Bellingham police arrest 2 fugitives following vehicle chase, K-9 search
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- Bellingham police arrested two suspects after pursuits and a K-9 search.
- Drug paraphernalia and vehicle theft devices were found in the vehicle.
- Authorities linked both suspects to California warrants.
Two people with fugitive warrants from California were arrested on Thursday by the Bellingham Police Department following multiple pursuits and a search by a K-9 team.
Bellingham Police Lt. Claudia Murphy said officers began pursuing a Hyundai driven by a 40-year-old man from Los Altos, California after he failed to stop at a stop sign and use his turn signal on Creston Way.
He evaded police there and again on I-5, according to Murphy. Officers saw the car get off at the Old Fairhaven Parkway exit and began to patrol the area. They noticed a man sprinting away from a nearby fenced-off area, Murphy said, and found a vehicle partially through the brush and gap in a fence sitting in a parking lot. The airbags were deployed, and officers found drug paraphernalia, mail and shaved keys in the car.
The “totality of the circumstances” led the officers to believe that this was the same person who’d tried to elude them before, Murphy said, and police set up a perimeter. A K-9 team searched the area and found the man hiding in the back of a nearby truck bed.
The 40-year-old was arrested on probable cause of reckless driving and two counts of attempting to elude a police vehicle.
Murphy said further investigation led police to believe that there was a passenger in the car. The K-9 team and an unmanned aerial system aircraft found a 36-year-old Bellingham woman shoeless in a blackberry bush. She was taken to St. Joseph Medical Center for treatment for a fractured vertebra in her spine and later released to be taken to jail on fugitive from justice warrants.
Police discovered the woman had warrants from the Superior Court of San Mateo County for theft of identifying information and prior felony offenses. BPD issued an additional warrant for failure to appear and third-degree malicious mischief.
The 40-year-old had an extraditable warrant from Campbell, California for buying or receiving a stolen vehicle, according to Murphy. BPD also found probable cause for vehicular assault and hit-and-run with injury. Because the two individuals were in a relationship, both of these pending charges were designated as domestic violence.
Murphy said further charges are pending related to stolen mail, making false statements to police, possession of a controlled substance and “perhaps more.” As of Monday at noon, no charges had been filed.