Sheriff’s deputies say man stabbed himself in the chest to avoid jail

Spokane County Sheriff’s deputies say a man with active arrest warrants repeatedly stabbed himself in the chest Sunday afternoon with a large knife to escape going back to jail.

The man, who was hospitalized but not arrested, was sleeping in a car with a woman in the 5400 block of E. Mercer Lane southeast of Mead, when at about 1:45 p.m., deputies Daryl Smith and Jerry Moffett knocked on a window and confronted the two, said Cpl. Mark Gregory, spokesman for the sheriff’s office, in a news release.

While the woman talked to Smith and Moffett, the man apparently pretended to be asleep, Gregory said. Once awake, he reportedly gave the deputies a false identity and when confronted, admitted to lying because he had an active warrant for his arrest.

“I hate jail,” he told them, according to the news release.

When asked to exit the vehicle, Gregory said the man instead reached for a large knife under his seat and “quickly and forcefully plunged it into his chest three times.”

Smith and Moffett reached for the driver’s window and quickly pulled the woman away from the car. Deputy Smith pepper-sprayed the man in the face, causing him to drop the knife.

Gregory said deputies were able to close the wounds on his chest before he was transported by ambulance to a local hospital. Due to his current medical condition, deputies opted not to arrest him.