Editor’s note: Compiled from reports to Tacoma Police.
Jan. 16: The Tacoma man carried brass knuckles in his pocket and hash in his ears. He was 21.
Shortly after 3 a.m., he drove a white Pontiac in the 3600 block of Center Street. The tabs were expired. An officer noticed.
Running the plate revealed more hits. The kid had an active warrant out of Lakewood, stemming from an earlier citation for disorderly conduct.
The officer cuffed him, frisked him and found the brass knuckles, wrapped with black shoelaces to cushion the palm.
Why did he have this? The kid said he’d been at a bar and a female server was flirting with him, but another guy got upset — and then it was OK, the other guy gave him the brass knuckles.
The officer said that sounded odd; why would a guy who was upset give the kid a weapon? The kid said that was what happened. The officer arrested him on the warrant and booked him into the Pierce County Jail.
During booking, more stuff turned up in the kid’s pockets. He had a designer plastic bag, branded with “4:20” labels. Inside was a single pill that turned out to be Oxycodone.
The kid said it was Percocet and that he had a prescription for it. The officer said people with prescriptions didn’t carry their medicine that way. The kid said they did if they had only one pill with them.
The kid had gauged ears that stretched his lobes. Small black tubes filled the gauge holes. They were hollow and stuffed with hashish. The kid said he was a medical marijuana user.
Jan. 16: The 62-year-old Tacoma man said someone was squeezing him for money.
The calls came from a collection agency called OES-CCA, according to the police report. The agent on the phone told the man he owed $712 for a modem. The man hadn’t ordered one.
He called the company that supposedly sold the modem; a representative said the company didn’t do business with that collection agency.
The man called the collection agency back, asked for the first person he’d spoken to, and got a different voice on the line. The voice repeated the amount owed, and gave an address in Massachusetts.
An officer taking the police report ran a background check on the company and found numerous complaints by other people saying they’d been scammed the same way. The officer called the Tacoma man, explained the circumstances and filed a report.
Jan. 16: The 43-year-old Tacoma man said he’d been robbed, but his story made little sense.
An officer found the man in the parking lot of a grocery store in the 700 block of South 56th Street, shortly after 9 p.m. The man said a 21-year-old woman had approached him in the parking lot, shoved him out of his car and driven away with it.
The officer looked at the empty parking space and noticed surveillance cameras that didn’t point to this particular spot.
Did the man know the thief? He said he did. He’d met her before. He saw her at the store. She demanded a ride to pick up some clothes. The man refused and the woman got angry, shoved him out of the car and drove away with it.
The story was getting more elaborate. The officer asked the man to tell it again. Was the woman a prostitute?
The man said he didn’t know. This time he said he’d picked her up on Pacific Avenue and driven to the grocery store. Why had he picked her up? The man said he just knew her. She wanted a ride to pick up her clothes, but wanted to stop at Safeway first. She asked to borrow the car while the man shopped, but he refused. She got mad, pushed him out of the car and drove away with it.
The officer tried again. He said filing a false police report was a crime. The man admitted the woman was a prostitute and he’d picked her up before. He still said she’d pushed him out of the car and driven away with it. The officer filed a report.
Jan. 16: The call came in as a man with a mysterious gunshot wound. It was shortly after 4 a.m.
The man was 20. He was sitting in the emergency room at St. Joseph Medical Center with his mother when officers arrived.
Hospital staffers said the man wouldn’t say how he’d been shot or where. Officers spoke to the man. He said he left his house to see a girl who lived near the hospital; the man didn’t give an address.
He said he walked up to the door and knocked. The door opened and a man he didn’t know stepped out with a gun. The kid said he couldn’t see the man’s face.
The man pistol-whipped the kid, slammed him in the mouth and knocked the kid down.
The man with the gun told the kid to take his shoes off. He stood over him, asking several times, “What do you have?” The man raised the gun. The kid covered his face. The gun went off. The man asked, “Are you shot?”
The kid didn’t think so. “No,” he said. The man pushed him back onto the porch. The kid didn’t know what the man did after that.
The kid rose and felt a stinging pain in his shoulder. He saw a hole in his sleeve. He ran home and told his mother to take him to the hospital.
The kid had a hole in his left bicep. The bullet had ripped through it without hitting bone, leaving an exit wound in the back of the arm. His upper and lower lips were swollen and bleeding, and some of his front teeth were missing. A hospital staffer told the officer the kid had a broken mandible.
The kid’s mother said she didn’t know what had happened; she’d thought her son was home, until he flashed into the house at 4 a.m. and told her to go to the hospital. The officer filed a report and collected the kid’s blood clothing for evidence purposes.
Sean Robinson: 253-597-8486
sean.robinson@thenewstribune.com
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