A 44-year-old man was arrested Monday evening near the fairgrounds in Puyallup after a pedestrian with a gun confronted him while he was allegedly assaulting his girlfriend. The suspect then fled from police in a vehicle.
A woman was injured in the assault, and the ensuing chase ended with police using a pursuit intervention tactic to stop the man’s vehicle, the Puyallup Police Department said in a news release. The man was booked into Pierce County Jail, and on Tuesday Pierce County prosecutors charged him with fourth-degree assault, attempting to elude a pursuing police vehicle, driving while under the influence and duty in case of damage to attended vehicle or other property.
Police said they responded at about 6:38 p.m. to a report of a confrontation involving a firearm at East Pioneer and South Meridian and discovered someone with a gun had intervened in a domestic-violence assault.
The suspect stopped assaulting his girlfriend and fled when he was confronted by the person who stepped in with a gun, police said. According to a police report, a witness told officers he was driving down Pioneer when he saw a man wearing all black beating on a woman when another man in a tan baseball jersey pulled a gun and told him to get away and stay back.
“Myself and two other guys tried to keep the guy in the black from leaving,” the witness said in a written statement. “He charges at us and the guy in the jersey pulled the gun again to protect us and keep him back.”
Arriving officers found that the woman was bleeding from her head and requested medical aid. Police said the suspect was leaving the area in a gray Dodge Caliber. He refused to stop, and officers pursued him.
The suspect’s driving was reportedly erratic but slow. According to a police report, officers used a pursuit intervention technique or PIT maneuver multiple times to try to stop his vehicle, but the driver turned his vehicle around each time and continued fleeing.
At one point the suspect tried to drive through the “A lot” of the Washington State Fair. A sergeant blocked the exit with his patrol car, according to a police report, but the suspect didn’t stop and rammed the back of the police vehicle to escape.
The pursuit continued south on Meridian, and officers performed a successful PIT maneuver near the grounds of the Washington State Fair, where the suspect was taken into custody.
Inside the suspect’s car, police saw an empty liquor bottle, a full liquor bottle and a knife, a police officer wrote in a report. The suspect submitted to a voluntary breath test, which returned a result of 0.272, above the legal blood-alcohol limit for motorists of 0.08.
