Rape, car theft suspect arrested in Spokane

Spokane Police arrested a 28-year-old man early Friday after a Colville woman said he raped her in an alley near Pacific Avenue and Fiske Street, and then stole her Pontiac.

The woman’s screams prompted area residents to call police about 1:10 a.m., Spokane Police spokesman Dick Cottam said.

Police took the nearly naked woman, who is in her early 20s, to a hospital, where she was examined and later released.

A few hours later the Pontiac and a rape suspect were located on East Everett when a man called police to say he was concerned about leaving his children at home while he went to work, Cottam said. He said there was a strange car parked across the street and a man asleep behind the wheel.

“Officers checked the car and determined it was the woman’s stolen Pontiac,” Cottam said. “They took the man to the Public Safety Building for an interview.”

Michael Leroy Wright, who police think resides in Stevens County, was booked in Spokane County jail on suspicion of first-degree rape and taking a motor vehicle without the owner’s permission. He’ll be held in jail pending his first court appearance.

The woman told police she met the man during a social gathering at a mutual acquaintance’s home Thursday night in Colville, said Spokane Police Sgt. Brad Arleth. The man asked if anyone could give him a ride to Spokane, and she offered.

The woman, who is unfamiliar with Spokane, told police that the man instructed her to take the alley at Pacific Avenue and Fiske Street, Cottam said.

The man attacked and raped her outside the car in the alley, Arleth said. He fled in her car and she ran to a nearby home and pounded on the door, pleading for help. Those residents called 911, as did others who heard screaming.

A man’s identification was found rolled up in the woman’s clothing, which police spotted sitting on top of a blackberry bush in the alley, Cottam said. It had Wright’s name and photograph.

Wright’s police record includes two felony drug convictions – one in Stevens County and one in Lincoln County.