‘I’m going to have to learn to live all over again’: Colville Reservation reeling after stabbing deaths of court clerk and her teenage son

NESPELEM – Thursday was a good day at work in the Colville Tribal Court office with her niece Laura Dick, Sophie Nomee remembers.

“She was making everybody laugh like normal,” Nomee said.

The group was talking about plans to go to the 12 Tribes casino in Omak for Dick’s birthday that Friday with her son and daughter.

“She goes, ‘Oh, I should get a room. That way my kids could come and Natalie could play and Anthony could play his game.’ We were gonna plan it that way.”

But those plans never came to be.

A former boyfriend of 38-year-old Dick called police Thursday night, claiming that he had stabbed her and her 17-year-old son, Anthony Vieira, at their home in Nespelem on the Colville Reservation, according to court records.

Police arrived to the scene and found Damian Todd Martinez Jr., 37, standing outside and covered in blood. When they entered the home, they found each victim had been stabbed in the neck.

Martinez admitted to a history of assaulting Dick, resulting in at least one previous arrest. Police arrested him Thursday on suspicion of two counts of first-degree murder in Indian Country. He is being held in the Spokane County Jail without bail following his first court appearance Tuesday.

Dick and Vieira belonged to a family with deep ties to many on the Colville reservation, Nomee said. Cars flooded the neighborhood when they noticed police outside Dick’s house.

“We didn’t know (what had happened) until the next morning,” Nomee said. “Nobody told us anything until 12 hours later. We stood out there and waited at that police line, and we didn’t leave.”

Among those waiting were Dick’s mother, Janice Dick, and her 19-year-old daughter, Natalie Vieira. Natalie Vieira and her younger brother, Anthony, grew up in the home.

“They didn’t really even look at us that much,” Natalie Vieira said. “They just walked past us, the police officers.”

The tribal police must have been in shock at the scene, Nomee said. Many officers grew up with Laura Dick.

“I can only imagine how it was to be the first ones on scene, the first ones to see it,” Nomee said.

Nomee and her daughter Corina were part of a group of female family members who cleaned the house when they were able to enter. They were unable to afford a professional service.

“In our way, we don’t cry. We don’t want to hold them here with our tears,” Corina Nomee said. “So when we’re doing that kind of work, we have to be strong and not cry.”

Laura Dick had worked as a clerk for the Colville Tribal Court.

“Our community is grieving deeply today after the loss of two of our own in what appears to be a senseless act of violence,” tribal Chairman Jarred-Michael Erickson said in a Friday statement. He said that he grew up with Laura Dick and remembers “her warm spirit and a smile that could truly light up any room.”

The tribal court is operating on a limited basis “in recognition of her service and to allow staff the time and space to grieve this sudden and painful loss.”

Laura Dick lived for her children, Nomee said, and in Native American custom, she was a child, sister and mother figure for far more people than those to whom she was immediately related. The family’s youngest generation – around seven or so kids at the time – often spent time at her house growing up.

“Our community, our reservation, whether we get along or not, we all know each other,” Corina Nomee said. “We all watch each other grow up. We all watch our families grow up.”

Halloween was Laura Dick’s favorite holiday. She and Sophie Nomee loved dressing up, decorating and watching scary movies together in October. Laura Dick had a tattoo of Jack Skellington from Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” her mother remembered.

“I felt like she never got scared because she just would laugh,” Corina Nomee said. “Like, when we’d go to scary movies, we’d be those people that would be laughing.”

Anthony Vieira shared his mother’s talent for making people laugh. He was particularly close with his younger cousins, one of whom said “Anthony was the best Roblox player ever.”

A number of videos of Anthony Vieira throughout his childhood show him dancing as younger kids around him smiled. He didn’t want to grow up, Laura Dick’s brother Coby Dick said.

“He made sure these kids had a blast with him every time they were with him, and that’s just the way he was,” Coby Dick said. “He was just like his mom.”

A junior at Lake Roosevelt High School, Anthony Vieira often kept to himself but loved art class, Natalie Vieira said, drawing and painting characters from anime in his spare time.

Grand Coulee Dam School District Superintendent Rodriguez Broadnax said in a statement that grief counselors were available on the school’s campus beginning Monday.

“Anthony was a bright and dedicated student who demonstrated remarkable resilience and determination. He was known for his kindness, his perseverance and the positive spirit he brought to our school community,” Broadnax’s statement reads. “His presence mattered, and he will be remembered for the impact he made on his classmates, teachers and friends.”

Anthony Vieira was also a talented singer who taught himself guitar, playing in a band with his sister, Sophie Nomee said. As children, they sang Christmas carols for relatives upon request.

The siblings would spend breaks at school together, Natalie Vieira watching her brother play guitar or “goof around.”

“My niece is basically alone now. She’s not alone, but she’s alone, because that was her whole life,” Coby Dick said of Natalie Vieira. “So she lost her whole life to somebody because he thought it was OK to go and kill them and then turn it around and try to make up that she was cheating on him.”

Sophie Nomee said her niece had been telling Martinez to leave her alone leading up to her death, but Martinez told police he suspected Laura Dick had been cheating on him, according to court records.

Laura Dick was a single mom raising her two kids, her brother said. She didn’t have time to cheat, and anyway, “she was the type of person who would never even think about doing that stuff.”

Coby Dick, along with the other members of their family, learned the details of what happened the night of the killing from court records published by KXLY on Saturday.

The records say that when calling the police on himself, Martinez initially referred to Laura Dick as his “wife” before telling police that the two weren’t married but intended to be after he proposed a year into their relationship.

Multiple family members were surprised to learn that Martinez was back in Laura Dick’s life.

Sophie Nomee said Martinez and Laura Dick began dating in 2017, but they broke up in 2023 and he moved to Oregon.

“At first, he would come to family functions, and after a while, you could tell something was wrong because Laura started to stop coming to family functions. She stopped talking to some of us,” Corina Nomee said. “Then they broke up and he had gone home, and then we started getting her back”

Since the breakup, Sophie Nomee said that Martinez had visited Laura Dick multiple times, and that she would tell him to leave.

“I would talk to her and tell her, ‘Get a restraining order, call the police on him,’ ” Sophie Nomee said. “And next thing she would say, ‘Oh, he left finally.’ ”

Seeing and hearing domestic violence situations similar to her own come through the tribal court may have helped open Laura Dick’s eyes to her own situation, Sophie and Corina Nomee said.

“I feel like she was getting strong enough to finally say, fully, I don’t want you in my life,” Corina Nomee added.

Domestic violence is a prevalent issue in Native American communities across the country. More than half of Native women have experienced physical violence by intimate partners in their lifetime, according to the National Congress of American Indians website, often at the hands of a non-native partner. Martinez told police that he was not Native and “expressed frustration about living on the reservation, claiming he experienced racism,” according to court documents.

The violence of the killings “has shocked everybody,” Sophie Nomee said.

Sophie Nomee said that she sees domestic violence “everywhere” in her work at the court. It’s not only physical, she said, but also mental, emotional and spiritual in nature.

“I mean, you think back in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, long time ago, not only Native women but women in general were – you didn’t know a lot about their personal business, their home life. Whether they were in a domestic violence situation or not, because they were caught in a hush-hush,” she said. “And still to this day, we’re trying to break that cycle. We’re trying to tell these women and some men, use your voice. You’ve got to love yourself.”

Even beyond domestic violence, Native communities are plagued by early deaths. Estimates vary between studies, but the Indian Health Service website puts the life expectancy of Native Americans and Alaska Natives at 73 years as of 2019, where the average across all races in the United States sits at 78.5 years. Suicide, many diseases and assault kill a greater proportion of Native people than they do the average U.S. citizen.

Just last week, Janice Dick was cooking food in the Nespelem Community Center for someone else’s funeral. Corina Nomee grew up attending funerals and was shocked to learn in college that some of her peers had never lost a loved one.

“It’s like every week there’s one or two people on our reservation that we’re having a funeral for because they lost to cancer or they overdosed or something. It’s nonstop,” Sophie Nomee said. “And in a way, it’s sad, because I felt like I was just starting to be able to come up right here, and it’s happening again.”

Corina Nomee said that “I’m going to have to learn to live all over again.” She hopes her cousin’s story will inspire families to “love them like it’s their last day.”

“And make sure you speak up and help women that are in that situation and tell them that it’s OK to put yourself first,” she said. “I wish for a lot of Native women across the country a healthy relationship so we can start healing our communities.”