A man sneaked into the secured entryway to the Clark County Jail campus, pulled out a pellet gun and put it to his own head Wednesday evening, the Clark County Sheriff’s Office said.
The man, later identified as Jaison Teragouchi, 53, entered the jail’s entryway at about 8 p.m. after the security doors rolled up to allow a police car to enter, officials said. A “brief standoff” followed as a deputy, believing the man to be suicidal, tried to talk to him. Teragouchi then bolted from the jail grounds and the security doors were closed.
Teragouchi, still holding the gun to his head, hopped onto an ebike and raced through downtown Vancouver, with police in armored vehicles in pursuit. During the chase, officials sent out a shelter-in-place notice to people within a half-mile radius of the 4300 block of Northeast 26th Court.
The Southwest Washington SWAT team, with help from police crisis negotiators, eventually took Teragouchi into custody after he had turned onto the Burnt Bridge Creek Trail. That’s when they learned that the weapon the man had was a pellet gun.
Teragouchi – who has a 2011 conviction for assault, court records show – was evaluated at a local hospital before being booked into the jail on a charge of possession of contraband (dangerous weapon) inside a correctional institution.
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