Editor’s note: Compiled from reports to Tacoma police.
March 20, 12:32 a.m. The drunk discovered a new way to screw himself. He headbutted a patrol car window and shattered it.He was 28. He’d been kicked out of O’Malley’s, a pub on Sixth Avenue. He’d walked in, already toasted, and started hitting on a pair of women.
One of the kitchen staffers doubled as a security guard, and told the drunk to lay off. The drunk said something hostile and spat twice on the guard, who “escorted him to the ground” and out the door, the police report states.
The drunk spat again. Outside, he shouted threats. Staffers called 911, but a patrol car rolled by at the same moment. The bartender flagged it down and pointed to the drunk, who ran.
The car followed. The drunk trapped himself near a 6-foot fence. An officer cuffed him. The drunk said he’d done nothing wrong. He said he ran because he feared a fight would break out.
His mood fell. Within 10 seconds, as he walked toward the patrol car and got in, he started crying, saying he wanted to get his life together. A second car and another officer arrived.
The pub staffers weren't interested in pressing charges. They just wanted the guy "trespassed" – banned from coming back.
The first officer returned to the car. The drunk was happy now, talking loudly, laughing at himself. The officer told him he wouldn’t be arrested – just “trespassed.” The drunk said he lived in Steilacoom. The second officer, newly arrived, offered to drive him home.
The drunk got out of the first car. The first officer uncuffed him.
The drunk abruptly slammed his head into the rear window, cracking it to pieces. The second officer cuffed him all over again and took him to St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma. Hospital staff stitched the bridge of his nose. They couldn’t do much about the lump on his head. He was booked into the Pierce County Jail on suspicion of malicious mischief.
March 6
At first, Mom was too embarrassed to admit it. Her sons convinced her to explain.
For more than a year, she’d been sending money to a man in Jamaica, who kept calling to say she’d won a prize.
Mom was 81. A year earlier, a man calling himself “John” had called to tell her she won a big prize from Publishers Clearing House. She just had to wire $2,400 to “get in the system.”
At first, Mom didn’t buy it. She told John no, but he kept calling. Once John called and Mom’s son, 50, answered the phone. Son told John to stop calling.
John kept calling, almost every day. He talked to Mom like a friend. Slowly, her resistance ebbed. John told her to wire cash advances to Jamaica. She sent them, sometimes twice a month, anything from $500 to $1,500. Once, she sent $9,000.
John was sneaky. He told Mom to mail him the receipts. She did, not realizing she was erasing the paper trail.
She’d sent one more payment on March 5. Her sons found out and put a stop to it. The total loss: $50,000.
She told officers she was embarrassed at having been so stupid. Officers filed the report under fraud.
March 19, 5 a.m.: Someone wanted to play with life-size dolls.
The display window of the lingerie store in the 7000 block of Tacoma Mall Boulevard was shattered. The alarm blared.
It was a brisk morning. “The weather was very cold and the streets were damp with semi-frozen dew,” the police report states. Two fresh sets of tire tracks, coming and going, marked a mysterious trail.
The manager said she’d closed the night before, just before 9 p.m. She’d set up a new display: two mannequins with new nightgowns.
The mannequins were gone, along with the nightgowns. Only a fake hand remained.
The store had a video camera in front. Officers filed a vandalism report and picked up the footage a few days later for further study.
Sean Robinson: 253-597-8486
sean.robinson@thenewstribune.com
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