(UPDATED TUESDAY MORNING with suspect getting out of jail – also, see comments for more info)
3:52 PM: Late Saturday night, we reported on a gunfire suspect arrested near Delridge and Genesee. We have more information this afternoon from both SPD Blotter and the police report. First, just published on SPD Blotter by the department’s Jonah Spangenthal-Lee:
A ride-share driver led police to arrest a convicted felon Saturday night and recover a backpack filled with meth, crack cocaine, cash and a handgun.
Officer Nic Plemel was on patrol in the Delridge neighborhood around 11 PM Saturday when he heard the sound of gunfire several blocks away.
Moments later, a ride-share driver called 911 and reported seeing a man dressed in a white t-shirt, jeans and a red baseball cap firing a gun on the street in the 5400 block of Delridge Way Southwest.
Officers arrived and immediately saw a 29-year-old man, dressed just as the 911 caller had described, standing behind a bus stop at Delridge Way SW and SW Genesee Street.
Officer Plemel and Officer Nathan Worthen approached the man, who was standing right next to a backpack on the ground. He refused to answer any questions, but said the backpack wasn’t his.
When police looked inside the backpack, they found $2,700 in cash, 53 grams of suspected methamphetamine and three containers of marijuana. They later discovered 21 grams of suspected crack cocaine in the man’s pocket.
After a witness confirmed the 29-year-old was the same person they had seen firing a gun on the street, officers also discovered the 29-year-old is a previously convicted felon.
Officers booked the man into the King County Jail for drug possession and unlawful possession of firearms and are investigating.
According to the police report, a gun also was found in the backpack. We’re checking on the suspect’s record and status and will update with whatever more we find.
4:12 PM: The suspect’s background includes multiple felony convictions, according to what we’ve found so far in online records, including previous drug and gun cases.
7:33 PM: We’ve obtained the police-report narrative from the probable-cause documents provided at a hearing this afternoon during which the suspect’s bail was set at $150,000. It has some additional information beyond the SPD Blotter summary:
It says officers were in the 4100 block of Delridge at 10:59 pm Saturday night when they heard what they thought were gunshots in the area of Delridge and Genesee. 911 got a lot of calls too. One was from a ride-share driver who said that he heard the shots, and his passenger reported seeing a man shooting on the east side of the street. The ride-share driver then looked east and saw what he thought was a man reloading a handgun. The passenger thought he saw the man at Delridge/Alaska; the driver, after dropping off the passenger, went back to the area and told officers he thought it was further north, near Delridge/Genesee. Officers searched there for shell casings and then spotted a man standing near a bag on the ground, though he moved away as an officer approached and noted he resembled a description given by the ride-share driver. He was the only person on the street in the area, but wouldn’t give them his name, nor answer any questions, and when asked if the bag was his, shook his head repeatedly side to side.
Since nobody therefore was there to claim the bag, officers looked into it, and, the narrative says, “observed a revolver-style handgun lying inside the backpack.” The ride-share driver, meantime, identified the man as the person he had seen with a gun. Officers got the suspect’s name from a Social Security card in his possession, and matched it to a booking photo. He subsequently came up in the law-enforcement data system as a “Potential Armed Career Criminal” and a convicted felon. They arrested him on suspicion of a firearms violation; subsequently, seven 9mm shell casings were found nearby (the report then says “though no 9mm pistol was located in the area,” and the police report says the revolver from the backpack was .22 caliber).
At the precinct, officers took “inventory” of the aforementioned backpack and said it contained $2751, 53.1 grams of suspected meth, and three “Tupperware-style containers” filled with marijuana. Additional cash apparently was found on the suspect, because the police report totals the cash associated with him to total #2,996 in all. The report also lists his “last known address” as a house on Pigeon Point.
TUESDAY MORNING, 6:39 AM: The jail register shows the suspect posted bond and was released just before midnight.
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