Man shot after driving stolen SUV at Pierce County political candidate has been sentenced
A 41-year-old man who was shot after driving a stolen SUV at a former Pierce County Council candidate in 2022 outside a Tacoma homeless encampment has been sentenced to prison.
Scott Ryan Stacy pleaded guilty Jan. 17 in Superior Court to felony unlawful possession of a stolen vehicle and reckless endangerment. Judge Edmund Murphy sentenced him to three years, seven months for the stolen vehicle charge, and Stacy received a suspended sentence on his second count, a misdemeanor.
Stacy originally was accused of second-degree assault for the May 30, 2022 incident outside an encampment near Cheney Stadium. According to court records, prosecutors asked the court to amend the charge to secure resolutions in two cases and because of evidence concerns if the matter had proceeded to trial.
Josh Harris, who was running on a law-and-order platform for a seat on the County Council and later lost in the primary election, had gone to the encampment with three other people to recover stolen property. According to court records, multiple Tacoma Police Department officers responded after Harris called police because a woman living in the wooded area told him that Stacy had threatened his family.
After officers entered the encampment, records state, Harris heard a loud bang that he told The News Tribune he thought was the sound of Stacy’s vehicle, a Honda CR-V, hitting an object. Harris said he then heard officers yelling and a vehicle driving up a trail toward him at high speed.
Harris said he fired multiple gunshots at the vehicle because the driver was coming directly at him and he feared for his safety because he had nowhere to run. Stacy was shot in the hand and face. Pierce County prosecutors later determined that the shooting was justified because Harris fired in self-defense.
The SUV stopped and headed another direction toward police, according to Harris, and witnesses told the newspaper Stacy crashed into a cement barrier. Stacy fled in the vehicle and was arrested the next day after a 911 caller reported the man had returned to the homeless encampment and was trying to treat gunshot injuries on his face. Firefighters transported him to a hospital before he was booked into jail.
The Tacoma Police Department’s investigation of the shooting was later handed over to the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office because of Harris’ close ties with Tacoma police. He bailed out the three officers who were eventually acquitted in the in-custody death of Manuel Ellis, and Tacoma’s police union endorsed Harris’ campaign.
Harris asked the sentencing judge to give Stacy the longest sentence he could in a victim-impact statement submitted to the court last week. The maximum sentence in such cases is 10 years in prison. Harris wrote that he was a man of second chances, but he said the community needed to be protected from someone like Stacy while detailing some of his lengthy criminal history.
“I had nowhere to run and had I not been armed I would have been seriously injured or killed,” Harris wrote. “And after he hit the retaining wall block in front of me, he proceeded in reverse almost hitting 2 of the officers again.”
Stacy has 10 prior felony convictions and 24 misdemeanor convictions between 1993 and 2018 in the Puget Sound area, according to court records.
Harris’ background also includes criminal convictions. He regained the right to own a firearm in 2013 following a felony theft conviction in 2003 stemming from altered checks for maintenance work he performed.
Stacy also pleaded guilty Jan. 17 to second-degree attempted burglary in a separate case from March 2022 when he and another man broke into a lot for a metal fabricator in South Tacoma. Judge Murphy sentenced Stacy to 43 months in that case. The time will be served concurrently with his other conviction for unlawful possession of a stolen vehicle and reckless endangerment.
