On Friday, June 18th, the Springfield Police Department received a report that 34 year old Laura Johnson of Springfield was missing. It was reported that Ms. Johnson had left her place of employment for her lunch break at 12:30pm, which was later observed on video surveillance by the Springfield Police Department.
However, Ms. Johnson had picked up her lunch and returned to her original parking spot, which not realized until further investigation. There, she was contacted by a man with a gun making Ms. Johnson leave her place of work before she could return from her lunch break. It was later that Ms. Johnson’s employer verified that she had not returned to work from her lunch break Friday afternoon.
On Sunday, June 20th, the Springfield Police Department reported that 34 year old Laura Johnson of Springfield had been “located and was safe”.
The North Bend Police Department also reported that just after 6:00am Sunday morning June 20th, that they had been contacted by the Milwaukee Police Department, and that 30 year old Oen Evan Nicholson had been arrested after he had turned himself in.
The armed suspect that had kidnapped Ms. Johnson was indeed Oen Nicholson, the suspect in the recent triple homicide case that began at the Mill Casino in North Bend Friday morning with a series of events that began at about 10:00am Friday morning when two people were struck by a pickup truck at an RV park at the Mill Casino. One person was killed, and the other person was left in critical condition.
Moments later the Police received reports of gunshots at Herbal Choices cannabis shop in North Bend where one person, reportedly an employee at the cannabis shop, was killed. After the shooting at the cannabis shop, the Coos County District Attorney said the suspect went to a nearby Big 5 sporting goods store and bought more ammunition.
Shortly after 12:00pm Friday afternoon, the Oregon State Police and Lane County Sheriff’s Office responded to the report of a vehicle crash on Hwy. 126 between Florence and Eugene. The driver of the involved vehicle, a white Dodge pick-up believed to be linked to the homicides that occurred in the North Bend area earlier in the day, was no longer on the scene when authorities arrived and witness told investigators the person driving the truck at the time of the crash ran into the woods and appeared to be armed with a handgun.
How Nicholson traveled from the vehicle crash location near Noti on Hwy. 126 to Springfield where Ms. Johnson was abducted has not been released at this time.
After confronting Ms. Johnson at gunpoint in her vehicle on her lunch break, Nicholson reportedly forced Ms. Johnson to drive him north from her workplace parking lot Friday afternoon, continuing for over 30 hours all the way to Milwaukee, where the suspect turned himself into authorities in Wisconsin and was arrested without incident.
34 year old Laura Johnson is safe and unharmed and returning back to Oregon.
Nicholson is being held in Wisconsin on fugitive warrants from Oregon, and formal charges for this case have been filed.
