STAFF REPORT
POULSBO — Two people found dead in a 30-foot travel trailer at Rhododendron Mobile Park Sept. 15 were saving money to buy a house in the area and had lived there for less than six months, the site manager said Sept. 16.
“They were well-liked folks and didn’t have any problems here,” said the manager, who spoke on the condition that his name not be used. “It’s just shocking.”
The couple was found about 2:30 p.m. — according to the mobile park manager, by a relative. He said the couple has family in the area. He said they were the only residents of the travel trailer.
Sheriff’s spokesman Scott Wilson said the couple were husband and wife, ages 30 and 28, respectively. They had been dead for less than 24 hours, Wilson said.
“There were gunshot injuries to them,” Wilson said. “We’re not in a position to go out and say we’re looking for anything. It’ll be up to the coroner to determine whether it’s homicide/suicide or homicide/homicide.”
He added, “We are not pursuing a person of interest in this … It’s believed to have been an internal domestic situation.”
The bodies were at the Kitsap County Coroner’s Office Sept. 16 for autopsy.
Sheriff’s deputies were first to arrive at the scene, then detectives. “We responded to the staging area but we didn’t go in,” said Jody Matson, spokeswoman for Poulsbo Fire Department. By that time, “it [was] a police investigation.”
The Rhododendron Mobile Park is located off of Clear Creek Road on Orweiler Lane, .7-mile north of Luoto Road/Highway 308.
A resident of the RV park said he “heard the choppers (but) thought it was something on Highway 3.” He said he heard the helicopters around 3:30 p.m.
The manager said Rhododendron Mobile Park is an RV park — there are two mobile homes on site, one of them the manager’s residence — with RV spaces on five of the property’s 25 acres.
“We typically cater to military personnel and contractors developing in the area,” he said. “Because of the base, we have a lot of active military personnel [here].”
The deceased couple was not in the military, the manager said.
News of the deaths shattered the calm of the heavily-forested RV park, which resembles more a family campground than a temporary residence. Residents walk trails and ride mountain bikes here, or collect blackberries, salal berries and salmonberries. Deer, rabbits and coyotes are regularly sighted; black bears were seen twice in the last two years.
The manager said residents were coming to terms with the deaths the best way they knew how Sept. 16.
“Everybody has their own way. I’ve got kids and a wife and a job, and I’ve got to pick up and move on,” he said.
How to share the news with children? “That’s a tricky thing,” he said.
Sheriff’s officials consult during their investigation of the deaths of a couple in a travel-trailer at Rhododendron Mobile Park, south of Poulsbo near Highway 308, Sept. 15. Photo: Sara N. Miller / Herald
