A man convicted of firing shots at Pierce County sheriff's deputies outside their own precinct in 2024 has been sentenced to 14.6 years in prison. Omari Brown was convicted of drive-by shooting, first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm and three counts of third-degree assault, and was sentenced on Aug. 7.
According to FOX 13 Seattle, deputies inside the Parkland precinct were completing paperwork at around 12:24 a.m. when they heard gunshots from a passing car on Pacific Avenue South. Deputies believed the shots were directed at them, prompting a pursuit of a dark-colored vehicle that would end more than a mile away near a golf course. FOX 13's initial report on the incident described Brown, who is a convicted felon, as 33 years old, while its later report on the sentencing described him as 35 — a discrepancy the record does not resolve.
The Chase Toward Spanaway Lake
A deputy and a sergeant followed the dark sedan on Pacific Avenue and eventually spotted it making a U-turn at the side gate of Spanaway Lake Golf Course on Military Road East, the station's report notes. The suspect trailed the deputies with his window rolled down, prompting the sergeant driving ahead to slow down and let the vehicle pass. Deputies then repositioned to get behind the car and initiated a traffic stop.
Once detained, the suspect had no firearm on him, per the same account. But investigators later found a SIG Sauer pistol near the driveway to the golf course, and after serving a search warrant on the vehicle, they recovered a spent shell casing inside. Notably, an earlier report on the incident stated that investigators found no spent shell casings on Pacific Avenue itself and no damage to the precinct building.
A Sergeant's Reaction to Being Targeted
Sgt. Darren Moss, addressing the shock of the ambush, said deputies rarely find themselves fired upon without warning. “We don't usually just have people shoot at us very often,” Moss said, according to FOX 13 Seattle's earlier coverage of the incident.
Brown's conviction falls under Washington's drive-by shooting statute, which the Washington Legislature defines under RCW 9A.36.045 as recklessly discharging a firearm from a vehicle or its immediate area in a manner that creates a substantial risk of death or serious injury to another person. That statute has come up in other cases across the state, including one involving a Wapato man who pleaded guilty to drive-by shooting and possession of a stolen firearm after firing at an occupied vehicle, according to the FBI's Seattle field office.
Pierce County has seen other cases of deputies coming under gunfire in recent years. A 43-year-old man convicted of shooting at four Pierce County deputies in the woods of Swan Creek Park while trying to evade arrest was sentenced to 122 years in prison in December 2023, according to the Tacoma News Tribune. Brown's case resulted in a far shorter sentence than the 122-year term imposed in the Swan Creek Park case.
