Sheriff's officials investigate homicides

MOSES LAKE - Grant County officials confirmed the genders of two alleged homicide victims found in different parts of the county this week.

Grant County Coroner Craig Morrison confirmed Thursday that a man's body was found 8 miles north of Moses Lake on Wednesday before noon, and a woman's remains were discovered outside of Mattawa Tuesday afternoon.

An autopsy is scheduled in the Moses Lake case for Friday morning.

Grant County sheriff's officials continue to investigate.

A passing motorist reported the body near the 12000 block of Road 10 Northeast. Records show that dispatch received the call at 11 a.m.

Officers were on the scene most of the day, closing down the street between Road K Northeast and a stretch of Road L Northeast.

Some residents in the area were, understandably, alarmed at the circumstances.

"It just makes everybody a little bit more nervous," said Bob Cook, who lives in the area. "This used to be a quiet neighborhood for 20 years, but now it's getting less and less so."

Demar Duvall lives right across the street from where the body was reported.

He said that in his nearly 60 years living in the Basin, he's seen crimes like theft occur from time to time. Homicides, on the other hand, just don't happen around here, he said.

"That's probably just a once-in-a-lifetime experience that will never happen to me again," he said of the homicide.

Both men were not at home when the body was reported and learned about the event when they saw police tape in their neighborhood.

In the Mattawa case, Morrison was able to confirm the woman's gender, but is still working on a positive identification by press time on Thursday.

Because the bodies were found in two consecutive days, county officials sent both to the King County Medical Examiner's Office for autopsy.

"It just makes more sense to do everything at one point in the same place," he said. "And it's cheaper for us to go there than it is for them to come here."