MARYSVILLE — A Marysville man accused of a high-speed, wrong-way car chase on I-5 now faces an aggravated charge of attempting to elude police.
Marysville officers staked out 136th Street with spike strips at the ready on Valentine’s Day in search of a green Honda with white rims. They’d been tipped off about a five-time felon, Kyle Aaron Barnes, who had been posting Facebook pictures of himself holding guns that looked real. He was suspected in dozens of vehicle break-ins and auto thefts, and Everett police believed he’d led them on a pursuit weeks earlier.
That evening the team of officers sighted a green Honda, but the spinning rims looked chrome, not white, and they didn’t want to spike the wrong tires. So they tried to pull over the car. The driver sped off. Police gave chase — stopping the pursuit more than once when it became too dangerous, but starting it again when traffic was light.
The Honda led police to a southbound offramp of I-5. The driver entered the freeway going the wrong way. Moments later the car was headed the correct direction on the freeway, and police restarted the chase with speeds reaching about 90 mph, according to charging papers.
At some point a driver’s side tire shredded. The Honda continued on the rim, with sparks flying. The car’s engine started to break down as the Honda reached Dagmars Marina in Everett. A Marysville officer used a pursuit intervention technique — tapping a back corner of the car with the front corner of a police cruiser — to make the Honda spin out off I-5. Barnes jumped out, ran south in the median and tried to snatch at doors of passing cars in an apparent last-ditch attempt to steal a car, according to an officer’s report. A police dog chased down Barnes, 28.
“I’m sorry!” he shouted when he was in handcuffs, police wrote. “I’m an idiot!”
Barnes has about a dozen pending felony cases with charges that are either filed or awaiting a charging decision, according to the Snohomish County Prosecutor’s Office. In recent years he has served prison time for possessing methamphetamine, identity theft, possessing a stolen car and theft of a motor vehicle.
Prosecutors noted a special allegation — that “one or more persons other than the defendant or the pursuing law enforcement officer were threatened by physical injury or harm by the defendant’s actions” — when Barnes was charged Friday with attempting to elude a pursuing police vehicle.
If he’s convicted of the aggravated charge, it would open the door to a more lengthy prison sentence.
Forty-two warrants have been issued because he missed past court dates. Barnes remained in the county jail Monday.
Caleb Hutton: 425-339-3454; chutton@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snocaleb.
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