Local authorities have charged three men with illegally entering an area of the Hanford Site closed to the public to gather antlers shed by deer and elk.
One of the men, Daniel Briant Charboneau, 32, of Pasco, was an employee of Hanford tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions at the time of the alleged incident. Charboneau and Tri-Cities residents Isaac Hampton Case, 38, and Stephen Michael Dearinger Jr., 31, have been charged in Benton County District Court with unlawful collecting of wildlife parts from the property of another.
A Washington state Fish and Wildlife officer approached three men as they put in a boat at a Columbia River launch that is open to the public on Feb. 12, according to court documents. Officers had received tips in recent years and a few days before Feb. 12 that people were trespassing in the area and collecting deer and antler sheds from Department of Energy land. However, the men told the officer they were going boating “to learn that area of the river,” court records state.
State and federal officers watched the men with spotting scopes and binoculars at overlook areas along the river as the boat set off. They observed it stop four times along the river at restricted areas of Hanford, according to court documents. The area is posted with many “No Trespassing” signs and also has a few larger signs that say that launching and landing boats on the south side of the Columbia River and on islands is prohibited. The secure portion of Hanford is south of the river.
Officers said they saw Dearinger trespass onto Hanford four times, Case trespass three times, and Charboneau trespass once. When the men returned to the boat launch, officers found five shed deer antlers and one shed elk antler, according to court documents. The antlers were returned to Hanford to be scanned for radioactivity, with no concerns found.
The misdemeanor property violation charge is punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.
Charboneau was a safety specialist at the tank farms, but left Hanford after March 13, according to Hanford officials. He was involved in an earlier case, accused of poaching an elk at the DOE site, and received a suspended jail sentence after pleading guilty in 2013 to hunting game without a state tag. Charboneau had been a tank farm employee since 2010 and kept his job after the 2013 sentence.
