Police Beat: Spiritual possession, a driver without a clue and a mystery man
Editor’s note: Compiled from reports to Tacoma police and the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department.
July 25: Sheriff’s deputies hear all sorts of explanations for unusual behavior. Typically, they don’t involve spiritual possession.
The dispatch call reported domestic violence. Three deputies drove to the 1000 block of 73rd Street East, near Midland.
They found a man, 63, holding his wife on the ground with help from the woman’s stepdaughter. The woman on the ground was screaming in a language the deputies couldn’t identify.
The deputies took charge and cuffed the woman. She twisted her body and screamed, “Release!” over and over, trying to bury her face in the ground.
Deputies rolled her on her side. The woman started biting her shirt. Again, the words she shouted were unintelligible. The deputies called for medical aid.
The man said his wife had been “acting unusual again.” She took his phone and hit him with it, he said, knocked decorative drums off the walls and threw items around the living room. The woman had also tried to hurt her stepdaughter’s child.
Was this typical?
No, the man said. The couple had been married for 13 years. Usually his wife was calm, reserved and shy. This strange behavior was recent, he said.
It started a day earlier, when the woman stripped off her clothes and ran down the street. She had been involuntarily committed at a nearby hospital, and released to her husband’s care shortly afterward.
Had she been diagnosed with any mental disorders?
No, the man said.
What about alcohol or drugs?
The man said his wife didn’t drink or use drugs. Then he told a story.
Recently he’d participated in a “Sun Dance,” a ritual practiced in Native American cultures. The ceremony included dancing and piercing. The man said he had taken part in the ceremony for more than 20 years. His wife had seen it for the first time two days earlier.
The man believed a spirit had entered his wife’s body, and needed to be released. He had spoken to someone in Oregon who could come up and handle the task, but it couldn’t be done in a hospital.
A medical aid team had arrived. The deputy told the crew the woman would be involuntarily committed on a mental-health hold; she was a danger to herself and others. She was taken to a nearby hospital.
July 23: Pop quiz — your driver’s license is suspended, you’re not supposed to get behind the wheel without an ignition interlock and you don’t have insurance. What do you do?
A: Don’t drive. Take the bus if needed.
B: Get behind the wheel, head for the highway and read from your cell phone as you accelerate.
The 30-year-old Tacoma man chose option B. An officer on patrol spotted him driving a gray, 2007 BMW X5, cruising toward eastbound state Route 16.
At 9:48 p.m., it was easy enough to see the glow of the driver’s phone, held at eye level in one hand. The officer pulled the car over.
Told why he’d been stopped, the man said, “I know, I know.”
Asked for insurance, the man said he didn’t have any. A quick records check revealed his suspended license and the interlock requirement. The officer arrested the man and booked him into the Pierce County Jail. The man’s girlfriend picked up the BMW.
July 22: The mystery man insisted he hadn’t been driving, no matter what the deputy said. The argument didn’t count for much.
The deputy spotted the man near Frederickson shortly after 1 a.m. He was driving a green, 1999 Ford Expedition with a screwed-up front license plate. One corner was bent, obscuring the first letter.
Seeing the SUV drive past, the deputy turned around and tried to catch a glimpse of the rear plate, but the driver accelerated, disappearing briefly.
The deputy found the Expedition about a block away, parked a in a driveway. The lights were off, but the motor was running. The driver’s seat was empty.
The deputy sent an alert to dispatchers and approached the SUV on foot. He spotted the driver crouched in the passenger seat, and ordered him out at gunpoint.
The man came out with his hands up. With a thick accent, he said he wasn’t driving.
The deputy said he’d seen the man driving. The man said someone else had been driving, bailed out of the SUV and left. The deputy saw no one around. He said again that he’d seen the man driving. The man denied it repeatedly.
The deputy cuffed the man, who repeated his plea, over and over.
Asked for his name and identification, the man replied with a blank stare, and repeated that he hadn’t been driving and didn’t understand.
The deputy called a tow truck. The man appeared to understand that. He showed the deputy where to find identification in the Expedition: a resident alien identification card and a Social Security card.
The deputy ran the name on the card through various records checks, and got an empty set. The name didn’t appear anywhere. The Social Security card yielded no hits, either. The deputy pegged it as a forgery.
The man insisted the name on the identification card was real. He said again that he hadn’t been driving. First he said it was a woman driving, then a man.
The SUV was registered to a woman’s name, but the deputy couldn’t find a phone number The man was carrying a cell phone. The deputy asked him to unlock it so he could review the text messages that appeared to be coming in nonstop.
The man said the phone wasn’t his, and he couldn’t unlock it.
The deputy booked the man into the Pierce County Jail, still uncertain of his identity.
This story was originally published July 28, 2018 at 2:00 PM.