Emergency services team up

Our week started with a rollover crash in the middle of the day on Kitsap Way near NAD Park. It was a one-vehicle crash with only the driver inside, who was an older gentleman who had turned onto Kitsap Way from Austin Drive, lost control and rolled over twice before landing on the roof.

He was trapped inside the driver’s compartment and our colleagues with Bremerton Fire used the “jaws of life” and cut the truck apart, extricating the man and getting him onto a backboard.

He went to Harrison Medical Center and fortunately had only minor injuries. Fire and police were at the scene for over two hours.

Being in a movie doesn’t mean it’s a good idea

On Sunday, we had a serious assault incident in which a stepfather beat his adult stepson.

The stepfather was angry and drunk, and apparently decided to use a technique he must have learned from a bad prison movie. He placed several bars of soap in a pillow case, went into the stepson’s bedroom and started beating him over the head.

The stepfather went to jail for domestic violence.

Two major penalties late in the game

Football was involved in two incidents early last week.

The first occurred on football Sunday, when a man and woman, married four years but currently separated, decided to get together and watch the Seahawks game. The man had agreed not to drink, but then showed up with a six pack.

You can probably guess where this is going.

After drinking four of the six beers, the estranged wife hid the last two. This drove him into a rage, one thing led to another and he ended up grabbing her by the throat. He went to jail.

The second football-related case was an extremely serious incident at an East Bremerton bar Monday night.

Two men were sitting at the bar and struck up a conversation about the Huskies, their success so far this season, and their expected national ranking.

Sounds innocuous enough, until they disagreed on whether the appropriate ranking would be No. 4 or No. 5.

Them is most definitely fightin’ words!

They exchanged some unpleasant comments, and then one man took out a very bright LED flashlight and started waving it in the other’s eyes. This, understandably, made the other man angry, and he shoved the flashlight-holding man off his stool.

Once he got back up, the man calmly put away the flashlight, removed a knife from his pocket and slammed it into the other man’s side. The suspect ran out with the other man chasing after him, until he began to realize he had been stabbed.

He began bleeding profusely and returned to the bar, where other patrons helped him and called 911. The suspect was located at his home, and arrested.

The victim was seriously hurt and needed surgery. The charge is first degree assault.

It’s also a little surprising that this occurred early in the evening, and nobody was extremely drunk. It is unclear if the suspect was advocating for the No. 4 or No. 5 ranking.

It always amazes us what gets people riled up.

Another case flying in opposition to the rhetoric

Last week I wrote about someone who had inadvertently pointed a vaping device at an officer, who perceived that it may have been the barrel of a gun.

The national media would have you believe that every police officer is trigger happy and overreacting to every incident, but this week we have another reminder that this is certainly not true.

Officers need to make split-second decisions and the public expects that their instant perception needs to be right all the time.

Last week, a woman reported that a suspect had stolen her pellet gun, which was a realistic-looking pellet handgun. Just a few minutes later, officers located the man, who had taken the gun and placed it into his waistband.

Not the brightest thing to do in the first place, but even less impressive when you consider he is a convicted felon and his previous conviction pertains to an actual firearm.

The man also had an outstanding arrest warrant, and he was quickly and safely taken into custody by officers. He was also found in possession of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia.

Stormy with a chance of hydroplaning

Officers dealt with a lot of calls related to the inclement weather Thursday night.

As Officer Jason Vertefeuille accurately noted in the start of his nightly summary, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

About 2 a.m., a car traveling southbound on Pine Road lost control, veered off the road, knocked over a telephone pole, took out a fence, flipped over and finally came within inches of hitting a bedroom occupied by two young, sleeping children. The car finally came to rest upside-down on the front porch of the house.

The driver was uninjured and said he believed he was only going about 30 mph; the evidence at the scene suggests he was going appreciably faster.

As you might expect, the driver was drunk with an alcohol content of .15, almost double the legal limit. The driver was uninjured; everyone was fortunate no one was hurt, just a lot of property damage.

— Bremerton Police Chief Steven Strachan