A 37-year-old man led Pierce County deputies on a foot chase through South Hill backyards Aug. 13, jumping fences and climbing onto rooftops before diving into a neighbor’s swimming pool and hiding under its cover. Deputies eventually heard him breathing underwater, gave him multiple commands to surface, and pulled him out after he refused to come out on his own.
The chase began around 8:30 p.m. when deputies spotted the vehicle near 72nd Street and Portland Avenue with an invalid registration, according to KING 5. Deputies had developed reasonable suspicion the vehicle could be stolen and tried to pull it over, but the driver and a passenger instead abandoned the car near the 7000 block of South M Street and fled on foot, according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office.
Rather than continue a ground pursuit through residential streets, a sergeant made the call to pull deputies back and let Washington State Patrol’s aircraft, nicknamed Smokey, track the fleeing pair from above. The plane’s crew fed precise updates from the air as the man hopped fences, scrambled across rooftops, and disappeared into a backyard, the sheriff’s office said. That kind of air-to-ground handoff is a standard tactic, letting ground units disengage from foot or vehicle pursuits while keeping eyes on a suspect, per the same account from the sheriff’s office.
Twenty Minutes Underwater
The man’s hiding spot turned out to be a residential pool, where he slipped under the cover and stayed submerged. Deputies waited roughly 20 minutes before moving in, eventually detecting his breathing beneath the cover. After giving him multiple commands to come out, which he refused, deputies pulled him from the water and took him into custody…