He helped a friend find a vehicle thief. The thief almost stole his car, too, charges say
A good friend helps you report a stolen vehicle.
Perhaps a better friend joins you on a vigilante quest to track down the suspect — almost losing his own vehicle to the same thief in the process.
Police wish he wouldn’t have, but he did.
Court records give this account:
Fife police officers responded Monday to a 911 call that two men were in an altercation with someone who had stolen a vehicle.
Dispatchers heard sounds of fighting in the background of the call from the 5000 block of Pacific Highway East.
Police arrived and spoke to the 911 callers, at which point the suspects had already fled the scene.
One man told police that his friend’s car had been stolen the day before in Federal Way, and that the friend had identified the suspect “and a cream-colored Jaguar associated with the theft,” the declaration for determination of probable cause says.
The man drove his Honda around with the friend looking for the vehicle Monday.
They saw the Jaguar near the scene of the theft, and the friend recognized the driver as the suspect.
The pair tailed the Jaguar to Fife, hopped out of the running Honda and confronted the suspected thief.
That’s when the suspect got out of the Jaguar, ran over to the Honda and got behind the wheel.
The Honda owner quickly jumped into the passenger seat and scuffled with the suspect, trying to keep him from stealing the Honda.
The suspect grabbed the wheel and tried to shift the Honda into gear.
“The defendant then began punching the victim in the right side of the neck while trying to get away from him,” the probable cause statement says.
Then the suspect gave up trying to steal the Honda. Instead, he grabbed the man’s wallet from the center console and fled back to the Jaguar.
A woman was behind the wheel, and she almost ran over the Honda owner and his friend as she and the suspect drove off.
“The victim and his friend said that they do not know the defendant and had never seen him before yesterday,” the probable cause statement says.
Police chastised them for how they handled the situation and said they should have called police first.
Officers found the Jaguar and spoke with the suspect. The 27-year-old told police he took the wallet to use in filing a police report because the victim attacked him.
Prosecutors charged the 27-year-old with second-degree robbery.
He was expected to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon.
