Tag: 911

A long mouse tale, fish burglars and more in the Blaine police blotter


Written by | The Bellingham Herald | October 31, 2012

Posted by Caleb Hutton

Text courtesy of the Blaine Police Department, with minor edits for style.

Wednesday, Oct. 24

3:21 p.m. A tavern employee called police mid-afternoon to report a suspicious man in the area had been asked to leave their premises because he appeared to be high. The subject reportedly rode away on a bicycle with no seat. Police intercepted the transient about a block away and found that he was not impaired by drugs or alcohol, but appeared to possibly have minor mental issues. He was not wanted for any warrants, and was asked to pedal with caution on his journey out of town.

4:29 p.m. The 911 call center asked Blaine Police to search out and contact a bunch of boys with a motorcycle who were probably in the area of Sweet Road and the city limits. The dispatchers were tracking a series of calls from a “911-only’ cell phone: The caller would not talk to dispatchers but they could hear boyish chatter and a cycle in the background. A Blaine officer located the group of kids and their adult chaperone. They apologized and terminated the problem by moving the cell phone to a different pocket.

Thursday, Oct. 25

1:05 a.m. A concerned resident called police when they spotted a figure outdoors with a flashlight in the 300 block of E Street. Officers arrived and interrupted masked trespassers who were in the process of stealing fish from an outdoor landscape pond. The suspects were doing their best to dispose of the evidence by consuming it, much to the chagrin of the flashlight-wielding pond owner who was working to reset the breaker switch on his landscape security lighting. In the end the pond was filled with light, but not before the raccoons were filled with fish.

6:20 p.m. Police were dispatched to contact a parent who was reporting her runaway teenage daughter has returned home. An officer met the family and confirmed that the young lady was now physically home. The teen had violated her probation by leaving home without permission, and she was wanted on an juvenile court arrest warrant for an alcohol violation. She
was arrested and booked in to Juvenile Detention.

9:07 p.m. Blaine police were assisted by U.S. Border Patrol agents when they responded to a report of a disorderly person at a restaurant lounge in downtown Blaine. They contacted a belligerent drunk at the business, and learned from witnesses that the stranger had come in to the eatery and threatened to assault an employee for no apparent reason. The drunk directed his confrontational behavior toward the arriving officers as they investigated the incident. The problem was resolved by arresting the 35-year-old Bellingham resident and booking him in to jail for misdemeanor assault, disorderly conduct, public consumption of alcohol and resisting arrest.

Friday, Oct. 26

1:25 p.m. A young man on O’Dell Road was a little more than startled when a large mouse popped up beside him, and fixated on his unexpected visitor. Unfortunately the gent was driving his pickup at the time, and the next thing to pop up was the much larger light pole that he crashed in to while trying to come to grips with the rodent. Man and mouse survived the collision, but the motorist’s desire to exterminate his passenger was overcome by his need to first extinguish his vehicle, because a fire erupted following the wreck. The Blaine officer who arrived at the scene discovered that the truck had careened out of the city limits and in to the county’s jurisdiction before crashing and catching fire, so the final twist of bad luck in the long mouse tale fell to the sheriff’s deputy who had to respond and fit the entire adventure into a traffic collision report.

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Witness explains how she mistook boy with toy gun for man with shotgun


Written by | The Bellingham Herald | June 21, 2012

By Caleb Hutton

A 911 caller said she fractured her foot earlier this week when she ducked to hide from what she believed was a man wielding a shotgun near Carl Cozier Elementary School.

The suspect turned out to be a child toting a toy gun, but as Sara Geballe explained Thursday morning, June 21, she wasn’t the only one who was fooled. She was walking with her son when they saw what appeared to be a full-grown person wearing a bandanna and carrying a long-barrel gun near a gas station on Lakeway Drive.

They ducked out of view of the suspect as soon as possible, and in the process Gebelle injured her foot. When she got it examined later, she found her foot was fractured in three places.

Police swarmed the area and found a boy carrying a toy gun and heading to a swingset at Carl Cozier. An officer radioed that the boy appeared to be “playing cowboy.”

From a distance, Gebelle said, the gunman could have been 15 or 30 years old, or even older, because “it didn’t look like a young child, that’s for sure.”

In light of recent shootings in Seattle, she added, “you never know when somebody’s going to start shooting wildly.”

Gebelle hopes the parents of the kid are more aware of how people might react to seeing someone carrying a gun — fake or not — in public.

Edited Friday evening, June 22, in response to a comment about the third-to-last paragraph.

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