Suspect in murder of Woodinville football player appears to be illegal immigrant

Taken from The Dori Monson Show on KIRO Radio.

Sunday morning, just as we finished the Seahawks pre-game show, one of our hosts, Sam Adkins got a call from his son.

His son was telling him about a former Woodinville High School football teammate of his who was randomly stabbed and killed at a 7-Eleven across the street from Linfield College down in Oregon.

The kid’s name is Parker Moore. Moore was just 20 years old. I read a tribute to Parker written by one of his former coaches. He talked about what an extraordinary young man Parker Moore was, how he was just the kid everybody loved, a great athlete, girls loved him, polite as can be.

Parker Moore played in the Linfield College game on Saturday. He was standing in line at the register at a 7-Eleven Saturday night, when all of a sudden a guy walked in with a knife and appears to have randomly stabbed Parker multiple times in the chest.

Sources report Joventino Bermudez Arenas of McMinnville, Ore. was identified as the stabbing suspect. Bermudez Arenas was reportedly still holding a knife when he was killed in an encounter with police.

I wanted to learn a little bit more about him. In doing a little digging, I found something that nobody else in the local media has talked about.

To me, aside from the abject tragedy of a fantastic young man being murdered, randomly and brutally, what is the most salient part of this story that everyone else in the media will completely ignore? Bermudez Arenas was an illegal immigrant.

How do I know that Bermudez Arenas was an illegal? You wouldn’t have gotten that anywhere else in the Seattle media. But if you go to Oregonlive.com, they talked to the suspect’s family members.

They said that their loved one was trying to surrender to cops when they gunned him down. His brother is claiming that Bermudez Arenas was trying to turn himself in when police shot him. They said that since Bermudez Arenas only spoke Spanish, he would not have understood English-speaking authorities if they had given him instructions. The brother said that’s why the cops shot him.

In this Oregonlive story, it says a key part of the investigation right now is verifying if Bermudez Arenas is who family members say he is. Investigators have not found any public records for him. Knowing more of his past could aid the investigation, but his family said that he has no documentation for any country. Undocumented people are illegal immigrants.

As you know, in Seattle, Portland, King County, we have all embraced this sanctuary city, sanctuary county philosophy. If illegals come here, they will have safe haven. Police cannot ask them their immigration status.

We can debate the immigration thing all you want and there are two legitimate sides to the immigration debate. But one thing you cannot refute is that when illegals commit crimes, the victims would not have been victims if the illegal wasn’t here.

Now, I’ve never once said we should deport all the illegals. But I find it outrageous that the president, in his national address, will say, ‘Let’s give amnesty to illegals.’ I think it’s absolutely outrageous that he’s doing that.

What I’ve always suggested is not deportation, but, through attrition, reducing the illegal population in our country. We shouldn’t reward people for coming into this country illegally as the president is going to do. He’s going to give them a big reward.

There have been people who have been in line for three or four years trying to get what has been the traditional, legal pathway to American citizenship. And the illegals who sneaked into this country are going to get to sneak ahead of them.

These things have consequences. The fact that an illegal kills one person, if that life could be saved by not having an illegal in the area, then that’s the way our public officials should be thinking and operating. But they never do.

This story is as sad and as senseless as they come.

Taken from The Dori Monson Show on KIRO Radio.

JS