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David Greenberger has lived aboard his boat, the Jeanette, for more than 50 years. The boat now has extensive water damage and he currently cannot live on it. TACOMA, Wash. — For more than 50 years, fisherman David Greenberger has lived full time aboard his boat, the Jeanette. But a recent accident left the Jeanette submerged for nearly two days, causing extensive damage and leaving the 80-year-old fisherman without his home. “Well, basically, I had some misfortune,” Greenberger said. At the end of August, the boat bottomed out, tipped over and took on water. The engine room flooded, interior spaces were soaked, and electrical systems were destroyed. “Still drying out all the drawers,” he said, surveying the damage. “I knew I had a lot of work coming.” Greenberger converted the Jeanette from a fishing vessel to a liveaboard boat decades ago. He bought the boat after working on it in his younger years and has since traveled up and down the West Coast. “Oh, it’s the freedom,” he said. “You get up, there’s nobody next to you, maybe a whale.” He grew up in Ballard and has spent most of his life on boats. “I went down in the boat, starting about six, seven years old,” he said. With the Jeanette out of commission, Greenberger has been staying with friends. He said he’s spent more time in a car over the past two weeks than in the past decade. The boating community in Tacoma has since rallied around Greenberger, raising funds and offering support as he faces months of repairs.  “Obviously, the news started coming in that it had sunk,” said Dwight Anderson, a Tacoma waterfront employee who has known Greenberger for years. “What we want to do is get it up running and functional so we can at least get him back into his home.” Anderson called Greenberger a living link to the region’s fishing history: a man who embodies Seattle and Tacoma’s maritime culture. “He was up and down the whole entire western coast. So, he's made chosen families at pretty much every port,” said Lindsay O’Neal, who also works on the Tacoma waterfront. “So, a lot of people know him, and if they don't know him personally, they know the Jeanette.” O’Neal said that Greenberger is always helping others, constantly being willing to share his knowledge with people trying to catch fish. She said it’s important to get him back onto the boat he has called home for so long and added it’s even more important to let him know how much people care. “I think that’s probably the most important part, just getting his spirit back up, because he had lost everything,” said O’Neal. “It’s just so important to get him on his feet again.” Despite the devastation, Greenberger remains resilient. “I have a lot more friends than I thought,” he said with a smile. The restoration of the Jeanette will take time and resources, but Greenberger is determined to return to the water, on the Jeanette. “Just take one day at a time,” he said. “You just got to keep going forward.” A fundraising page has been set up to help cover the cost of repairs.

After taking a plea agreement, the Army soldier shared disturbing details of the assault in court. He said he and another soldier filmed the assault on Snapchat. JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. — Editor's note: Some of the details in this story may be disturbing to read. If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. Additional resources are available on the Washington State Department of Health's website. Disturbing new details about a crime committed in the barracks of Joint Base Lewis McChord were shared in a military courtroom on Wednesday. One of the four soldiers charged with sexual assault in connection to the incident detailed the crime after agreeing to a plea deal. Audio and video recordings are not allowed inside military courtrooms, but KING 5 had a crew inside for the duration of Wednesday’s hearing. Deron Gordon,20, is one of the four soldiers who have been charged in connection to a sexual assault of a college student that happened in October of 2024 in the barracks. Gordon took a plea deal where he pleaded guilty to sexual assault and sexual misconduct. As part of the plea agreement, his charges of attempted sexual assault, obstructing justice, and conspiracy to commit sexual assault were dropped. Gordon recounted the crime as he took his plea deal, admitting to what he did. He said that he and another soldier followed the college student into a bedroom after she had been drinking with them. He said she was unstable walking into the room and when they went inside she was on the bed and not responsive. Gordon said he and the other soldier each proceeded to have sex with her and they filmed each other sexually assaulting her on Snapchat. His defense team said he is not pleading guilty to committing the crime while she was unconscious, but in his own words in court Wednesday Gordon described the victim as being unresponsive, limp, and having her eyes closed. He said she appeared to be asleep. KING 5 asked military officials why Gordon was charged with sexual assault and not rape. They said this was because “Gordon committed sexual acts against the victim while she was incapable of consenting due to voluntary alcohol intoxication.” They said that rape is defined as “a sexual act accomplished by applying unlawful force, threatening serious violence, rendering the victim unconscious, or impairing the victim through the forceful or unknowing ingestion of a drug, intoxicant, or other substance.” The other three soldiers’ court proceedings are at different points in the legal process, as they are all being treated as separate cases. Gordon is expected to be sentenced on Thursday. According to his plea agreement he faces four to eight years in prison. Without that plea agreement he would have faces up to 42 years in confinement for the charges he pleaded guilty to.

Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank posted Monday asking if it is time to "ban trans people from owning guns." TACOMA, Wash. — Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank took to social media Monday, posting on X and asking his followers: “Do you think it’s time to ban trans people from owning guns?” The post garnered significant reaction online. Swank later said the post was intended to provoke discussion. “Speech is offensive—that’s what it’s about. That’s why we have freedom of speech,” Swank said in an interview with KING 5. “I wanted to see what the people on the left would say,” he added. “People who say we should ban firearms—what are they going to say if I ask them a question about that?” Swank told KING 5 that he believes transgender people have mental health problems. However, he said he does not believe all transgender individuals should be banned from owning guns. “I didn’t put it out to be a threat to anybody’s right to own a gun,” he said. “The fact of the matter is, there are people out there who say that we should ban all guns. So I’m putting it out there—if we do, who should we ban them from?” According to a 2023 report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, transgender individuals accounted for less than 2% of mass attacks between 2016 and 2020. More than 95% were carried out by cisgender men. “Is it time for all cisgender white men to have their rights taken away? Because they are notoriously the ones committing the mass shootings and crimes,” said Joanne Levy, director of operations for Rainbow Center in Tacoma. Rainbow Center is a nonprofit that serves and advocates for LGBTQ+ individuals in Tacoma and Pierce County. Levy said it is important for people in leadership positions to speak responsibly and avoid causing harm to the communities they serve, including transgender people. “We believe very strongly that trans rights are human rights,” Levy said. “We deserve complete equity and equality across the board and should not be demonized or othered because of one human being who commits a crime.” Swank said he supports free speech—even when directed at him. “I worked in Seattle for 33 years. I worked hundreds and hundreds of protests,” he said. “I probably didn’t agree with very many of those people at all, but I always made sure they had the right to voice their opinion.”