A Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office deputy had a life-and-death encounter with an armed 12-year-old boy in Bremerton following a 911 call made by the boy’s father from the 1100 block of Charlotte Ave. June 3.

The boy’s father called police at about 7:30 p.m. that evening to report that his son had stolen a loaded handgun from the residence. When the deputy arrived, the father told him that the boy, a student at Mountain View Middle School, had recently been arrested for six counts of vehicle prowling and had also been convicted of second-degree domestic violence assault for assaulting his step-mother with a softball bat. The man said the boy’s behavior had become increasingly unpredictable, to include threats to kill his step-mom.

The man said that the boy is not allowed inside the home without being searched and has to wait to go inside since he doesn’t have a key. Earlier in the day, though, the boy would not consent to being searched, was “acting weird,” had a “creepy smile on his face” and fled the area on foot. Upon returning to the home from dinner, the father and step-mom discovered that the master bedroom window had been forced open and a .38 caliber Ruger LCR 5-shot revolver was missing.

The father told the deputy that he knew his son was the one who took it and eventually went out to look for his son before returning a few minutes later after spotting the boy nearby.

The deputy then found the boy holding his right arm horizontally across his chest and had a black sweatshirt draped over his right arm as if he were concealing something.

“It actually reminded me of the spy movies where they drape a newspaper over their arm to cover the gun,” the deputy wrote in his report.

The deputy, whose gun was drawn, twice ordered the boy to, “Show me your hands.” The deputy wrote that the boy briefly looked behind him as if he were going to run, but then just stared at the deputy, making no effort to comply.

“I was yelling at him to, “Lose the sweatshirt,’ ” the deputy wrote. “He grabbed the sweatshirt with his left hand, pulled it off his right arm and dropped it to the ground. When he did this I could see he was holding a black revolver with his right hand. He had the gun in a shooting grip and it was pointed in the direction of his left elbow.”

The deputy noted that he was in full uniform at the time of the incident and loudly ordered the boy to drop the gun. The boy did not comply, according to the deputy, but instead lowered his right arm to his side so that the gun was pointed at the ground before being ordered again to drop the weapon.

“He finally complied and dropped the gun to the ground,” the deputy wrote. “I ordered him away from the weapon, faced him away from me and ordered him to the ground. As I did so I told him that if he moved towards the gun I would kill him. I was able to take him into custody without further incident.”

The deputy then opened the cylinder of the five shot weapon and emptied the rounds into a plastic bag, noticing that four of the rounds were live and one had been fired. More deputies arrived at the scene and the boy told them that he had earlier walked to Viewpoint Park and fired one of the rounds. He was then transported to juvenile detention and booked for theft of a firearm and unlawful possession of a firearm in the second degree.