[1]Denise Salts, left, and Venus Hamilton wait their turn to go before a judge on Friday afternoon.
This news story was updated at 6:30 p.m. on Friday June 17, 2011
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – The sheriff’s office says it arrested two of the main narcotics distributors in East Lewis County yesterday, and one of them is Denise R. Salts – the woman who was shot in the face when her boyfriend and two others were slain last August.
Salts, 52, of Glenoma, was arrested for delivery of methamphetamine after sheriff’s deputies and their SWAT team served a search warrant yesterday, according to the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office. Also arrested for the same offense was Venus D. Hamilton, 47, of Morton, Chief Civil Deputy Stacy Brown said today.
Brown said members of the Lewis County Narcotics Task Force conducted several undercover drug buy operations during May and June in East Lewis County.
Salts was the lone survivor when in the night on August 21, her live-in boyfriend David J. West Sr., his 16-year-old son and a friend from Mineral were fatally shot inside a Salkum-Onalaska area home off of Gore Road.
John Allen Booth Jr. is charged with her attempted murder, murder, attempted extortion and unlawful possession of a firearm. His trial is scheduled for August. His former cell mate Ryan J. McCarthy, 29, is also charged in the case.
Brown didn’t say when or where the arrests were made yesterday.
She did say both individuals were taken into custody without incident and booked into the Lewis County Jail.
Hamilton is shown as being booked at 3:21 p.m. yesterday and Salts was booked at 12:49 a.m. today, according to the jail roster.
Also yesterday in East Lewis County, a 48-year-old Randle man was arrested at his home following undercover purchases of marijuana made during June, Brown said.
At about 5 p.m., deputies searched David E. Bellamy’s residence on the 200 block of Skinner Road and turned up almost 42 grams of suspected marijuana, scales and what Brown called a ledger.
When Bellamy arrived home just after 6:30 p.m., he was taken into custody without incident, she said. He was booked for three counts of delivery of marijuana, according to Brown.
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CORRECTION: David J. West Sr.’s name was corrected to reflect he is the senior West, not junior.