Woodburn police discovered a funeral wake with dozens of people in attendance this week but failed to immediately shut it down despite Gov. Kate Brown’s order halting large gatherings to stem the spread of coronavirus.
The wake ended up going into the next day, when officers finally acted, police reports show.
While it’s unclear if any of the people at the event were infected or became infected afterward, the incident is particularly jarring because it happened in one of the worst-hit counties in the state.
While about 5 percent of Oregonians tested for the virus are infected, the rate in Marion County is 11 percent. Woodburn has been the epicenter of the outbreak there, data show, with half of the county’s cases living in the town that makes up only 10 percent of the county’s population.
A police department spokesman said in an email that officers acted in line with the governor’s suggestions to “educate and inform the public when violations are observed.” Participants had agreed to end the event, so officers didn’t see a need for more action, said spokesman Tommy Moore.
When on the following day officers saw the wake was still in progress, they shut it down, Moore said.
Here’s what happened.
A Woodburn officer came upon the wake Tuesday afternoon while driving in downtown. He saw men and women in business casual clothes walking into a venue called Metropolis Marketplace and Event Venue, according to the officer’s summary of what happened. He then called for backup.
When another officer arrived, the two went into the building and were greeted by the venue’s owner, Noe Valenzuela Valles.
Valenzuela Valles told the officers that everybody at the private event was keeping 3 feet of social distance. The first officer on the scene, Jorge Gaspar, said he would go upstairs to “take a look.”
Gaspar wrote in a police report that after passing a crowd of 10 people waiting at an elevator, he went inside the space where the wake was being held. He saw decorations, flower arrangements, about 100 white chairs and an open coffin on a platform with the body of a man inside.
Gaspar saw about 40 people there, he wrote, some congregating in large groups.
Brown’s March 17 executive order, which Gaspar cited in his report, banned social, spiritual and recreational gatherings over 25 people where those attending can’t keep at least 3 feet away from each other. The governor’s March 23 executive order banned all non-essential social and recreational gatherings of any size where people can’t keep at least 6 feet apart.
According to Gaspar’s report, a man attending the wake came up to him and said, “We’re just saying goodbye to my nephew.”
Valenzuela Valles later told officers that he hadn’t been able to pay his rent because nobody had reserved the space for two months.
The wake was the only event he had been able to book. It had started Monday and was supposed to be over by 9 p.m. Tuesday, he said.
Sgt. Geoffrey Carpenter, who came to the scene later, told Valenzuela Valles “that we would not be taking any action at this time." Valenzuela Valles was cited with failure to comply with public health emergency, according to police records.
That was the end of it for Tuesday.
The next day, however, Gaspar went back to the venue and saw that the wake was still going, according to his second report.
When he went back inside, he saw that the casket was still there, along with 25 to 40 people, Gaspar wrote.
“Some were further than six feet away and some were not,” he noted.
Valenzuela Valles told Gaspar that the wake actually had been scheduled for three days, ending Wednesday. Soon after, Gaspar told Valenzuela Valles to shut it down.
“He immediately went inside to begin evacuating the building,” Gaspar wrote.
Valenzuela Valles declined to comment.
-- Fedor Zarkhin
desk: 503-294-7674|cell: 971-373-2905|@fedorzarkhin
This article was originally published by The Oregonian/OregonLive, one of more than a dozen news organizations throughout the state sharing their coverage of the novel coronavirus outbreak to help inform Oregonians about this evolving health issue.
