Man admits 18-hour rampage
A man pleaded guilty Tuesday to an 18-hour crime spree in November 2005 that involved kidnapping, robbing and assaulting a list of victims including a pregnant woman, a good Samaritan and a Washington State Patrol trooper.
Lance Karunaratne, 27, pleaded guilty in Spokane County Superior Court to residential burglary, first-degree robbery, first-degree kidnapping, two counts of first-degree assault, second-degree robbery and first-degree criminal trespassing. A sentencing date has not yet been set.
Since the prison terms of several of the most serious offenses must run consecutively, Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor Larry Steinmetz agreed to seek a sentence of 282 months, or 23 1/2 years.
Defense attorney Marla Polin said that sentence will be reduced by the year and a half Karunaratne has been incarcerated in the Spokane County Jail awaiting trial.
Karunaratne was arrested in November along with two other suspects, 19-year-old Christopher F. Olofson and 18-year-old Andrey Fedin. They both pleaded to lesser charges and agreed to testify against Karunaratne, who had moved to the Spokane area from California just a month prior to his arrest, Polin said
Still unclear, though, is what prompted the crime spree.
According to court records, investigators believe Karunaratne stole four vehicles, including one at knifepoint, and rammed a Washington State Patrol trooper’s vehicle nearly head-on and pushed it about 75 feet into a field.
Trooper Jim Hill had just investigated the Nov. 7, 2005, rollover crash of one of the stolen vehicles near U.S. Highway 195 and Stentz Road. After leaving that scene, Hill drove to the area of Excelsior Road and U.S. 195 where he spotted a red 1994 Jeep Cherokee that had been reported stolen.
Hill was turning east to investigate when his car was struck by the Cherokee and pushed into a field. Hill fired gunshots as the three suspects approached his vehicle.
Karunaratne, in a jailhouse interview with The Spokesman-Review on Nov. 9, 2005, admitted that he was driving the stolen 1994 Jeep Cherokee but claimed he didn’t know he had rammed an unmarked police car.
He said in the interview that he and the other two suspects saw the copper-colored car block the road. The driver then started firing shots at them.
“We had no way to know. They didn’t show their badges. They just started shooting. So we drove at them,” Karunaratne said. “If we knew they were cops, we would have got out and ran. We thought they were, like, trying to ambush us the way they did it.”
But in his statement to police, Olofson contradicted Karunaratne’s account. Olofson told a sheriff’s detective that they all saw the car turn onto Excelsior.
“Lance believed the vehicle was a police vehicle,” Detective Bill Francis wrote in court records. “Olofson stated at this point Lance, who was driving the red Jeep, turned on the lights, accelerated and rammed into the police vehicle.”
Karunaratne said Hill’s bullets almost hit him and Olofson and Fedin, whom he met just a few days earlier.
“He shot at least a whole clip. He was just shooting. That’s why we ran,” Karunaratne said in the interview. Hill “would have killed somebody if he knew how to shoot straight.”
When asked in the jailhouse interview what sparked the alleged crime spree, Karunaratne said: “I think I’m going crazy or something.”
While the sentence should keep Karunaratne in prison until he’s about 49, it could have been worse had the case gone to trial, Polin said.
The prosecution could have sought an exceptional sentence based on the serious nature of the crimes. If a jury agreed, “the state could have asked for any sentence they deemed appropriate,” Polin said.
An additional four years in prison were dropped because the state agreed not to pursue weapons enhancements. It was alleged that Karunaratne used a vehicle as a deadly weapon in both assault charges, she said.
“He did get a very good reduction in what he was facing,” Polin said.