people. We will never forget the loyalty of the comandante of the Indigenous Peoples, Father of the country.”