Investigators were looking into what sparked a blaze late Sunday that heavily damaged a detached garage in Pacific.

Crews from the Valley Regional Fire Authority and South King Fire & Rescue were called to the garage in the 400 block of Valentine Avenue just after 11:20 p.m. Flames had engulfed the building and were threatening a nearby structure by the time firefighters arrived.

Firefighters kept the blaze from spreading. They extinguished the flames.

No injuries were reported.

By all accounts, Samuel Stephens and Joseph McNeil were young men going places.

Hardworking and well liked, they had bright futures.

That all ended for Stephens the night of Sept. 6 when McNeil got behind the wheel drunk and slammed his four-wheel drive into Stephens’ car in the town of Pacific.

Stephens, 24 and a resident of the Graham area, died. The youth pastor at a Bonney Lake church was to be married two weeks later.

This afternoon, an emotional McNeil apologized to Stephens’ family and friends before being sentenced to two years, seven months in prison for vehicular homicide. …

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A memorial service has been scheduled to honor a youth and worship pastor who was killed Monday when a drunken driver struck his car in Pacific.

The public is invited to the service for 24-year-old Samuel Stephens. It will be held at 5 p.m. Friday at Church of All Nations, 111 112^th Street East, Tacoma.

Stephens had just taken his sister and brother-in-law home after picking them up from the airport when a drunken driver crossed into his lane and struck his car about 2 a.m. Monday.

A worship pastor for four years at EastPointe Church in Bonney Lake, Stephens …

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Two accomplices in the murder of 21-year-old Shiloh Drott in Pacific in 2008 were sentenced today but will serve no additional time in prison.

Chatri Lime Thip and Salomon Nora Phe, both 21 and from Pacific, were given credit for time served that satisfied their sentences.

Both pleaded guilty last year to rendering criminal assistance in the first degree in the killing of Drott. Their sentencing range was six to 12 months.

King County Superior Court Judge Andrea Darvas followed prosecutors’ recommendations in sentencing Thip to 12 months in jail and Phe to 60 days.

Thip fulfilled his sentence with 328 days in jail and time reduced for good behavior, said Dan Donohoe, a spokesman for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. Phe was jailed for 60 days.

Thip and Phe were sentenced today at the Regional Justice Center in Kent.

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A Kent man pleaded guilty Friday to first-degree murder in the 2008 slaying of a 21-year-old man at the Pacific Community Center in South King County.

Sopheatheara Kim, 23, changed his plea to guilty just days before jury selection was scheduled to start in his trial Monday at King County Courthouse in Seattle for the murder of Shiloh Drott.

Kim shot a handgun eight or nine times through a window into the center where 25 young people were reading Bibles, playing games and eating pizza on Nov. 14, 2008, according to charging papers. One bullet struck and killed Drott, of …

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