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ArcDome
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PostSun Jul 19, 2009 4:52 pm 
Just saw this on the news: Seattle Times Article King5 Story
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Black Diamond sound engineer fatally shot at Twisp motel Tom Pfaeffle, a respected sound engineer from Black Diamond who worked with music groups that included Nirvana, The Black Crowes and Heart, was killed Friday at a Twisp-area motel, according to KING-TV. By Seattle Times staff Related Tom Pfaelle's Web site Tom Pfaeffle, a respected sound engineer from Black Diamond who worked with music groups that included Nirvana, The Black Crowes and Heart, was killed Friday at a Twisp-area motel, according to KING-TV. Pfaeffle, 49, had been active in the recording, touring and sound-reinforcement industry for three decades, he said on his Web site. He was also an instructor at the Art Institute of Seattle, teaching audio production. Pfaeffle owned and operated The Tank, a recording studio located in the woods of Black Diamond. According to the Twisp Police Department, a 49-year-old man, whom the department did not identify, was shot at about 10:42 p.m. Friday by a 57-year-old man. The victim died from his wounds about two hours later at Mid-Valley Hospital in Omak. The shooter was apprehended and booked for murder in the second degree and reckless endangerment, the police department said. The latter charge was subsequently upgraded to second-degree assault. "Circumstances and possible motivations have not been conclusively determined," the Twisp Police Department said in their report. KING-TV reported that Pfaeffle may have inadvertently tried to enter a wrong room at the motel. On recent posts on his Web site, Pfaeffle appears to have been busy and enjoying his work. His most recent entry reads: "Things are cooking along — Just finished Dog Leg Preachers full length "Abscess." The record kicks."

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ArcDome
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PostTue Jul 21, 2009 6:24 am 
Here is a link to an updated article: Omak Chronical
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Posted: Monday, July 20, 2009 - 6:24 p.m. PDT Man arrested in fatal shooting By Roger Harnack Chronicle staff OKANOGAN - An award-winning Seattle city engineer heard anticipated charges July 20 of second-degree murder and reckless endangerment following the shooting of a Black Diamond man in Twisp. Kino Michael Gomez, 57, Seattle, appeared in Okanogan County Superior Court after being arrested in the fatal shooting of Tom Pfaeffle, 49, on Friday night, July 17. The men, who were staying next door to each other at the Blue Spruce Motel, 1321 N. Methow Valley Highway, Twisp, apparently did not know each other, police said. Attorney Michael Haas, who is representing Gomez, said in court that his client was sleeping in Room 7 when Pfaeffle accidentally tried to enter the wrong motel room at about 10:40 p.m. In what Haas called a "seriously horrible" accident that lacked grounds for a murder charge, the attorney told Judge Jack Burchard that Pfaeffle's death was the result of a mistake by the victim awakening Gomez from a deep sleep. Police reports said Pfaeffle and his wife had just checked into Room 8. Gomez, who was sleeping with two 40-caliber Glock handguns, awoke and thought he saw someone coming in the motel room door and began shooting in self defense, Haas said. The state sought bail of $500,000. Burchard set bail at $100,000, agreeing with Haas’ request for lower bail by saying Gomez seemed to be a fairly responsible person. Pfaeffle, who died at Mid-Valley Hospital in Omak two hours after being shot, is well-known in the music industry. He owned and operated his own recording studio, The Tank Studio, and also was an Art Institute of Seattle instructor. According to his Web site, www.thetankstudio.com, during his 30 years in the music business, Pfaeffle worked with a number of top bands including Heart, Nirvana, Aerosmith, The Black Crowes, Great White, Queensryche, Scorpions, UB40, Alice Cooper, Rodney Crowell, B.B. King and others. More on the story will appear in this week's Chronicle newspaper. - Prepared by Omak Chronicle staff

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Mtn Dog
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PostTue Jul 21, 2009 6:10 pm 
I work with the accused, in fact he was responsible for overseeing the repair and restoration of the county section of the Middle Fork Road this spring (and IMO did a great job). I don't feel as though we are hearing the whole story and so I have reserved judgement. Kino is one of the best engineers I know; very sensible, a hard worker, and really good at getting projects built. A horrible accident indeed - this is a terrible thing for all involved, no question. The other strange thing is the response time. It took 18 minutes to get to the victim. Here in the Seattle area they cringe if they can't get there in less than 5. He died two hours later waiting to be airlifted from Omak to a higher level trauma center. If this happened in Renton, for instance, he would have been flown to Harborview in minutes and likely would have survived.

Footprints on the sands of time will never be made sitting down.
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509
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PostTue Jul 21, 2009 6:14 pm 
One Seattle resident shoots another Seattle resident in Okanogan County.....and the residents of Okanogan get to pick up the tab for the trial.

Retired Forester....rambling round www.usbackroads.blogspot.com
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PostTue Jul 21, 2009 6:47 pm 
At least as presented, a pretty unnerving story.
509 wrote:
One Seattle resident shoots another Seattle resident in Okanogan County.....and the residents of Okanogan get to pick up the tab for the trial.
huh.gif I wonder if the reverse ever happens. Don't get me started on the net flow of $$ from urban to rural areas (which I see as fine, but tends to get glossed over in some of these diatribes). Mtn Dog - good thought on waiting to hear the whole story. We all know that the papers don't always get breaking news exactly right in all the details, and may leave out crucial details as well.

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Dave Workman
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PostTue Jul 21, 2009 7:27 pm 
Mtn Dog wrote:
I work with the accused, in fact he was responsible for overseeing the repair and restoration of the county section of the Middle Fork Road this spring (and IMO did a great job). I don't feel as though we are hearing the whole story and so I have reserved judgement. Kino is one of the best engineers I know; very sensible, a hard worker, and really good at getting projects built. A horrible accident indeed - this is a terrible thing for all involved, no question. The other strange thing is the response time. It took 18 minutes to get to the victim. Here in the Seattle area they cringe if they can't get there in less than 5. He died two hours later waiting to be airlifted from Omak to a higher level trauma center. If this happened in Renton, for instance, he would have been flown to Harborview in minutes and likely would have survived.
Twisp ain't Seattle. Harborview ain't in Omak. Omak ain't near Renton. And perhaps most importantly, this guy may have fired through the door, and that has all kinds of problems. I don't care to turn this into either a gun or hunting thread, so take this in the proper perspective: This guy Pfaeffle is no less dead than Patricia Almli was last year on Sauk Mtn. Where's the level of outrage that took the Sauk thread to about 90 pages? Pfaeffle was shot at a motel, not on the trail, that it? Or maybe it's because he was shot by a middle-aged Seattle engineer and not a 14-year-old hunter from Podunk? I'm really trying to sort this out because a lot of people got pretty ripped last August. Now you're almost sedate. Someone lost their life as the result of an apparent act of negligence, same as before. What made that one more, ah, "urgent" than this one?

"The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted." - D.H. Lawrence
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Ingunn
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PostTue Jul 21, 2009 7:40 pm 
Because it's a hiking message board and this has nothing to do with hiking?

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Mtn Dog
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PostTue Jul 21, 2009 7:44 pm 
Gee Dave, for me it's the fact that I've also been pretty out of sorts waking up from deep sleeps before. Maybe he was suddenly woken from a terrible dream or nightmare. My daughter used to have night terrors that we could not wake her up from. She screamed and thrashed around in her sleep. It certainly adds enough "reasonable doubt" for me to withold judgement until I know more. What's worse is what can be percieved as an attempt to break and enter into someone's hotel room, which IMO is only a temporary replacement for your home. Not fully awake I could see someone reacting irrationally to the situation. And if you just try a door key and it doesn't fit, you reassess and walk away, usually back to the office to ask WTF? That alone shouldn't have woken someone sleeping deeply inside. Is it irresponsible to sleep with guns if you have a tendency to awaken startled? Sure. Is it 2nd Degree Murder? Under the circumstances I'm not so sure. The difference for the teen hunter situation is that his intent was to fire a weapon at what he perceived to be an animal. His error was in not properly identifying his target - a target he had every intention to shoot! In this situation the alleged's intent was to protect himself from what he perceived at the time to be an imminent threat. There's plenty of outrage in the comments following the news articles. I think this may end up being considered a tragic accident also. Isn't it difficult to assign blame to someone in an altered state of consciousness?

Footprints on the sands of time will never be made sitting down.
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PostTue Jul 21, 2009 8:04 pm 
Dave Workman wrote:
I don't care to turn this into either a gun or hunting thread [...]

If you show fear, a monkey will bully you.
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Tom
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PostTue Jul 21, 2009 8:25 pm 
Dave Workman wrote:
Where's the level of outrage that took the Sauk thread to about 90 pages? Pfaeffle was shot at a motel, not on the trail, that it?
Duh!

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509
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PostTue Jul 21, 2009 8:30 pm 
joker wrote:
At least as presented, a pretty unnerving story.
509 wrote:
One Seattle resident shoots another Seattle resident in Okanogan County.....and the residents of Okanogan get to pick up the tab for the trial.
:huh: I wonder if the reverse ever happens. Don't get me started on the net flow of $$ from urban to rural areas (which I see as fine, but tends to get glossed over in some of these diatribes).
Eastern Washington is as urban than western Washington. It is an urban myth that monies flow from west to east. Currently, gas tax monies are shipped west of the Cascades. Stadium funding from the state of Washington was $150 million dollars as of 2007. The only credible report I saw came from the 1980's and it was a push between east and west.

Retired Forester....rambling round www.usbackroads.blogspot.com
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Malachai Constant
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PostTue Jul 21, 2009 8:30 pm 
ditto.gif ditto.gif

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Grizzy
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PostTue Jul 21, 2009 9:00 pm 
A bizarre and sad tale....but gee Dave, what's different? Come on! down.gif Who the hell sleeps with two loaded pistols? paranoid.gif and why?

All the birds have flown up and gone; A lonely cloud floats leisurely by. We never tire of looking at each other - Only the mountain and I. ~Li Po~
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Tom
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PostTue Jul 21, 2009 9:19 pm 
Guns and politics. What is it, a full moon? No more politics and take any gun debate to the gun thread in trail talk assuming it has something to do with the outdoors.

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Dave Workman
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PostTue Jul 21, 2009 9:26 pm 
Mtn Dog wrote:
Gee Dave, for me it's the fact that I've also been pretty out of sorts waking up from deep sleeps before. Maybe he was suddenly woken from a terrible dream or nightmare. My daughter used to have night terrors that we could not wake her up from. She screamed and thrashed around in her sleep. It certainly adds enough "reasonable doubt" for me to withold judgement until I know more. What's worse is what can be percieved as an attempt to break and enter into someone's hotel room, which IMO is only a temporary replacement for your home. Not fully awake I could see someone reacting irrationally to the situation. And if you just try a door key and it doesn't fit, you reassess and walk away, usually back to the office to ask WTF? That alone shouldn't have woken someone sleeping deeply inside. Is it irresponsible to sleep with guns if you have a tendency to awaken startled? Sure. Is it 2nd Degree Murder? Under the circumstances I'm not so sure. The difference for the teen hunter situation is that his intent was to fire a weapon at what he perceived to be an animal. His error was in not properly identifying his target - a target he had every intention to shoot! In this situation the alleged's intent was to protect himself from what he perceived at the time to be an imminent threat. There's plenty of outrage in the comments following the news articles. I think this may end up being considered a tragic accident also. Isn't it difficult to assign blame to someone in an altered state of consciousness?
Now that is a good, honest answer. Thank you. I dunno if you're analysis/theory about how this went down is accurate, but it's something. As for charges and prosecution, that'll be up to the Okanogan County prosecutor. Yeah, I've read some of the comments in the P-I and Times.

"The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted." - D.H. Lawrence
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