Fleeing man dies of exposure 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
Fleeing man dies of exposure
By Jennifer Langston
Herald Writer
LAKE STEVENS -- A man died Saturday after he crashed a stolen truck and hid in a cold creek from Snohomish County sheriff's deputies who had tried to pull him over.
After a two-hour search in the woods north of Lake Stevens, officers found the man hunkered down chest-deep in a creek at about 11:30 p.m. Friday.
Three deputies tried to revive the man, but his body temperature was too low, said Snohomish County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Jan Jorgensen. He was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he died Saturday morning.
The King County Medical Examiner's Office was withholding his name Saturday night pending notification of family.
The chase began after two sheriff's detectives noticed a suspicious truck near U.S. 2 and 88th Street SE near Snohomish. They ran the plates and discovered the Nissan pickup had been stolen in Enumclaw. A Honda that had no license plates was following it.
Deputies and Snohomish police officers pursued the two vehicles and turned on their sirens.
Snohomish police stopped the Honda and arrested its driver without incident. He was armed with a .22-caliber handgun, a knife and several shaved keys, which are often used to break into vehicles, Jorgensen said.
The driver of the stolen truck refused to stop and led county deputies on a 15-minute chase, swerving and trying to hit the patrol cars, Jorgensen said.
At Highway 92 and 44th Street NE just north of Lake Stevens, the man crashed his truck and fled on foot into the woods.
More than a dozen officers from Granite Falls, Snohomish, Monroe, Lake Stevens, the sheriff's office and the Washington State Patrol contained the area and participated in a search.
Officers began tracking the man around 9:15 p.m. Dogs were able to follow his track for a while, but lost his scent at a creek, Jorgensen said.
It was a dark, brushy area, and they didn't find the hidden man until they heard a yell around 11:30 p.m.
When the deputies got the man out of the water, he was already unresponsive and severely hypothermic. They gave him CPR and tried to revive him until medics arrived.
Jorgensen said although the man's death was unfortunate, she doubted there would by any special review of the incident, since the man chose to flee and jumped into the creek of his own volition.
"He was driving a stolen car, he refused to stop. Then he crashed the car and got out and ran into the creek on his own," she said. "The three deputies did everything they could to bring him out of it."
You can call Herald Writer Jennifer Langston at 425-339-3452
or send e-mail to langston@heraldnet.com.
Submitted on 03/24/2002
Submitted by:
Paul Wolfe
Reference:
Everett Herald, 23 Mar 2002
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