Man tells Pierce County deputies he ran over police car in stolen truck after 5-day meth binge
PUYALLUP, Wash. – A man driving a stolen truck who rammed into a police vehicle and several other cars while trying to escape arrest in South Hill told Pierce County sheriff’s deputies Sunday he hadn’t slept for five days because he was high on meth.
The 26-year-old man was booked into Pierce County Jail on two warrants and suspicion of 18 different charges. Q13 News usually doesn’t name suspects if they haven’t been officially charged.
According the Pierce County sheriff’s department, it started when somebody reported that a suspicious truck had been parked and running for three hours outside their apartment building:
Deputies got to the apartment complex in the 14100 block of Meridian E. a little after 9 a.m., and found the gold Toyota Tundra with heavily tinted windows running with its lights on. A deputy knocked on the window, and said the driver grabbed at the shifter just as a dispatcher radioed to say the license plates were stolen.
The deputy drew his gun and told the driver to get out right about the same time another deputy pulled into the parking lot.
The driver hit the gas and ended up driving all the way over the second deputy’s car – with the deputy still in it – before ramming his way through four parked cars and heading for the exit.
The first deputy gave chase, and witnesses said the man had bailed out of the truck and ran off down the fence line. The deputy chased the suspect on foot and eventually took him down and arrested, although it took some help from the second deputy.
They searched the man and the truck, finding knives, mail with other people’s name on it, some bags of tools and a hypodermic needle.
The man told deputies the reason he ran away was “he got scared because he woke up to a cop standing outside of his window.” He said it was exacerbated by the fact he’d been up for five days using meth, and that he’d used heroin to go to sleep about an hour before the deputies showed up.
The truck had been stolen from somebody in Tacoma in June, and the ignition had been rewired.
The man told the deputies he’d swallowed a bag with eight grams of cocaine in it just before they showed up, but nothing turned up when they took him to the hospital to have his stomach pumped.
The man was booked into jail for Assault in the 1st degree, Possession of a Stolen Vehicle, Possession of Stolen Property, four counts of Malicious Mischief, Possession of Stolen Mail, Felony Eluding, Resisting Arrest, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, Operating a Motor Vehicle without an Ignition Interlock Device, Hit & Run Attended Vehicle, four counts of Hit & Run Unattended Vehicle, Driving With License Suspended, and active warrants for Possession of Stolen Property – Dangerous Weapons and DUI.