The family of Aron Christensen, a Portland musician who was shot to death along with his puppy Buzzo while hiking on a remote Washington trail last August, is planning to sue the sheriff’s office that investigated the homicide. The family alleges investigators “maliciously damaged” the puppy’s body “in order to sabotage a criminal investigation.”
Christensen, on an annual camping trip with friends, set out on a solo hike Aug. 19 with his four-month-old cattle dog up the Walupt Lake Trail in Washington’s Cascade Mountains. The 49-year-old avid outdoorsman, who grew up in Klamath Falls, was expected to return to the campground the next afternoon.
Instead, the next day, a pair of hikers reported finding a man’s body near the trail, next to the body of a small dog.
The investigation into the deaths turned into a tumultuous, frustrating waiting game for Christensen’s family and friends that lasted more than seven months.
The Lewis County, Wash., prosecutor in early April ultimately concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to bring felony manslaughter charges against the suspect in the fatal shooting.
A 20-year-old Lewis County man named Ethan Asbach admitted he fired a gun on Aug. 19, 2022, in the area where the bodies of Christensen and Christensen’s dog were later found, and forensic evidence linked the bullet that killed Christensen to Asbach’s gun, according to the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office investigation. Asbach said he was hiking on the trail with his then-16-year-old girlfriend to meet his father on a bear-hunting trip.
But the evidence didn’t meet the threshold for proving criminal recklessness or criminal negligence, county prosecutor Jonathan Meyer said.
“Had the case been fully investigated, and from the beginning been treated like a homicide, I don’t know what evidence would have been found,” Meyer told The Oregonian/OregonLive in April. “It’s hard to say… All I know is, with the evidence we have now, there’s not enough to go forward.”
Corey Christensen, Aron’s brother, said the prosecutor met with the family in April and cited incompetence by the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office as a key reason he decided not to pursue manslaughter and animal-cruelty charges.
Now, the Christensen family is seeking other avenues for justice.
Lorenzo Leoni, the Olympia attorney hired by Aron Christensen’s sister Natalie Parker and brother-in-law Raymond Parker on behalf of Christensen’s estate, filed the tort claim earlier this month, asking for punitive damages and naming every Lewis County employee who handled evidence during the investigation into the deaths of Christensen and Buzzo.
The tort claim, a formality in the civil-suit process, was sent to Lewis County’s risk management department May 11, according to the record provided by Leoni’s office. Tort claims serve as an official notification of a plan to sue and give the government agency a chance to settle outside of court.
The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office and other county officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The tort claim is the first step in the case in which the facts are still developing, Leoni said. Lewis County has not responded to the filing. Leoni expects his office will file a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court sometime this summer.
“Injuries and damages are still being accessed at this time,” the tort claim said. The document doesn’t go into any detail about the accusation that investigators purposely damaged the dog’s body.
It remains a mystery what exactly happened to Buzzo. One theory is that a single bullet killed both the dog and Aron Christensen.
Among several errors and missteps in the investigation, a forensic pathologist may have botched Aron Christensen’s autopsy. When examining the bullet wound in Christensen’s chest, pathologist Dr. Megan Quinn found canine DNA.
In emails, the case’s lead investigator, Det. Jamey McGinty, asked Quinn if it was possible the tools used to inspect the dog were also used during Christensen’s autopsy. The same pathologists examined Christensen and Buzzo, even though they didn’t have veterinary certifications.
Quinn said she was sure the same instruments were used for both Christensen and the dog.
Ultimately, she wrote to McGinty that “I would not say to any degree of certainty there could not have been DNA transfer between items of evidence.”
In the sheriff’s office’s initial referral of charges to the Lewis County prosecutor, McGinty wrote: “While looking at the angle and exit wound in Buzzo, it matches the approximate height as the entry wound on Christensen’s body. With Christensen laying down at the time, it is possible for Asbach to have shot Buzzo, with the bullet exiting Buzzo and entering into Christensen. This could also explain the dog DNA found on the bullet removed from Christensen’s body.”
It’s apparently still not certain whether a single bullet hit both Buzzo and Christensen.
While the tort claim launches one legal case from members of the family, Christensen’s brother, Corey Christensen, a music teacher in Silverton, is receiving pro-bono legal representation from the Pacific Northwest-based law firm Lane Powell.
Attorney Pilar C. French said she offered Corey Christensen help “after reading news reports and personal social-media posts from so many members of the Portland community regarding the unbelievable twists and turns in Aron’s and Buzzo’s case.”
She did not say if Corey Christensen plans to file another lawsuit concerning the case. In an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive, French wrote:
“While (Leoni and Aron Christensen’s estate) focuses on the tort claim, we are counseling Corey on additional avenues he can pursue to ensure that the State of Washington has done everything within its means to ensure justice for Aron and Buzzo.”
– Savannah Eadens; seadens@oregonian.com; 503-221-6651; @savannaheadens
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