18-hour crime spree nets 25-year term

A man received 25 years in prison Friday after he pleaded guilty earlier this year to an 18-hour crime spree in November 2005 that involved shots by a Washington State Trooper.

Lance Karunaratne, 27, just two weeks ago attempted to withdraw his April guilty plea to charges of first-degree robbery, first-degree kidnapping, two counts of first-degree assault, second-degree robbery and first-degree criminal trespassing.

However, Superior Court Judge Sam Cozza refused Karunaratne’s request to withdraw the plea.

Karunaratne was arrested in 2005 along with two other suspects, Christopher F. Olofson and Andrey Fedin. They both pleaded guilty to lesser charges and agreed to testify against Karunaratne, who had moved to the Spokane area from California a month prior to his arrest.

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 in 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.”

But law enforcement officials had Karunaratne evaluated for mental illness at Eastern State Hospital, which determined he was faking the symptoms of mental illness.

Deputy Prosecutor Larry Steinmetz was seeking 23-and-a-half years, but Judge Cozza – who said the crime spree was “totally senseless” and told the defendant he was lucky that nobody got killed – gave Karunaratne an extra two years.