MARYSVILLE — A man on a crime spree led Marsyville police on a high-speed, wrong-way chase onto I-5 with a flat tire Wednesday evening, according to police reports filed in court.
After officers caused him to spin out on the freeway, they said he tried to carjack passing vehicles to get away. In the end he was chased down by a police dog, arrested and booked into jail for a litany of warrants and new crimes.
Marysville police had been tipped off that the man, 28, and his girlfriend, 26, would be in Marysville on Valentine’s Day. He was expected to be driving a green Honda with white rims. He was wanted for “dozens” of car break-ins and car thefts, police wrote.
A team of officers got into position to stop the car around 6:50 p.m., with spike strips on 136th Street. They saw a Honda, but weren’t sure if it was the right one, the reports said. The windows were tinted, and the rims looked chrome, not white. Police tried to pull over the car, but it sped off.
A chase wound through the city, with the car driving over the center lane and above the speed limit, police wrote. A sergeant called off the pursuit when the car sped the wrong way up the southbound offramp of I-5.
Moments later officers saw the Honda again, headed the proper direction in the freeway’s southbound lanes. They got permission to restart the chase.
A driver’s side tire on the Honda had been shredded by the spike strips. The car kept going on the rim of the shredded tire, with sparks flying and speeds topping 90 mph. Police stopped the chase again near the exit to 4th Street.
Officers saw the car a third time minutes later, by Dagmars Marina in Everett. They saw it was breaking down — lurching forward, with the engine revving loudly, police wrote. An officer used a PIT maneuver, tapping a back corner of the car with a front corner of the patrol car, to make the Honda spin out.
The driver bolted out of the car and across the lanes of I-5. He kept running south as police shouted his name to make him to stop. He snatched at the doors of at least three passing cars, in an apparent last-ditch effort to commandeer a car and get away, police said.
Investigators asked drivers of those cars and witnesses to call 360-363-8300. Police would like to speak with them.
A police dog, Steele, chased down the suspect. According to the reports, the man kept resisting, and officers shot him with a Taser and punched him in the head at least six times.
He was booked into the Snohomish County Jail for investigation of attempting to elude law enforcement and 25 other criminal counts.
His girlfriend was in the car. She was arrested, too. She’s accused of forgery, identity theft and vehicle prowling.
Caleb Hutton: 425-339-3454; chutton@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snocaleb.
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