Friday, December 3, 2010

White Swan, WA: White Swan man stabbed to death

BY CHRIS BRISTOL
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC



WHITE SWAN, Wash. -- Yakima County sheriff's detectives Thursday arrested the girlfriend of a White Swan man who died at a Yakima hospital Wednesday night under mysterious circumstances.

Chief of Detectives Stew Graham said the case began shortly after 8 p.m., when Yakama Nation tribal police received a complaint about two unwanted guests at a home on Coburn Loop in White Swan.

One of the guests, 27-year-old Gabriel Paul, was suffering from an unspecified medical problem and was sent to the hospital, where he died. Hospital staff subsequently discovered that Paul had been stabbed in the neck.

Graham said Paul's 30-year-old girlfriend, the other unwanted guest at the Coburn Loop home, was subsequently arrested and booked into the county jail on homicide charges.

Graham said tribal police and the FBI initially investigated the case, then turned it over to sheriff's detectives after determining the Sheriff's Office had proper jurisdiction.

According to police, the girlfriend was related to the owner of the Coburn Loop home. Paul was an enrolled member of the Colville tribe. An autopsy is scheduled for today.

The homicide was the county's first since Nov. 9 and the 26th of the year, not counting the deaths of two people in a police chase in Yakima last June.

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