Charges: Man pointed gun at neighbor, child, woman with walker during Puyallup fight
A man allegedly pointed a gun at a neighbor, the neighbor’s child, and a woman who was using a walker after an argument escalated to a fight in Puyallup, according to court records.
Prosecutors charged the 21-year-old with three counts of second-degree assault. He pleaded not guilty at arraignment, and bail was set at $50,000.
Charging papers give this account of what happened:
Police responded to the fight Monday on Fifth Street Northeast.
Someone who had scrapes on his arms and legs told police he’d been jumped. He said a neighbor thought he’d been speaking negatively about them, and that they’d gotten into an argument. He said the neighbor and his juvenile brother tackled him. When he got up, the 21-year-old, who’d been working on a vehicle with the neighbor, was pointing a gun at him.
He said the suspect also pointed the gun at his 12-year-old daughter, which the suspect denied.
The 21-year-old allegedly said the victim was on top of the neighbor’s juvenile brother, punching him in the back of the head during the fight. The younger brother denied that.
The suspect told investigators that at one point the victim’s stepmother “began walking towards him ‘aggressively’ while holding a broom handle like a baseball bat in an upward position, so fearing for his safety, he pointed his gun at her and told her to back up or he would shoot her,” the declaration for determination of probable cause said.
Video from a nearby residence cut in and out, but showed the 56-year-old stand up from the seat of her walker and try to hold back the victim.
“An officer asked him (the suspect) how he, as a 21 year old man, was fearful of an elderly woman with health issues,” the probable cause statement said. “The officer asked him why he didn’t just back up given that she had been sitting in a walker. The defendant replied that if a ‘100 year old lady was armed with a weapon, then police would either shoot or tase her.’”
The woman wrote a statement that said a man pointed a gun at her face and profanely told her to back up.
“She was very distraught during the incident and visibly upset,” the probable cause statement said.
The gun didn’t have a serial number, investigators found, because the suspect built it custom in another state.
