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.
He now faces charges of felony eluding, obstruction, and driving while license suspended in the first degree, the sheriff's office said. The passenger who ran alongside him was located and released, since deputies determined they lacked probable cause to make an arrest, according to the same Facebook post from the sheriff's office.
Car Wasn't Actually Stolen
Despite the suspicion that triggered the stop, the vehicle was confirmed not to be stolen once it was recovered and impounded. That means the felony charge against the driver stems entirely from his decision to flee and hide rather than from any auto theft, a distinction the sheriff's office was careful to note in its own recap of the incident.
The stop grew out of a multi-agency emphasis patrol tied to the Puget Sound Auto Theft Task Force, a regional team funded through the Washington Auto Theft Prevention Authority that coordinates patrols across King and Pierce counties. The sheriff's office gave the task force credit for organizing the operation that put deputies in position to spot the car in the first place. The task force's own data show the scale of the region's theft problem: in November 2024 alone, 258 vehicles were reported stolen in Pierce County and 1,061 in neighboring King County.
What the Charges Could Mean
Under state law, attempting to elude a pursuing police vehicle is a Class C felony carrying up to five years in prison, a $10,000 fine, and mandatory license revocation upon conviction, according to the Washington State Legislature. Driving while license suspended in the first degree applies to habitual traffic offenders and is a gross misdemeanor with mandatory minimum jail time — 10 days for a first conviction, rising to 90 and then 180 days for repeat offenses. Obstructing a law enforcement officer, the charge tied to his refusal to surface from the pool, is also a gross misdemeanor, punishable by up to 364 days in jail and a $5,000 fine.
Washington's pursuit standards changed in 2024, when Initiative 2113 lowered the bar for officers to pursue a vehicle to reasonable suspicion of any law violation, a shift from the stricter probable-cause threshold that had applied to specific violent crimes between 2021 and 2024. That change is part of why deputies were able to attempt a stop over an invalid registration rather than a more serious offense.
The South Hill case echoes another recent Pierce County incident Hoodline reported, in which a driver hit 103 mph fleeing into King County while ground officers again backed off and let Smokey maintain contact from the air. In both cases, aerial FLIR-equipped surveillance let deputies avoid a high-speed chase on public roads while keeping the suspect in view until it was safe to move in.
