‘You’re gonna get a dog’: Thurston County Sheriff chase leads to chaotic arrest

A police chase of an allegedly speeding work truck with its headlights off culminated late Friday night in a chaotic arrest of the driver outside a residential home off Steilacoom Road in Thurston County.

Writing on his Facebook page around 2:20 a.m. on August 2, Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders said he followed the truck after the driver failed to pull over. According to Sanders’ statement, once in the driveway, the suspect exited the vehicle and “tried to run” into the house, threw “what smelled like sweet liquor” in his face, resisted arrest and “grabbed ahold of my throat.” Sanders attempted to use a taser, he said, but it didn’t deploy, which led to a “fight” and a K9 dog biting the suspect on the ear.

The incident began around 11 p.m. Friday night at Steilacoom Road and Pacific Avenue Southeast, with the man handcuffed and on the ground about eight minutes later.

The suspect was taken to a nearby hospital for medical treatment. The Sheriff’s Office obtained a warrant to gather blood samples, Sanders said in his post. The man was booked into Thurston County Jail on suspicion of reckless driving, driving under the influence, failure to obey an officer signaling a traffic stop, obstruction, resisting arrest and felony assault on a police officer. He was also driving on a suspended license, Sanders said.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Monday, the sheriff confirmed.

According to Sanders’ Facebook post, the family told sheriff deputies that they had “tried to give the suspect a ride home from an event but he refused.” He did not have permission to drive the vehicle, which they use for their family’s business, Sanders said they explained.

Sanders has been an outspoken critic of Washington state laws that critics say has limited police from pursuing suspects on the road. An anonymous complaint filed with the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability in February claimed that Sanders “regularly patrols the roads at night himself looking for potential pursuits,” Fox 13 Seattle reported.

The sheriff has defended the department’s approach, telling Fox 13, “When people are saying, ‘It’s your fault. You guys are killing people,’ I 100% could not disagree more. The people who are killing people in these car chases, in these DUI crashes, in these high-speed crashes, when there isn’t a cop behind them. They’re sitting in jail right now facing pending murder charges.”

Just before 5 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 1, the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office warned on Facebook of a “DUI emphasis” that night. Extra deputies would be on the roads, the post read, “focusing on DUI enforcement.”

Thurston Sheriff arrests DUI suspect on video

Sanders wrote that he initially saw the truck traveling 53 miles per hour in a 35-mile-per-hour zone on Steilacoom Road. The truck “nearly rear ended” another vehicle and passed it in a no-pass zone, according to the sheriff, “then sped off.”

The sheriff shared the statement along with 5 minutes and 30 seconds of dashcam and bodycam footage.

As the video begins, the truck can be seen traveling westbound on Steilacoom Road Southeast, nearing Lacey. The sheriff’s blue-and-red police lights are visible around the police car but sirens cannot be heard at this point in the footage, which is common during a traffic stop, Sanders said in a phone call Saturday afternoon. The truck continues through a green traffic light and then a roundabout, at which point Sanders appears to click on the police sirens for a couple of seconds. Sanders can be heard radioing to dispatch that the driver, now traveling at 25 miles per hour, has not pulled over. He then turns on the police car’s sirens.

After around 2 minutes and 30 seconds, and 1.5 miles, the truck pulls into a driveway in a residential neighborhood off Clearbook Drive. Sanders exits his police car and from the street calls out to the suspect: “You are under arrest. Drop the drink. Put your hands up.”

The suspect appears to open the driver door of the truck again, as Sanders shouts, “Do not get back in your car. Hey! Listen to instructions. Walk back to me now.”

The man can be heard saying, “This is private property.”

Sanders then approaches the driveway. In an interview, he added that “everything in the textbook,” including no lights and speeding but slowing down when a police car shows up, indicated impaired driving. An arrest would be more challenging if the suspect entered the house, he continued. “My big thing was, ‘Do not let him get inside the house.’”

Bodycam footage appears to show the suspect walking toward the front door, a blue cup in his hand. Sanders appears to grab the man’s arm, and the video blurs a bit as a tussle ensues.

It’s difficult to tell in the video what happens to the drink. Sanders told The Olympian that the man had a hold of the collar and shoulders of his vest and tossed the drink as he attempted to apprehend him.

In his Facebook post, Sanders said the suspect “doused me in the face and eyes with what smelled like sweet liquor, at which point a fight ensued,” adding that in “the first portion of the fight I wasn’t able to see clearly.”

As the two appear to wrestle for a few seconds, the suspect is then seen leaning against the garage. Sanders, speaking into his radio, says “Fighting 1” and slaps the man in the face. Sanders told The Olympian that he slapped him in part because they were in “really tight quarters” between the garage and another parked car in the driveway.

The man asks, “Why you punch me? Look at this guy, he’s punching me. I’m not doing nothing, I’m not doing nothing. What are you doing, bro?”

According to Sanders, “The suspect grabbed ahold of my vest, turning my radio off and ripping my lapel mic off my vest. At one point, the suspect grabbed ahold of my throat.”

Sanders then steps back and pulls out his taser. It appears to fail. “Let go!” Sanders yells, standing several feet from the suspect.

It’s not clear in the video where the suspect reaches for the sheriff’s throat. Sanders said by phone that it happened as the man is first pinned against the garage.

As Sanders approaches the man after the taser fails, the suspect appears to twist his arm out of the sheriff’s grasp.

“You’re gonna get a dog — stop,” Sanders says. The suspect backs away. As other police cars appear to arrive in the street, Sanders calls out to them, saying they are near the garage. The suspect steps toward the front door and seems to be speaking to someone not visible in the video.

In his statement, Sanders wrote, “The suspect continued to fight as K9 Asher arrived, and K9 Asher bit him on the ear. Once the suspect was bitten, he surrendered.” A neighbor assisted him in pinning the suspect to the ground, Sanders added.

In the video, Sanders’ arm can be seen reaching for the side of the man’s neck, eventually pushing him to the ground. “The only thing I could grab was the back of his neck,” Sanders explained by phone, describing it as a standard defensive training tactic. “He was sweaty.”

A dog can be heard barking and then the suspect touches his ear, which the video reveals around the 5:20 mark with blood droplets on the cement.

“He bit me,” the man says of the dog, speaking again to the person who had emerged from the house. He asks several times in the video if the altercation is being recorded. A woman’s distraught voice is audible in the background.

“Shut up,” Sanders replies as the suspect lies, now in handcuffs, on the ground. Speaking to the woman, Sanders says, “Go back inside the house. He tried to [expletive] strangle me. Get the [expletive] back inside your house.”

The woman appears to say, “I’ve seen the whole thing.”

Sanders told The Olympian that the family member was “telling the suspect to stop” and to listen to the sheriff.

At the end of the video, the suspect is shown lying on his stomach in handcuffs. He alludes to “the recording” again and says to the sheriff, “You’re weak.”

The Sheriff’s Office decided to not impound the truck, Sanders ended his Facebook post, because “the family needed the truck to earn their living.”

“All things considered, this wasn’t a fight where there were a bunch of punches thrown; I never kicked him,” Sanders said by phone. “Most DUIs are cooperative,” he added.

This story was originally published August 2, 2025 at 3:37 PM.