Stephanie Rodea, whose husband died in a six-car crash on the Bend Parkway in the fall, can’t believe that no one is responsible.

Until Monday, as she waited for authorities to decide if there was enough evidence to charge someone in connection with the Nov. 19 crash, the death of her husband was one of nine active homicide investigations in Deschutes County. But in a meeting with District Attorney John Hummel on Monday afternoon, Rodea was told that no one would be charged with the death of Christopher Rodea, who was 37 when a pickup truck slammed into his Ford van.

Instead, traffic citations would be issued, Hummel told The Bulletin.

“There’s no way everyone was doing what they were supposed to,” Stephanie Rodea said. “I could say, I can’t believe somebody could do this and get away with it. But then I’m just like, who cares if they get criminal charges? What is the point? It doesn’t change anything.”

Homicide cases have been taking longer to resolve in Central Oregon, in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It adds to the grieving process,” Rodea said. “You want to close as many doors as you can and instead it just lingers.”

But Hummel also cites a backlog of cases at the state crime lab, explosive population growth in Deschutes County and a shortage of local judges.

“It’s not necessarily that more homicides are occurring now, it’s that the longer each one takes to resolve, the more you’ll have pending at any one time,” Hummel said.

Nine is a high number for Deschutes County, with an estimated population of nearly 200,000, but it’s not the high point of Hummel’s nearly eight-year tenure. At one point in 2019, his office was pursuing 11 homicide cases. A majority of homicides in Deschutes County over the last six years have been vehicular homicides, according to the district attorney’s office.

The oldest of the 16 active homicide cases in Jefferson and Deschutes counties dates to 2018. There are none in Crook County. They include elements of alleged mental illness, random violence, score-settling, hit-and-run and domestic violence.

• Gavin David Smith-Brown, 32, is suspected of killing his mother, Gayla Smith, 65, in her Crooked River Ranch home in June 2018. He allegedly stole her Subaru and drove to the Portland area, where he was in a two-hour standoff with police. He has been sent several times to the state mental hospital in Salem for evaluation. His next status check is scheduled for May.

• On July 28, 2019, a man walking his dog in the heavily forested Wake Butte area about 6 miles west of Sunriver discovered the badly decomposed remains of Curtis Frederick Pagel, 48. Pagel had no known address. Detectives with the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office believe foul play was involved in Pagel’s death.

• In May, the body of Byron Joseph Hilands, 33, was found in an unplugged refrigerator on land Hilands owned on SW Culver Highway in Jefferson County. One month later, police arrested his girlfriend, Charina Jeanette Owen, who had a history of domestic violence against him. Owen, 37, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, abuse of a corpse and other charges. In January, she was charged for allegedly making “pruno,” or alcohol in her jail cell.

• Madras Police officers believe that brothers Jakobi Washington, 18, and Josiah Washington, 20, were in an extended dispute with Madras man Jonathan Bonfield, 18, that culminated in Bonfield’s death July 1 by a gunshot to the chest. The pair was arrested at their mother’s home in Madras after police say they provided statements that were inconsistent with evidence from their cellphone histories. A .38-caliber handgun was taken as evidence. The brothers and co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and a jury trial is scheduled for September.

• Anthony Rubaldino Vasquez, 20, is accused of being high on marijuana on Nov. 20 when he struck pedestrian Leroy Eugene Hall, 90 crossing NW Sixth Street in Redmond. Vasquez has pleaded not guilty to criminally negligent homicide and other charges and is scheduled to enter a plea April 27.

• Police believe Jenna Rae Campbell, 21, shot and killed Doretta Adaline Smith, aka Sammons, 42, on Dec. 16 at Smith’s home in Madras. Campbell, of Prineville, was arrested following an alleged run from the law that included home invasion, gunfire and attempted carjacking. A grand jury charged Campbell under three theories of homicide: first-degree manslaughter, second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. She’s pleaded not guilty and has a pretrial hearing scheduled later this month.

• Randall Richard Kilby, 35, was arrested last month in connection with three murders in southwest Bend. He’s accused of killing Bend woman Daphne Anne Banks, who died Jan. 10, and brothers in law Jeffrey Allen Taylor and Benjamin Harlin Taylor, whose bodies were discovered March 21. Last week, the home in Romaine Village where the alleged killings took place mysteriously burned.

The homicide total also includes the unsolved double homicide of Ray Atkinson Jr. and Natasha “Tasha” Newby, whose bodies were found in a Bend home Aug. 15.

Stephanie Rodea said she was hurt that no one from the police or district attorney’s office reached out to her since her husband’s death.

“It’s hard to say what I want in the end. I don’t know if anything is going to make it better,” she said. “I feel like I’m only 34, and I have a life sentence of heartache. It doesn’t matter how good or bad my life goes, I’m always going to think about what could have been and what should have been.”

Christopher Rodea, an electrician, lost his own father at age 15. His widow thinks it helped make him into the person he was: patient and kind, unbothered by life’s little frustrations.

When people would ask Stephanie Rodea why she had so many children, she would always point to her husband.

“I’d tell them, I have such an amazing partner,” she said. “I would never have had four if he wasn’t so hands-on.”

The district attorney’s decision Monday was a lot for Rodea to take in emotionally, she said. It left her lonely and thinking about Tuesday, when her husband would have celebrated his 38th birthday.