Seattle police were called to a home in the Georgetown neighborhood on Saturday after a man with dementia reportedly threatened his housemate with a gun, according to a police report. The disturbance apparently began earlier in the day when the suspect got into an argument with the woman about a friend of hers. The suspect left the house only to return 15 minutes later with a .38 caliber revolver. The argument apparently picked up where it left off, but now the man was pointing the revolver “6-8 inches away from [the victim] with his finger on the trigger.” The suspect continued threatening the woman, calling her a “fucking slut” numerous times. In fear for her life, the woman managed to slip past the suspect, seeking refuge with a male friend in a back room. The victim called police as she hid herself, while the gunman remained in the front of the house. As police approached, they saw a man matching the suspect’s description standing on the sidewalk near the house. The police quickly zeroed in on the individual’s blue sweatshirt, which they describe as having an, “obvious sag in the front sweatshirt pocket from containing an object.” Officers began to give “loud and clear” instructions to the suspect to put his hands up and get on the ground. The suspect apparently would not follow instructions. He began to reach for the pocket of his sweatshirt, but just before reaching into his pocket, he put his hands into the air. Officers approached the man, handcuffed him, and searched his sagging pouch to find the black and brown revolver loaded with six .38 caliber, hollow-point bullets.
The man, who is suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s according to reports, does not have a concealed pistol license and had not been seen with a gun before the incident. Police booked him into King County Jail for investigation of assault and harassment.
Wow, scary.
The construction of the headline made me think the story was “Demented Man Threatens Armed Housemate.”
i knew i shouldn’t have sold that guy a gun.
Kind of sounds like an average day at a Tea Bagger rally.
Excellent work by SPD described here. I wish these officers were working Officer Ian Birk’s beat last month.
Thanks, NRA!
Wow. Does he know how close he came to dying? I thought that if a cop even thinks you might be reaching for a weapon, it`s a death sentence.
@7 if he has dementia and early AD, he might not.
Yay! Guns!
I’m thankful he wasn’t shot, and yes, this is how good cops handle these situations.
Dementia is horrible. I remember that sometime in the last two years a man in his eighties in Oakland shot his landlord to death because he was convinced the landlord was trying to evict him or something. And there’s that grandmother in West Seattle last week.
Wasn’t there a similar incident in Alaska last month, involving an elderly woman with alzheimer’s? One more and it’s a trend. Get to work crazies, the world needs a new meme.
Alzheimer’s does some really bad things to your brain. Reality is lost and your mind makes stories from what’s left of your memories… Unfortunately some of us have all too many bad memories kicking around deep down in the back…
I was an eye and ear witness to this event, which was surreal at high noon on a sunny Saturday.