Wire theft did $30,000 in damage at local school’s football field, police report says

Editor’s note: This blotter is compiled from recent Gig Harbor police reports.

Expensive, unwelcome surprise after winter break

Staff at Gig Harbor High School found an expensive surprise when school resumed after winter break.

An officer from the Gig Harbor Police Department responded to the high school Jan. 4 for a reported “theft of wires at an electrical box near the football field,” according to the police report.

Patrick Gillespie, director of facilities for the Peninsula School District, told police the electrical box was checked on Dec. 15, before the school district’s winter break. It had no damage then.

On Jan. 4, Gillespie was checking the school grounds and noticed the electrical box was open and that underground wires had been pulled up and cut, the report said.

“There were several locations near the football field where wires were cut,” according to the report.

Gillespie had no idea who could have done this and there aren’t surveillance cameras in the area, the report said.

Gillespie estimated the cost of the damage to be around $30,000, the report said.

Officers visit same same house 3 times

The Gig Harbor Police Department responded to a verbal domestic disturbance on Jan. 7.

In the call to dispatchers, a woman stated her sister was refusing to leave her father’s house and was under the influence of methamphetamine, according to the report.

When an officer arrived the woman would not leave her bedroom and refused help from law enforcement, the report said.

“She had no immediate concerns for involuntary committal and the family was given information on how to obtain a court order,” the report said.

The officer left around 3 p.m. and returned two hours later.

This time the woman reported that her sister was arguing with their father, she could smell alcohol coming from her sister’s breath, and that her sister destroyed the bedroom, according to the report.

The officer saw the woman climbing out of a window and she told the officer she did not want law enforcement assistance, the report said.

The family told her to leave the residence and not return. The woman left voluntarily with some of her belongings.

Two hours later she returned and attempted to break in through the same window, banging on the front door, yelling that she wanted back in, the report said.

For a third time, two officers returned to the residence after midnight.

The woman tried to flee and attempted to kick an officer.

The officers took the woman to the Kitsap County Jail to be booked on suspicion of resisting arrest and for an existing bench warrant for malicious mischief.

“I was periodically watching the woman on a black and white small monitor from the front passenger seat,” one officer said in the report. “I heard the woman hit the cage and looked at the monitor. She had her hair in her face and was screaming at us. After a while, she moved her hair away and I saw a dark spot on her check that I thought was a clump of hair.”

When they arrived at the jail, the officer discovered the woman was bleeding from her face.

They believed she had headbutted the cage.

Officers transported the woman to St. Anthony’s Hospital and released her to the care of the hospital’s staff.

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