‘Pretty emotional’ vigil honors Meshay, Layla in Vancouver

Coin 6 following the tragic story out of Southwest Washington where authorities say two bodies found in Washougal Wednesday are likely those of a missing Vancouver mom and daughter. Welcome to Coin 6 News at 11 o'clock, I'm Wayne Haverly. As investigators work to hold those responsible, accountable family, friends and community leaders, they held a vigil to honor the pair in Vancouver today. Our Joelle Jones has been covering this story all week. I once was lost, but now I'm found. Lost and found, but never forgotten. This morning hundreds of people donned in their favorite colors, red, pink and purple, gathered at Esther Short Park to honor the legacy of 27-year-old Miche Mellendez and her 8-year-old daughter, Leila Stewart.

Miche was always caring, always had a huge heart and always made sure that all her loved ones were good. How genuine of a person she was, and this is truly sickening. Emotions were raw as the vigil comes less than a week after authorities say the bodies of the young Vancouver mom and daughter were discovered in Washougal Wednesday. And while no charters have been filed in their murders, police have named Mellendez's ex-boyfriend 28-year-old Kirkland Warren as a person of interest. With court documents showing Warren assaulted Mellendez, shot up her apartment and violated a domestic violence protective order in the weeks leading up to her disappearance, Michelle Bart, CEO and founder of the National Women's Coalition Against Violence and Exploitation says this tragedy highlights the urgent need for legislation reform. Why do we have to wait until something happens where there's blood on our hands? Let's try to prevent it from happening. I never wanted to come to one of these again.

I never wanted to have another victim of domestic violence murdered here in Clark County again. Sergeant Tanya Wolstein with VPD's domestic violence unit stressed the need for state-wide lethality assessments for domestic violence offenders, suggesting a constitutional amendment which would allow judges to deny bail for extreme risk offenders and laws enforcing them to participate in monitoring with victim notification. I know we have to do more to keep domestic violence victims safe, which is why I worked on the Tiffany Hill Act. Named after a Vancouver woman murdered by her estranged husband, the Tiffany Hill Act of 2020 grants domestic violence victims a layer of protection by electronically tracking abuse suspects with ankle monitors and alerting victims when they're nearby. And while the act wasn't applied in this case, jail records show when given a risk assessment earlier this month, Warren scored a 31 on a scale of 1 to 18, with 18 being extreme risk. Senator Linda Wilson helped pass the Tiffany Hill Act and tells us today she is already requesting new legislation as she feels more needs to be done. We need to be looking at those high scores and then holding on to the people because the higher that score, the more chance there's something drastic or deadly is going to happen to the victims.

Joelle Jones, Coin 6 News.

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