GOBLE, A woman walked into the Goble Tavern at about 8:15 p.m. Saturday with stab wounds. Five minutes later a man came in the same way. By the end of the night, deputies had found a third victim near a rock pit on Nicolai Road, two people had been flown to Portland hospitals, and a bar on Highway 30 had turned into a trauma room.
All three are expected to survive, the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office said in a release issued Monday. The office has not announced an arrest or described a suspect, and it has not said what led to the attack or how the three victims are connected.
The release identified them as Sandra Townsend, 46, and Chad Smith, 51, both of Rainier, and Richard Flores, 45. Smith and Flores went out by Life Flight; Townsend went by ambulance. Flores, found at the rock pit, had what the release called extensive stab wounds.
Raegan Royale, the tavern’s manager, told KATU that staff and customers went to work on the two victims before the first ambulance arrived. One bartender had military experience, she said, and several people drinking at the bar that night worked in medicine. “I think it was a stroke of luck that it happened the evening that it did,” Royale said. The tavern closed for the night, staff told KPTV, and said they were told the two were husband and wife.
Sheriff Brian Pixley said there was no outstanding threat to the public, according to KPTV, and that the county’s Major Crimes Team would meet Monday. As of Thursday evening the Oct. 19 release remained the office’s only public statement on the case.
Oregon State Police, St. Helens, Scappoose and Rainier police, Scappoose Rural Fire District, Columbia River Fire and Rescue and Columbia 911 all responded, the release said. Investigators processed both the tavern and the rock pit as crime scenes.
Goble is an unincorporated stretch of Highway 30 between Columbia City and Rainier, with the tavern, a few houses and the Nicolai Road turnoff into the hills. It is the second violent incident reported there in six weeks. On Sept. 10, a driver stopped an SUV in the middle of Highway 30 near Goble at about 3:30 a.m. and fired through the rear window of another car, according to the sheriff’s office. Detectives used surveillance video to identify Xavier Cerrillo, 30, of Sandy, who was arrested Sept. 23 and booked into the Columbia County Jail on charges including second-degree attempted murder, KPTV reported. The sheriff’s office has not connected the two cases.