Loath to argue in front of an audience, he beat an onlooker with a pipe, police say

SPANAWAY, Wash. — The man sped into a Spanaway trailer park Saturday in his yellow Ford Mustang arguing with the person in his passenger seat.

When the car stopped, he looked over at a neighbor standing nearby and yelled, “Do you want some popcorn?”

The neighbor said he wasn’t listening to the argument. For that, the man hit him in the head with a metal pipe, Pierce County prosecutors say.

The University Place man was arraigned Wednesday in Pierce County Superior Court on his 36th birthday on one count of second-degree assault, one count of fourth-degree assault and two counts of felony harassment. His bail was set at $75,000.

According to charging documents:

The man was speeding through the trailer park in the 200 block of 198th Street Court East in his Mustang on their way to visit some friends there. He and his friend started to argue, drawing the attention of a neighbor standing a couple trailers down.

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The man looked at the neighbor and his son and said “Do you want some popcorn?” insinuating that they were watching the argument as a spectacle.

The neighbor said he wasn’t watching the argument, but the man sprinted over and punched him in the face. The neighbor’s son, a juvenile, tried to calm tensions, but the man hit him in the face, too.

As the man and the neighbor fought, the man was able to get his hand on a metal pipe and hit the neighbor in the head with it. The neighbor wrested the pipe from the man, then struck him in the head.

“I’ve got something for you,” the man said before running to the trunk of his car.

The neighbor and his son fled into their home and didn’t see that the man had returned with a gun. The man then threatened to kill two of the people who witnessed the fight.

The neighbor called 911, and the man was arrested nearby with a head wound. He told Pierce County sheriff’s deputies he wouldn’t talk with them without a lawyer.

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