Spokane Man Arrested After Gun Accidentally Fires

Spokane County Sheriff’s deputies arrested a 27-year-old Spokane man Nov. 9 after the pistol he illegally possessed accidentally fired and sent a bullet through the walls of a neighboring apartment.

Franky Lee Dean, of 323 E. Wellesley, was booked on a felony charge of unlawful possession of a firearm. He was also cited for reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor.

Deputy Larry Humphrey was contacted by the assistant manager of an apartment complex at 515 E. Hawthorne. The employee showed the deputy where a bullet had entered and exited apartment walls next to the apartment where Dean had been visiting.

No one was struck by the errant bullet, which lodged in an outside hand railing.

Humphrey contacted the tenant of the apartment from which the bullet was fired and learned Dean’s identity. The deputy eventually recovered a .357-caliber Interarms pistol from beneath a dresser in the apartment.

Dean, a convicted felon, is prohibited from possessing guns. Humphrey arrested him shortly after he left an appointment with his probation officer, who was present when Dean was taken into custody.

Detectives nab woman for fraud

Spokane fraud detectives arrested one of a dozen people being sought for a series of thefts, identity thefts, counterfeiting and stolen checks in the city.

Genine M. Zielke was arrested while she was trying to obtain bail for a man recently arrested by police.

Zielke, 35, was using a counterfeit check and false identification. That information showed her to be another woman who was the victim of a car prowling in which her checks and identification had been stolen, said police spokesman Dick Cottam.

Police had staked out several bail bondsmen’s offices near the county courthouse Nov. 7 and 8. The woman had called several businesses to make appointments to establish bond for the jailed man, but failed to keep the appointments, Cottam said.

Finally, Zielke showed up at a bail bondsman’s office on North Monroe Nov. 8 about 2:45 p.m. and filed out paperwork for the bail. She produced the false identification, then had the paperwork notarized by an office employee.

Fraud Detective Stacey Carr had been sitting in the office, and Detective Craig Brenden had been in a rear office. At that point, the detectives took Zielke into custody without incident. She was booked into jail on fraud charges, but additional counts will be processed against her. Zielke gave her address as 1327 E. Sanson.

Three bikes-built-for-two stolen

Someone broke into a Riverfront Park storage area over the weekend and stole three old-fashioned tandem bicycles.

The bikes could be rented by the hour in the park and were being stored for the winter. They were in a fenced area on North Washington Avenue. A The lock was cut sometime between Nov. 3 and Nov. 7.

The bikes had not been used recently. A park employee said they were not very popular with the public because of their weight and the difficulty in handling them. They are one-speed models with 26-inch wheels; two black, touring-style seats and are painted solid colors: one red, one white and one blue.

Anyone with information on an old tandem bike of these descriptions, newly arrived in their neighborhood, is asked to call Crime Check at 456-2233.