Mail thief tries to escape on kayak

SAMMAMISH, Wash. — A suspected mail thief chose a bizarre getaway vehicle and got caught in the middle of Lake Sammamish.  Now he and a woman are in the King County Jail.

"I just thought it was a kayak theft, a kayak hijacking,” explained Brian Conway, standing with his son Nolan on the edge of their Lake Sammamish dock.

Little did the father-son duo know that the man who hijacked their kayak was wanted for mail theft, and what the pair described as a low-speed pursuit to the middle of Lake Sammamish started with a mailman hot on the trail of a stolen vehicle.

Kerek Edwards confronted the alleged thieves, and police said they ditched a stolen car full of stolen mail in a driveway in the 2900 block of 204 Avenue Northeast in Sammamish early Christmas Eve morning. Neighbors called police, then another neighbor used her car to block theirs and the pair ran through Edwards' backyard.

“At the same time, the mailman starts driving down the driveway at us, literally fishtailing, like the mailman in ‘Funny Farm,’ you know, throwing the mail out,” Edwards said.

The mailman was chasing them, too. We checked jail records and neighbors confirmed it was Jeremy Webb and Desiree Segar who ran into the woods behind Kerek's house.  Police caught her, but he made it down a hill to Brian and Nolan Conway's dock, where he hopped in a kayak without a paddle.  Nolan Conway grabbed another kayak from the garage and gave chase.

“And we got a paddle,” Brian Conway explained. “I think what this poor fellow is going to have a lot of time to think about is if you take the kayak, you've got to take the paddle, too."

“I think he thought I was a sheriff, initially,” Nolan Conway told us.  “He was very apologetic. It was a little sad to be out there. He was so wet and so cold; he was so miserable."

But the neighbors are so grateful this Christmas for a real team effort.

"We've got a great group of neighbors around here that kind of look out for each other,” Edwards concluded.

We took a look at both suspects' criminal records. Webb has nearly 50 charges against him from possessing stolen property to drugs and resisting arrest.  Segar has a handful of theft and drug charges from 2007.

KIRO