POULSBO — Assault charges against a Poulsbo man were dropped on Aug. 3.

City Prosecutor Alexis Foster said she decided not to go to trial because she can’t find the alleged victim.

The defendant’s attorney, Dee Boughton of Poulsbo, said he believes the case isn’t going to trial because the prosecution doesn’t have a case.

As the Herald reported last week, Michael Lunn of Poulsbo was charged with fourth-degree assault, a gross misdemeanor, after he allegedly beat up a man who he said broke into his home. Lunn had let the man, described by police as 28 years old and homeless, stay in his home but had evicted him after finding uninvited guests and evidence of drug use in his home. Lunn said he felt an unsafe environment had been created for his 85-year-old mother, who has dementia and lives in the home.

In police bodycam footage after the alleged assault, the 28-year-old is heard telling police he had opened the front door, but that he didn’t go inside. Police allege the assault took place outside, not inside the house, based on blood they found on the front steps. Lunn says otherwise to both.

The 28-year-old said he had returned to the home to retrieve some belongings he left there. Lunn said the man left with all of his belongings when he was evicted.

The time and date of the 28-year-old’s return to the house and alleged assault: 1 a.m. Nov. 23.

There are some holes in the investigation.

One: Three days before the alleged assault, Lunn called police to report a possible burglary. Lunn reported finding a window to a back room open — the room formerly used by the 28-year-old — as well as an empty energy drink can. Officers didn’t dust for fingerprints or collect other possible evidence. Police Chief Dan Schoonmaker said that’s not unusual.

“If someone says, ‘My house was broken into,’ but there’s no sign of forced entry, fingerprints may not be taken,” he said. In this case, because the 28-year-old had lived in the residence, “his fingerprints would be all over the house” and any prints collected would not necessarily be “evidentiary in nature.”

Two: Officer Gary Westerfield, after interviewing Lunn the night of the alleged assault, told Sgt. Howard Leeming, also at the scene, that Lunn admitted “that he’s having individuals like this come into the house while he’s not home,” that he’s “inviting all these other weird people in there,” and that “he kicks them out, he brings them in,” leading Westerfield and Leeming to determine the 28-year-old “has a legal right to go back in there.”

But according to police bodycam footage, Lunn told Westerfield that, with the assistance of a friend, he evicted the 28-year-old; Lunn didn’t say he brought the man or the others in after kicking them out. Lunn said of the eviction, “I opened the door and all these other crazy people are here, all these homeless people, and then the neighbors are telling me they’ve been sneaking out as I was coming in, in the morning.”

Lunn said, “And, so right there, I said … Never again. I don’t want to see you.” Lunn said he took the man’s house key, and that the man told him he didn’t make a copy.

Three: A police photograph documented blood on the ground; a GameStop membership card is lying next to it. Police didn’t pick up the card as possible evidence. Lunn took the card to the police department later that day, saying it might have been used by the 28-year-old to open the door. But Schoonmaker said in an earlier interview he didn’t know if it had been analyzed it to determine if the card belonged to the man or if it had been used to open the front door.

Foster said Aug. 9 that the case against Lunn was dismissed without prejudice, meaning she could choose to refile the case in the future if the alleged victim is found. She said she has a case: Even if the 28-year-old had opened the door and a portion of his body crossed the threshold, she believes the level of force used by Lunn exceeded the level of threat; the 28-year-old sustained a split lip and a possible broken nose.

Boughton disagrees. The way he sees it: A man who, at an unreasonable hour, knocks on the windows of a home from which he had been evicted — a home he knows is occupied by an elderly woman with dementia — then opens the locked front door with the obvious intent of entering, can be seen as a threat.

Boughton said he was ready to take that, and Lunn’s defense, to trial.

— Richard Walker is managing editor of Kitsap News Group. Contact him at rwalker@soundpublishing.com.