Police beat: A car prowler named Frankenstein, a sibling fight and a fighting couple

Editors note: Compiled from reports to Tacoma police.

Nov. 21: Frankenstein needed a car battery and carried a crowbar to aid his search. The people in the parking lot were not amused.

The dispatch call reported a man smashing cars with a crowbar. Multiple witnesses had called 911.

Officers drove to an address in the 8700 block of South Hosmer Street and a found a short man sitting on a curb who matched the description given in the reports. Several people stood around him.

One of them spoke to the officers. She said she saw the man break into a car that belonged to visiting friends. The man had broken the left rear window of the car and clambered inside.

The woman said she confronted the man, asked what he was doing and told him to get out of the car.

The man refused, she said, and said he needed a battery for his own car, which was broken down.

Officers spoke to the man and asked for his name. “Frankenstein,” he replied, and refused to answer any questions. He carried no identification. Officers pegged his age at around 25. He had a “666” tattoo under one eye and another of praying hands on his neck.

Officers booked the man into the Pierce County Jail as a John Doe, on suspicion of vehicle prowling and obstructing a law enforcement officer.

Nov. 20: Told to leave the house, the sister spat in her brother’s eye. It didn’t change the outcome.

Officers responded to a reported domestic assault in the 5200 block of South M Street. They spoke to the brother, who was 18. He said he came home to find his sister on the porch.

The sister, 29, was estranged. The family didn’t want her at the house. The brother knew it, and said so, telling her she needed to go.

That started an argument, the brother said. As the siblings shouted, the sister spat in her brother’s face. He told her he was calling police and went inside to wash his face.

The sister wasn’t around when officers arrived. They gave the brother a domestic violence guide and a card with a case number and left.

A few moments later, a dispatch call reported that the sister was back. Officers returned to the address. They found the sister sitting on the porch. She started crying when she saw them.

She said people were after her, trying to kill her.

Who? She couldn’t name them.

What had happened today?

The sister said she came to the house to pick up clothes and take them to a laundromat. She came back because she had nowhere else to go, she said.

Had she spoken to her brother?

Her brother was a liar, the sister said. They had argued, nothing more. She was trying to get into the house to get away from the people who were trying to kill her.

Officers made a judgment call and decided to arrest the woman. She rambled, saying her child’s father was trying to record her secretly and set her up.

Did she have any weapons?

Maybe razors in her shoes, the woman said. The people trying to set her up might have put them there.

Officers checked the woman’s shoes and found no razors. They booked her into the Pierce County Jail on suspicion of misdemeanor assault.

Nov. 19: The dispatch call reported a domestic dispute. The woman said her husband might have broken her arm.

Officers drove to the 400 block of Sixth Avenue and spoke to the woman, 26. She seemed calm. One officer interviewed her; the other spoke to her husband, 28. The couple’s two children, ages 1 and 2, toddled around the apartment.

Asked for information, the woman said: “Nothing happened;” and “We are just having marital issues. It’s fine.”

All the while, she rubbed her arm, as if trying to be careful with it.

The story dragged out slowly. The woman said she and her husband were arguing. She threw a TV remote at him. He blocked it with a book. She went into the bedroom. He followed and punched her in the arm and the stomach.

The woman insisted she provoked her husband. She stopped answering questions and rubbed her arm.

Did she need medical aid?

No, the woman said. Her arm hurt, but she didn’t think it was broken.

The husband was shirtless and uninjured. He wouldn’t answer questions.

Officers made a call and decided to arrest the man. The woman raised her voice — she said she called 911 for “mediation,” not to force an arrest.

The husband was in the military. Moments after the officers made their decision, the man’s commanding officer arrived at the apartment. Officers explained the situation.

The commander said he had been to the apartment two weeks earlier, attempting to defuse an argument about the woman’s alleged infidelity. The commander didn’t know whether that incident had been physical.

Officers booked the man into the Pierce County Jail on suspicion of misdemeanor assault.

This story was originally published November 26, 2016 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Police beat: A car prowler named Frankenstein, a sibling fight and a fighting couple."