Pal's story contradicts dad in boy's drowning

Pal's story contradicts dad in boy's drowning

The Associated Press

SHELTON - A 10-year-old boy who accompanied Shawn Lowrance and his adoptive father on a deadly fishing trip last fall has told police a story substantially different from the father's.

Shawn, 10, drowned during the Oct. 9 trip to Brown's Creek near Shelton. The death was initially ruled an accident, but Mason County sheriff's investigators have been taking another look since learning the adoptive parents had heavy debt and had taken out a $650,000 insurance policy on the boy in the year before he died.

No charges have been filed, and the adoptive parents' names are not being released.

The 10-year-old's statements were contained in a Sheriff's Department request for a warrant to search the Lacey boy's home and family pickup truck in late January.

The father told investigators he asked for the boy's help in pulling the body from the water after trying unsuccessfully to retrieve it himself, but Shawn's friend says the father never got in the water.

The friend also told investigators the father put the boys about 100 yards apart and separated by a bend in the river, Mason County sheriff's Detective Michael Foster said in the request for a search warrant. The two boys and Shawn's adoptive father were alone on the trip.

Shawn had been a foster child under the supervision of the state Department of Social and Health Services. After several years in foster care in Aberdeen, he was placed with the Lacey couple in January 1998. His adoption became final in October 1998.