Hit-and-run suspect told police he was ‘having a bad trip’

A man accused of ramming six cars and attempting to jump on others in downtown Spokane Monday afternoon told police he was “having a bad trip.”

David Wyman, 33, was charged Tuesday with six counts of felony hit and run and driving while under the influence of drugs. Superior Court Judge James Triplet set bond at $25,000.

Spokane police officers believe an “unknown substance” might have influenced the man to steal a car in Wellpinit and then drive it northbound between two lanes of Lincoln Avenue traffic in downtown Spokane, hitting at least six vehicles and injuring some drivers, police wrote in court documents.

Witnesses followed the 33-year-old as he fled the stolen SUV eastbound on Main Avenue. Court documents say he at one point tried to grab onto the storage racks of a moving SUV and “ride on the outside of the vehicle.”

Responding officers tracked Wyman to Post Street and Main Avenue, where he was “sweating profusely” and appeared “extremely disoriented,” court documents state. He made an apparently unsolicited statement to the officers that he was “having a bad trip” and “having a bad reaction to drugs.”

Wyman has a felony history in Spokane County, including a similar incident in 2002, when he was 18. According to Spokesman-Review archives, Wyman led Spokane County sheriff’s deputies on a chase through several red lights on Division Street near Lyons Avenue, where he eventually rammed into a deputy’s car, which pushed it into another unmarked patrol car.

A third patrol car was damaged when it struck the 1994 Ford Explorer Wyman was driving.