The King County Sheriff’s Office deputy jailed and charged Thursday with three felonies is a West Seattle resident. That’s according to the lengthy document charging 49-year-old Darrion Holiwell with promoting prostitution, theft, and a drug violation. The charges filed against him Thursday have been widely reported in regional media; we obtained the charging papers, which cite a Puget Ridge address for Holiwell, identified as a SWAT team member and as KCSO’s lead firearms instructor, as well as owner of a private business that “specializes in firearms training, tactical training, and the sale of tactical equipment.” That business, the charging documents say, took Holiwell and his wife to Las Vegas for a trade show in 2012, leading to a discussion of her possibly working there as an exotic dancer, something she had done elsewhere before. That in turn eventually led to her working from a South King County condo as an “escort,” it is alleged, even as the Holiwells’ marriage faltered, and that is what he is charged with helping facilitate, as a form of domestic violence against her. Some of the evidence on that charge came from Holiwell’s iPhone, seized when his Puget Ridge home was searched in mid-April as part of the investigation, the court documents say, while simultaneously another warrant was served at the KCSO gun range in Ravensdale, where he was at work.
Other items police say they found at his house in the April search included drugs, mostly steroids and substances used in conjunction with them. And the charging documents make note of what was not found during the search of Holiwell’s house: A “large gun safe” was empty, though that is where unnamed “witnesses” told police he stores his “high-quality personal firearms,” and searchers didn’t find a single gun or round of ammunition anywhere in the house. The theft charge, meantime, involves allegations that Holiwell sold KCSO ammunition and other property, mostly to create an unauthorized “slush fund” of sorts. You can read more about the case in this report from our partners at The Seattle Times, who covered Sheriff John Urquhart‘s Thursday afternoon briefing about this case and an investigation of whether others might be involved. Holiwell has been on leave since mid-April and is jailed in lieu of $150,000 bail, scheduled to answer the charges next month. He was taken into custody Thursday morning at the King County Courthouse downtown, according to the arrest report.
| 13 COMMENTS