Western Front - 1988 October 25

              The Western Front
VOL. 80, NO. 50 WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, BELLINGHAM, WA TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25,1988
Two arrested in double murder
Victims gunned down
in High Street house
By Laura Gordon and Kathy Tucker
of The Western Front
Two Bellingham men were arrested Sunday in
connection with the early Saturday morning shoot­ing
death of Western student Patrick J. Fuquay and
Bellingham resident Dan W. Lane over an alleged
drug deal.
Clifford Cooper, 20, 4102 Dewey Rd., and
Velard "Joe" Saselli, 26, 1610 Alabama St., ap­peared
in Whatcom County Superior Court Mon­day
for a bail hearing.
The bodies of Fuquay, 20, 208 Flora St., and
Lane, 28,907 1/2 High St., were found by a friend
in Lane's two-room house. Both men died of
multiple gunshot wounds, Bellingham' Police
Detective David McNeill said. Also killed was
Lane's pit bull, "Scooter."
Cooper is expected to be charged today with
two counts of first-degree, aggravated murder. He
is being held without bail in Whatcom County Jail.
The maximum penalty for aggravated murder is
life imprisonment or the death penalty.
Saselli is expected to be charged with criminal
assistance in the first degree for allegedly furnish­ing
Cooper with transportation and clean clothes
after Cooper's clothing was apparently bloodied
after the shooting. His bail was set at $10,000. The
maximum sentence would be six months to a year
in jail. He has no past criminal record.
The victims attended a party Friday night at a
home on Jersey Street and left for Lane's house
between midnight and 1 a.m. Michael Gadwell, a
friend of Fuquay who also attended the party, said
he did not think the victims had any enemies.
Gadwell said the men had been drinking, but were
not drunk and had not been involved in any fights
or arguments.
Neighbors reported hearing a firecracker-like
noise shortly after 1:15 a.m.
see SUSPECTS p. 12
Jesse Tinsley/the front
Two Bellingham residents, including a Western student, were shot in this house obscured from the roadside at 907 High St.
Friends remember slain student
By Kathy Tucker and Laura Gordon
of The Western Front
Pat Fuquay's friends said he was a giving
person.
"He was extremely generous, always tak­ing
people out to dinner. He'd give you any­thing,"
said Michael Gadwell, a close friend of
Fuquay.
Twenty-year-old Fuquay, a Western stu­dent,
was shot to death early Saturday morning,
in an allegedly drug-related incident.
Fuquay, Bellingham
resident Dan Lane and a pit
bull dog were found dead
in Lane's High Street house.
Two Bellingham men have
been arrested in connec­tion
with the incident.
Fuquay's roommate, PatFuquay
who wished to remain
anonymous, also noted Pat's generosity.
"He's one of the most generous people that
I have ever known," she said. She and Fuquay
were "pretty close" friends and had been shar­ing
an apartment on Flora Street since Septem­ber,
she said.
"He was such a great guy," she said.
Fuquay had been a student at Western for
two years. Friends said Fuquay, a junior, hadn't
declared his major yet, but he was leaning
see SLAIN p. 3
Union rallies for campus police commissioning
By Luis Cabrera
of The Western Front
Lt. Chuck Page
Speakers at a rally Friday in Viking
Union Plaza denounced a decision to
decommission the campus security
force and called for restoration of all
police authority to the force.
"They (Western's Board of Trus­tees
members) made a very serious
mistake when they decommissioned
your campus police force," said Mark
Brown, deputy director of the Wash­ington
Federation of State Employ­ees.
"They have locked themselves
in an ivory tower and ignored every­day
realities," he said.
About 200 people attended the
45-minute rally sponsored by the state
employee's union.
The issue arose when security
petitioned to carry arms last spring.
The board denied the request, then
chose to decommission the 11-offi­cer
force, which rendered them un­able
to arrest or take other official
action.
"At this time there are fully trained
university police officers under or­ders
not to help you if you are being
assaulted, raped or otherwise victim­ized.
They may be disciplined or
fired if they do. All they can do is call
Bellingham police for help," accord­ing
to a paper distributed at the rally
by union representative of Local 1381,
which represents security and other
campus workers.
"We just want you to have the
best protection available," Lt. Chuck
Page of campus security told stu­dents.
"Guns will be on campus. The
question is, who will carry them? We
have-the experience, the expertise
and the sensitivity to serve our cam­pus."
Page told other union members
the issue is "a wolf in sheep's cloth­ing.
It can affect the jobs of state
employees all over Washington."
Page said legislators will intro­duce
a bill in 1989 that would clear
the way for universities and other
institutions to contract with local law
enforcement agencies for protection.
Western has tried to contract with
Bellingham Police, but so far has run
into legal roadblocks. The governor-appointed
Higher Education Person­nel
Board declared the contract ille­gal,
and that decision was upheld in
Thurston County Superior Court in
Olympia.
The greivances will go before a
hearing examiner appointed by the
personnel board on Oct. 28, said Tim
Welch, communications coordina­tor
for the union in Olympia.
The case will be decided in a trial
scheduled for Dec. 1 in Thurston
County.
"With the campus police, we had
a lot shorter response time and a lot
more personal service," junior Ken
Duncan said. He commended the
response by campus security mem­bers
when his vehicle was broken
into last year.
Duncan said the main problem
security had in petitioning for weap­ons
was student ignorance of the
training the campus force receives,
which is identical to that of city
police.
see PROTESTS p. 3