Burglary suspects claiming to be with DEA shot up a Pierce County trailer, charges allege
Two burglary suspects who claimed to be with the Drug Enforcement Agency shot up a Pierce County trailer this week, court records allege.
Charging papers give this account of what happened:
Sheriff’s deputies got a report of shots fired Monday in the 11000 block of 50th Avenue East.
A man whose hands were zip-tied waved down the first to arrive.
He said several suspects fired semiautomatic weapons into a trailer on the property and had driven off.
Deputies on their way to the scene stopped a suspect vehicle with three people inside.
They found zip ties, a night-vision camera, a handgun and binoculars.
The 42-year-old driver said he didn’t know about a fight or robbery.
He and one of the passengers, a 36-year-old man, were charged with two counts of first-degree assault and one count of first-degree burglary.
They pleaded not guilty at arraignment Thursday and were ordered held in lieu of $500,000 bail.
Back at the property investigators found bolt cutters and a pry bar by the front gate.
The zip-tied man told a deputy that he and someone else had been sleeping by a fire when two men who said they were with the DEA showed up with flashlights and tied them up.
The deputy saw scratches on the man’s neck, which he said were from being hit in the neck with the butt of a rifle.
There had also been two people in a trailer on the property at the time, he said, and the suspects yelled for them to come out with their hands up. They yelled that “the cops are here,” and called one person inside the trailer by their name.
The suspects fired shots into the trailer when they didn’t come out.
Deputies who investigated the trailer smelled gunpowder, found bullet holes, and saw glass falling from the windows.
Two people came out and said they’d been sleeping in the trailer the shots were fired into it.
A deputy found what appeared to be meth pipes in the kitchen and a safe on the bed.
“One of the deputies was familiar with the location from numerous neighborhood complaints regarding suspicious activity on the property, to include a complaint that ‘non stop vehicles’ were coming and going from the property,” the declaration for determination of probable cause said. “Other people had complained about alleged theft of power from the power lines, and suspected drug activity.”
