PORT ORCHARD — A second stolen vehicle has been found and one suspect has been charged in an early morning police pursuit.
It all began just after 2 a.m. on June 27 when a Honda was reported stolen from the Conifer Park area outside the city limits of Port Orchard. A sheriff’s deputy who took the stolen-vehicle report was told the car would only run for about five minutes at a time, then the engine would die and have to be restarted, according to the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO).
Later, that deputy spotted the stolen Honda near S.E. Lund Avenue and Chase Road SE. The driver of that vehicle also spotted the patrol care and took off before the deputy even had time to turn on his emergency lights.
The deputy pursued the car south on Chase Road to SE Salmonberry Road, where a sheriff’s sergeant joined in the pursuit. The driver of the stolen Honda would speed up, then suddenly slow down, presumably since the engine kept dying.
Eventually, the lead pursuing deputy employed the pursuit intervention technique (PIT maneuver) on the Honda at Glenwood Road SW and SW J H Road — bumping the rear of the fleeing vehicle with his patrol car. The Honda driver lost control and his car ran off the road.
The male driver and male passenger of the stolen car then fled on foot into the nearby woods.
The lead pursuing deputy chased down the passenger and, after a struggle, he was taken into custody. While waiting for the medic unit to arrive and initiating a K-9 track to search for the driver, the on-scene personnel suddenly heard the sound of an engine revving on J H Road.
The driver of the stolen Honda had walked into a nearby occupied house and, in front of the homeowner, grabbed the keys to the resident’s silver-colored Ford F-150 pickup truck and walked back out again. J H Road is a dead-end road.
Officers on the scene said the stolen truck came down the road at “an extremely high rate of speed” and narrowly missed hitting a Port Orchard police officer and the sheriff’s sergeant.
Deputies, along with Bremerton Police and Washington State Patrol units, set off in pursuit of the stolen truck. This second pursuit ended up on a dusty dirt road off SW Berry Lake Road, where the police units lost sight of the truck in its dust cloud.
A short time later, a street-sweeper operator pointed the units into a nearby industrial park off SW Old Clifton Road, within Port Orchard city limits. There, officers discovered the driver of the stolen Ford F-150 had apparently crashed through the fence into the City of Port Orchard public works lot, crossed the lot, crashed through a rear fence and then drove overland to SW Cook Road, which leads to Anderson Hill Road SW.
The driver and the stolen truck were gone.
The stolen truck was located at 6:45 a.m. when a resident in the 3600 block of Long Lake Road SE noticed it abandoned and blocking his driveway and called 911. The truck was towed to the sheriff’s evidence facility where sheriff’s detectives will handle processing the truck for possible evidence.
The initiating deputy’s patrol car sustained a small amount of damage to the fender and push bars from executing the PIT maneuver but was still drivable, according to the KCSO.
The stolen Honda was towed at the owner’s request.
The passenger, a 27 year-old resident of South Kitsap, was booked into Kitsap County Jail. The arresting officers charged him with possession of a stolen motor vehicle, possession of stolen property, possession of methamphetamine, possession of motor vehicle theft tools, a dangerous weapon violation, and resisting arrest. Bail was set at $75,000.
The suspect is due to appear in Kitsap County Superior Court on June 28. The Kitsap County Prosecutor’s Office has since reduced the charges to possession of a stolen motor vehicle and lowered bail to $25,000.
Persons with information about this incident/driver of the stolen Honda &stolen Ford F-150 truck, are asked to contact Kitsap 911 at 360-308-5400, and reference case report K17-006273.
— Story edited by Terryl Asla, Kitsap News Group reporter.
