Spokane7
58°
July 11, 2009 in City
Knife-wielding man arrested after standoff
A 40-year-old Spokane man was arrested early Saturday morning after a two-hour stand-off with police. He faces a first-degree assault charge for attacking his neighbor with a butcher knife.
Spokane police said they received a call from a man living in the 100 block of East Bridgeport who said he’d gone to his neighbor’s house Friday evening to ask a favor, and the neighbor attacked him with a knife. They wrestled, and he received injuries that aren’t life threatening before he escaped and called police.
While police were talking to the victim, Michael Miethe came onto his porch with knife in hand and yelled at officers that they’d have to shoot him. Then he went back into his house.
Police called hostage negotiators and the SWAT unit, and negotiators talked with Miethe for nearly two hours before he came out of the house. The SWAT officers used sponge rounds to subdue him, and he was arrested and taken to a hospital for injuries from the rounds and a possible overdose.
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davidthewhat on July 12 at 1:48 a.m.
It is a fundamental shortcoming of the American system of justice if this man, and the troubled mind that he obviously had at the time of this incident, is not rebuked by society only for his troubled mind and not for his action. This society needs to help him in his troubles not to simply incarcerate him because of his troubles. The current system of justice, in both this state and in the country, is much too uncaring and blighted in respect to mitigating circumstances and there is too much injustice to simply state that one size fits all. It is a matter of compassion, not just so-called justice.