Crime & Safety
Officer on Leave After Shooting Enumclaw Woman
Standard procedures being followed after 6-hour standoff.
A King County sheriff's deputy is on administrative leave after shooting an Enumclaw woman during a six-hour standoff Thursday, spokesman John Urquardt said Monday.
The deputy will not be named until the leave ends after an investigation by the sheriff's office's Shooting Review Board. And the woman will not be named unless she is charged, which Urquardt said could happen at a later date. All of those procedures are standard following such an incident, he added.
The standoff ended when the woman reportedly raised a weapon toward a SWAT officer searching a house in rural Enumclaw. The deputy fired at least once, injuring the 43-year-old woman. She was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle with non-life threatening injuries.
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The 42-year-old deputy has been with the sheriff’s office for 16 years.
Deputies arrived at a house in the 37300 block of 244th Avenue Southeast and tried talking to the woman when a shotgun blast rang out.
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The Sheriff's Office SWAT Team and negotiators were called out and tried to talk to the woman all afternoon. The SWAT team finally entered the home and was unable to find the woman, until a deputy dropped down into the home’s crawl space and was confronted by the woman.
The deputy fired after the woman refused to drop the shotgun despite several commands.
