Police beat: Road-rage arrest, scam and a slip of the tongue
SEAN ROBINSON
Editor’s note: Compiled from reports to Tacoma police.
June 16: The golfers wanted grub. The cook wanted to close early. He took a licking.
About 6:30 p.m., the trio of hackers – two men and one woman – finished a round at the Meadow Park Golf Course and headed to the clubhouse grill for a bite.
The cook, a 61-year-old Tacoma man, was trying to close. The day had been slow – but he was supposed to stay open until 7 p.m.
The cook turned the golfers away. They were unhappy. They complained to the manager of the pro shop, a 61-year-old man from University Place.
The manager walked to the grill and called out the cook. Why was he refusing service to paying customers?
The cook objected. An argument started. Soon, the two men bumped faces. Their noses touched.
The manager stuck out his tongue and licked the cook’s nose. The cook took a swing. The police report gives slightly different accounts of the swing. It was a slap or a punch. Either way, it landed on the manager’s face.
The manager took a swing. On this point, the report is clearer. It was a straight punch to the cook’s mouth. He went down with a split lip.
The golfers told two police officers the cook was the aggressor. The cook said the manager started it. The manager said the cook started it. Stuck with conflicting accounts, officers gave both men cards with case numbers, and made no arrests.
June 11: It was a road-rage sideswipe, a hit-and-run that ended with an arrest.
Two Tacoma men, a 31-year-old driver and 32-year-old passenger, were headed home about 9:30 p.m. in a 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser.
They slid from I-705 to South 38th Street, headed for Pacific Avenue. Reaching the intersection, the driver noticed something behind him: a white Scion, riding his bumper. The Scion’s driver revved its engine at the red light. The driver, a 36-year-old man in black shorts and a T-shirt, got out and yelled at the two men. Before the light changed, the angry driver got back in his car.
The Toyota’s driver moved forward with the green light, the Scion still riding the bumper. The Scion swerved right, into the curb lane, and pulled up next to the Toyota.
The Scion swerved again, sideways, into the passenger side of the Toyota, then sped away. The men in the Toyota weren’t sure where it went. Shaken, they called police.
“Why did the vehicle hit you?” an officer asked.
“We don’t know,” the driver said. “I wasn’t speeding. I didn’t cut anyone off. We didn’t see him until I was getting into the turn lane.”
The Toyota driver said he could identify the man who hit him if he saw him again.
The description of the Scion and its driver crackled over the dispatch system. A few minutes later, two officers spotted it in the 5200 block of A Street. Three people, a man and two women, were washing it, but the damage to the car was still visible.
Officers asked them why they were washing the car. They said it had to be clean for work the next day.
Officers asked where the driver was. Inside, the car-washers said. The man came out. He wore a black T-shirt.
Officers brought the driver of the Toyota to the scene. He looked at the man in the black shirt.
“Yep, that’s him,” the victim said. “He changed his shirt.”
The car-washers said the man came home upset, saying someone had cut him off.
The man was arrested and booked into the Pierce County Jail on suspicion of first-degree assault. Officers tried to ask him questions, but he wouldn’t talk.
June 18: Before you give someone $150,000, it might be wise to get a name.
The 59-year-old Tacoma woman didn’t do that. She called police to report a fraud.
Since October, she said, she’d received periodic emails saying she’d won the lottery: $140 million. All she had to do to pick up her winnings was pay the taxes.
The emails led to several face-to-face meetings at Porter Way and Pacific Highway in Fife. The woman always arrived first. The man always came second. He drove a black SUV with tinted windows. He was about 40, the woman recalled. Maybe 5-feet-10, 170 pounds. That was all she knew. No name, no ID, nothing else.
She gave him money. He said she needed more to cover the taxes. She would agree to meet again. This happened three or four times, the woman said. She wound up giving the man $150,000 in cash all told, she said. After the last meeting, she said she was tapped out. The man said the lottery check would come in the mail.
“I asked why she believed the suspect and why she gave him this amount of money,” the report states. “She said that he knew her name, was very excited for her and seemed sincere.”
Which lottery was it, the officer asked. The woman didn’t know.
Did she play the lottery?
No, the woman said. She provided a copy of her financial records and a handwritten statement. The officer filed a report.
253-597-8486
sean.robinson@thenewstribune.com
