Community Police & Fire
Gig Harbor Police Blotter: Shoplifting suspect strollers out the door
Editor’s note: The Police Blotter is written based on information in Gig Harbor Police reports.
An officer patrolling a large retail store on Borgen Boulevard noticed a woman pushing a stroller toward the door on the evening of Aug. 25. Several items of unpaid merchandise were clearly draped over the top of the stroller.
When the woman saw the officer looking at her, she did a U-turn and disappeared down an aisle.
About 30 minutes later, the same woman walked out the door with the cover on her stroller closed. The theft alarm at the entrance did not sound, but the officer spotted possible unpaid merchandise stashed above the stroller’s wheels.
The officer asked the woman what was inside the stroller and she claimed a baby was sleeping there. But when the officer asked to check, she admitted she had filled the stroller with more than $500 in unpaid merchandise. She said she was having a hard time financially and needed to get items for her children.
The woman had no previous criminal record. She was cited and trespassed from the store
A security officer noted that the store had been the victim of 16 theft incidents the previous day alone.
Where am I?
A 21-year-old Poulsbo man was arrested for DUI after an officer saw him driving in the wrong lane of traffic on Harborview Drive around 2 a.m. on Aug. 28.
The officer pulled the 21-year-old over and asked why he had been driving on the wrong side of the road. The question befuddled the suspect, who argued that he was just parked on the wrong side.
The suspect also was confused about geography. He believed that he was in either Poulsbo or Bremerton, not Gig Harbor, when he was arrested. When the officer asked if he knew which road he had been pulled over on, he said Highway 303, which is in Kitsap County and in no way resembles Harborview Drive.
The suspect agreed to submit to blood alcohol tests. He was cited and given a court date, and took an Uber home from St. Anthony Hospital.
Officers found his iPhone
Officers went the extra mile — several extra miles, actually — to return a stolen iPhone early on the morning of Aug. 27.
The victim called 911 to report that his phone had been stolen from a gas station in Purdy. He used a tracking app to follow the stolen phone into Gig Harbor, where city officers responded. It was inside of a white box van, which the victim had seen at the Purdy gas station.
The victim caught up to the box van at a gas station on Pioneer Way in Gig Harbor, but the two occupants of the van denied knowing anything about his phone.
The tracking app showed the phone heading east on Highway 16 into Tacoma. Gig Harbor officers followed the van and pulled it over near the intersection of Highway 16 and I-5.
A scary moment ensued. One of the two suspects got out of the van when asked to do so. The other didn’t and tried to hide in the van while holding a large, noisy dog. After several minutes of officers yelling at the second suspect, he finally secured the dog and got out of the van.
The two suspects argued over which of them took the phone, then finally located it in the van. Officers returned the phone to its owner. Reports on the incident were forwarded to the prosecutors office.