STANWOOD — It was the opposite of incognito.
The rusty blue 1985 Chevrolet pickup, complete with a stolen shower in the truck bed, didn’t make it too far. The truck ended up in a muddy ditch near the Snohomish-Skagit county line, with all three occupants outfitted in handcuffs.
For Stanwood police, that early morning in mid-December took a meandering path.
It started around 4:30 a.m. Dec 13. A witness reported seeing a pickup parked in a construction site in a housing development along 70th Ave NW, near Cedarhome Elementary.
Local deputies knew some tools had been stolen from the site a few weeks earlier, Police Chief Rick Hawkins said.
The witness said the suspects were loading lumber and what appeared to be a shower unit, the kind that arrives ready for installation.
“It comes in a crate. It’s upright,” Hawkins said. “It sticks out like a sore thumb in the back of a pickup.”
Deputy Brandon Liukko was on scene in less than a minute. By then, the witness had seen the truck moving northbound, toward 68th Avenue NW.
“That’s where deputy Liukko saw the pickup along with the shower unit in the back, which was very visible,” Hawkins said.
The deputy attempted to stop the truck and it took off, staying at or below the speed limit, Hawkins said. The low-speed chase lasted about 8 miles. It went onto 300th Street NW.
At that point, a second deputy was headed northbound from Island Crossing, hoping to use spike strips to stop the truck, Hawkins said. Unbeknownst to the police, the suspects had an emergency radio scanner. They knew to head north to avoid the second deputy. The chase then wound onto northbound old Highway 99, then eastbound on County Line Road, then northbound on Silvernail Road.
At one point, the truck driver slowed way down, as if the occupants were making ready to jump and run, Hawkins said.
The chase was approaching the intersection of Starbird Road and I-5 in south Skagit County.
There had been little to no traffic so far, and the deputies didn’t want the chase to continue onto the freeway, Hawkins said.
Liukko then bumped the truck with his Ford Crown Victoria, a common police pursuit tactic called a PIT maneuver.
The Ford’s front bumper got stuck on the truck’s back bumper, and the truck kept on, dragging the patrol car. As the truck turned southbound, back onto Old 99, a second deputy arrived and rammed the truck’s front bumper.
The driver, a man in his 40s, took off running. He was quickly caught. So were a woman and a younger man who stayed behind, Hawkins said. All three suspects were from Mount Vernon.
The man in his 40s was booked into jail on warrants. He first was taken to the hospital, where a blood sample was taken for investigation of driving under the influence. The other two suspects were interviewed and released.
The incident happened prior to the sheriff’s office adopting new pursuit policies that restrict when deputies can give chase. In this instance, the pursuit was at such low speeds that deputies didn’t feel they had probable cause to seek eluding charges.
The recovered stolen property was worth about $750, Hawkins said. The contractor confirmed it came from the construction site. The trio reportedly had visited the housing development a few hours earlier. “When we got them, that was their second trip there that night,” Hawkins said.
The stolen property apparently was being peddled for cash in Everett. Thefts are common from construction sites in Snohomish County and around the country, with several high-profile arrests here in recent years.
Detectives recently forwarded the Stanwood case to prosecutors for review. They recommended felony burglary and theft charges for all three suspects. The DUI case also is pending.
It took two deputies to unload the shower from the truck.
“It’s more bulky than heavy,” Hawkins said.
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.
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