A 35-year-old man is sitting in the Whatcom County Jail on bail topping $100,000 after a stolen-vehicle pursuit sent him careening through a Ferndale yard, narrowly missing a house. The vehicle he allegedly left behind wasn't exactly subtle about where it ended up — officers found it abandoned a short time later with its horn blaring and nobody inside.
The chase unfolded late Friday night, October 23, when witnesses told police the suspect drove through a residential yard and came close to hitting a house, according to My Bellingham Now. Investigators recovered a license plate left behind in the yard and traced it back to a vehicle reported stolen out of Bellingham. By the time officers caught up to the car, the driver was already gone, leaving the vehicle with its horn blaring in what must have been an odd scene for anyone nearby.
A Second Vehicle Flees Toward Portal Way
While officers combed the area searching for the suspect, they tried to pull over a second vehicle leaving the scene, per the outlet's report. That driver instead sped off onto Portal Way, triggering another pursuit before officers deployed spike strips to bring the car to a stop. Washington State Patrol troopers and Whatcom County Sheriff's deputies assisted in finally ending the chase.
The 35-year-old suspect was taken into custody and remains held at the Whatcom County Jail on bail exceeding $100,000.
Part of a Pattern in Whatcom County
Part of a Pattern in Whatcom County In October 2014, a 27-year-old man named Dustin Tyler Owen was charged with four felonies after a chase that, according to The Northern Light, began when he allegedly struck a detective and an empty patrol vehicle while reversing out of a Ferndale Haggen parking lot, then struck a second patrol vehicle while leaving the lot. That pursuit continued onto Interstate 5, with the driver reportedly topping 100 mph before crashing onto the grassy shoulder.
Back in 2022, a different stolen-vehicle driver rammed a Whatcom County Sheriff's patrol car twice during an attempted stop in Ferndale, fleeing at speeds between 40 and 50 mph before deputies used spike strips to end that chase in a nearby neighborhood, Cascadia Daily News reported at the time. That same spring, Whatcom County auto thefts had jumped 331% comparing the first three months of 2022 to the same stretch in 2021.
By August 2022, Bellingham alone had logged 372 reported car thefts for the year, more than double the 180 thefts reported over the same period in 2021, according to the Bellingham Herald. That same report detailed a Ferndale man suspected of breaking into a Bellingham car dealership, stealing keys off the lot, and driving away in a stolen 2019 Cadillac XTS before he was arrested at a grocery store along Meridian Street with the Cadillac's keys reportedly still in his shorts pocket.
A National Decline, but Local Incidents Persist
Zooming out, the trend lines look better than they did a few years ago. Reported vehicle thefts nationwide fell 23% in 2025 compared to 2024, dropping to 659,880 vehicles, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau. Washington state posted the steepest decline of any state in the country, with a 39% drop in reported thefts year over year.
Still, the NICB notes that a vehicle is stolen somewhere in the country roughly every 48 seconds, and the Hyundai Elantra remained the single most stolen model nationwide in 2025, with 21,732 reported thefts. Hyundai and Kia vehicles combined accounted for 14% of all U.S. vehicle thefts last year, continuing a steady decline from 21% in 2023. For Ferndale residents, though, the national statistics offer little comfort when a stolen car is tearing through a backyard at night.
