Woman charged in shooting death

A Moses Lake woman will be charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death Saturday of a man she said attacked her at an apartment in northern Ferry County.

District Court Judge Lynda Eaton found probable cause Monday to hold Doris M. Grisham, 46, on the murder count. Eaton set Grisham’s bail at $100,000, and Grisham remained in the Ferry County Jail.

Prosecutor James von Sauer said he would file formal charges within 72 hours, and Grisham would be arraigned in Superior Court on Sept. 10.

Grisham is accused of killing Benjamin S. Brown, 24, with two shots from a 9mm semiautomatic pistol.

Sheriff Pete Warner and von Sauer said details of the shooting remained sketchy, but Grisham, Brown and a man identified only as Grisham’s boyfriend had been quarreling.

“We still haven’t got all the witness statements,” Warner said. “What explanations we got were sketchy at best due to the fact that everybody involved was intoxicated. … Some were highly intoxicated.”

Warner said a group of people, mostly residents of the Old School Apartments, had been drinking at the Curlew Saloon until it closed at 2 a.m. Saturday. The group went back to the apartments, where Brown lived across the hall from the apartment where Grisham was staying with her boyfriend, Warner said.

Brown apparently was a gold miner who had recently come to Curlew from Moundhouse, Nev., the sheriff said.

According to a sheriff’s report von Sauer cited in court Monday, Grisham told a deputy that Brown “came into the apartment and started hitting me and threw me up against the wall and went after my friend and started beating him. I grabbed my gun and shot him twice.”

Warner said Brown was hit once in the shoulder and once in the middle of his chest.

Von Sauer rejected Grisham’s self-defense claim on grounds that the shooting apparently occurred in the hallway, not in the apartment, and because the dead man was unarmed and there was no “trauma” to his hands to indicate he had hit someone.

According to von Sauer, Grisham left the building with her boyfriend after asking a man to hide her gun. Officers later found a Ruger pistol believed to be Grisham’s in an inoperable vehicle, where the man who allegedly was asked to hide the weapon had been sleeping.

The weapon was loaded and cocked, von Sauer said.

Grisham surrendered without incident at a home on Bamber Creek Road, about six miles west of Curlew, when officers were summoned by the homeowner. Deputy Tom Williams said Grisham claimed to have fled the shooting scene “because of all the vigilantes.”

Williams reported Grisham’s cheek was bruised and swollen.

Warner said Grisham had come to Curlew to visit her father, who lives on Bamber Creek Road. It wasn’t immediately clear whether her father had any connection with the home where Grisham was arrested, the sheriff said.

Court records show Grisham has no felony convictions in Ferry or Grant counties.

The 22-unit Old School Apartments, a converted grade school, has been owned by Superior Court Judge Rebecca Baker and her husband, Joe Abraham, since 1985. It was the scene of a suspicious death last year that authorities said was methamphetamine-related.

“We have trouble there all the time,” Warner said. “If it’s not domestic violence, it’s assaults or thefts. … It’s low-income housing.”

“I’m sorry that the sheriff has that perspective,” said Baker, who serves Ferry, Stevens and Pend Oreille counties.

Baker conceded, however, that “the people in the building have very low income, and sometimes they have problems that spill over.”

She noted that Grisham was not a tenant, and said the man she was staying with hadn’t paid his first month’s rent and wasn’t supposed to have moved in until Sept. 1. The man was given permission only to move in his belongings, Baker said.

The judge said she and her husband live in Republic, 25 miles south of Curlew, but her husband often stays overnight at the Old School Apartments. Also, Baker said, a couple living in the apartments serves as a “liaison” to the building.

“The more hands-on a person can be, the better, and that’s what we have tried to do within the confines of not being resident landlords,” Baker said.