Monday, November 17, 2014

#35 Parker Moore, Wildcat sophomore linebacker, 'embodied everything that's good about Linfield,' said Joe Smith, head football coach

Headlines print edition (page 1):  Chance encounter ends in death. Linfield student stabbed at a convenience store
Headline online edition: Linfield's Parker Moore fatally stabbed in 'random act' 
By Saerom Yoo, Salem, Ore., Statesman Journal 11/17/2014
McMINNVILLE – Parker Moore's trip to the 7-Eleven just off Linfield College's campus on Saturday night was not out of the ordinary. It's a frequent destination for many students.
But for the 20-year-old business management major from Woodinville, Wash., the outing that students make every day turned deadly. And based on the police's investigation so far, it could have been anyone who was stabbed to death by a man who had no connection to Moore or the small private school.
"I just don't understand — why him," sophomore Anna Bruns said Sunday. "A lot of Linfield students go there all the time. It could have been any of us."
Investigators were just as stumped.
"We don't really have any reason as to why," Yamhill County Sheriff's Office spokesman Capt. Tim Svenson said.
McMinnville police officers responded to a call of a stabbing at the convenience store about 11:08 p.m. Saturday. The suspect had fled.
While officers were assisting Moore and talking with witnesses, the suspect returned, with a knife in hand. He refused to put down the weapon, and police shot him, Svenson said.
Both Moore and the suspect, tentatively identified as 33-year-old Joventino Bermudez Arenas, died at a hospital.
"This is a random act committed by someone totally unrelated to Parker and unrelated to the campus," Linfield's director of campus safety Ron Noble said at a press conference Sunday.
Yamhill County Sheriff's Office is handling the investigations of the stabbing and the officer-involved shooting.
Investigators spent Sunday morning interviewing witnesses and obtaining surveillance video of the incident, Svenson said.
The officers involved in the incident have been placed on paid administrative leave, which is standard protocol while the use-of-force investigation continues.
McMinnville Police Chief Matt Scales declined to say how many officers were involved or whether they were veterans.
A makeshift memorial wall adorned with flowers, a Linfield football jersey and candles along a fence of Maxwell Field became a gathering place for students to comfort one another.
Moore was a resident adviser and linebacker on the Linfield football team.
"He embodied everything that's good about Linfield," head football coach Joe Smith said during Sunday's press briefing. "He was a consummate teammate who put everybody first ahead of himself. He was incredibly loyal, a great man of character with a lot of integrity."
Classmates echoed Smith's sentiments.
"I just thought he was really sweet, really caring," Bruns said. "He was just a good individual taken too early."
Sophomore Sean Pellatz walked by the memorial, bumping his fist on the purple jersey on the fence. He stopped at the edge and wept.
"He was the best guy on campus," Pellatz said.
Parker was one of Pellatz first friends at Linfield, and the two golfed together, talked about sports and shared meals. The last time the two saw each other was in a sociology class Thursday.
Both students and officials have said that crimes of this nature are rare at Linfield and McMinnville. Scales said Saturday's was the first officer-involved shooting he has seen in his 21 years with the police department.
"It's one of the reasons we're spending so much time processing the scene and interviewing witnesses," Svenson said. "Because not only do we want to know what happened, we want to give the victim's family some understanding and some closure as to why this happened."