Suspect says turning self in proved difficult

EVERETT – Larry Donnell Baker says he tried to turn himself in for a warrant in a rape case, but a jail receptionist told him to go to the Sheriff’s Office instead.

When he went to the Sheriff’s Office, he says, the receptionist there told him to go to the police station.

That’s where he was headed Wednesday, he says, accompanied by his mother and brother, when he was suddenly ordered to the ground at gunpoint by a sheriff’s detective – who was about to give a television news interview on the manhunt for Baker.

A spokeswoman for the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office questioned his account, but his mother and brother supported his story to the Herald of Everett. County corrections chief Steve Thompson also told the newspaper that jail procedures will likely be changed and other policies also are under scrutiny because of the case.

Baker, 35, of Everett, was arrested Sept. 26 for investigation in the rape of a 17-year-old girl who said she was grabbed by a man wielding a box cutter. Bail was set at $25,000, and Baker was released after paying a bonding company $2,500.

He was linked to the case by DNA evidence, which also matched him to an unsolved rape in 2004 in Waterloo, Iowa.

Baker was accused Tuesday of first-degree rape in a warrant that set bail at $1 million. Deputies said they had been unable to find him because he had recently moved out of his apartment.

Baker went to the jail after his brother, Mike Bruce, told him of the warrant. Their mother, Lesha Bruce, said she told county Detective Chris Leyda on Wednesday she would find Baker and get him to turn himself in.

Bruce said he, his brother and mother went from the jail to the Sheriff’s Office as directed by the jail receptionist. There, Bruce said, the receptionist told them to go to the Everett Police Department.

On their way, they walked near Leyda, who was about to be interviewed by a reporter outside the county government complex on the search for Baker. Leyda drew his gun, arrested Baker, handcuffed him and booked him into jail.

Thompson said the receptionist followed jail policy by sending Baker to the Sheriff’s Office because he didn’t have identification or a court order. In the future, he said, people who want to surrender may be asked to wait in the lobby while the appropriate law enforcement agency is contacted.

Caution is important because some people have posed as others being sought on warrants or other court orders, Thompson said.

Sheriff’s spokeswoman Rebecca Hover questioned Baker’s account.

“Nobody came in and identified themselves as Larry Baker,” Hover said, “so that’s not an effort to turn themselves in.”

A man approached a sheriff’s receptionist Wednesday but neither gave his name nor stated his business before leaving, nor did a woman identify herself when she came in and asked how someone would surrender to custody, Hover said.

“We don’t know who it was who came in,” Hover said. “(Baker) didn’t come in here and say he wanted to turn himself in. That’s not trying to turn yourself in. That doesn’t cut it.”