The Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney decided Pierce County Council candidate Josh Harris acted in lawful self-defense when he shot a homeless man driving an SUV at him outside a Tacoma encampment, according to a memo sent to investigators Friday.
Prosecutors will charge the man Harris shot, Scott R. Stacy, with second-degree assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly driving the car at Harris on May 30, the memo to the Pierce County Sheriff's Department said.
Prosecuting Attorney Mary Robnett wrote that Harris' account of the speeding car driving toward him was corroborated by a security guard, three Tacoma police officers, body-worn camera footage and two men he was with to recover allegedly stolen property. Only Harris and the two people he was with witnessed the shots fired.
It appears police closed the investigation without Stacy's wildly differing account of the May 30 shooting.
Statements from Harris, who is running as a Republican on a law-and-order platform, have dominated the public narrative as investigating law enforcement officials declined to answer questions about the episode or subsequent investigation.
And what was billed as an outside probe by Kitsap County detectives — at the request of Prosecuting Attorney Mary Robnett due to Harris' ties to Tacoma police — involved more review than independent fact-finding. Meanwhile, Kitsap and Tacoma police officials have each pointed to the other agency as the lead investigative body in declining questions.
Stacy's claims are an explosive contradiction of prior law enforcement descriptions of the incident, but he said investigators never interviewed him. He's continued to live at the encampment where Harris shot him following a Metro Parks Tacoma sweep.
He alleges a Tacoma officer shot him with his hands up and car stopped about 20 feet short of at least half a dozen police and Harris standing beyond concrete barriers. He also says Harris was standing up an embankment rather than directly in front of his car.
Stacy remained steadfast in his story during multiple interviews with The News Tribune. Dispatch audio and charging documents indicate three officers were in the area when Harris fired.
Department spokesperson Wendy Haddow said no officers fired and the shooting did not involve police. She declined to say how many officers responded after Kitsap County detectives took over the investigation and South Sound 911 has not released dispatch computer logs. The News Tribune also requested body-worn camera footage in addition to the entire investigative file from law enforcement.
Despite multiple other witnesses at the scene, including a security guard contracted by Metro Parks Tacoma, Harris' story undergirded the initial Tacoma police narrative. Robnett wrote in her memo to investigators that witness interviews corroborated his account. Responding officers said they were behind a bend when Harris claims he fired in self-defense with Stacy's Honda CR-V hurtling toward and then crashing into a cement block in front of him.
Robnett's memo, citing witness interviews, says Stacy's car slid to a stop and Harris stopped shooting.
Harris' account was the foundation of the second-degree assault with a deadly weapon charge Pierce County prosecutors filed against Stacy while he was in the hospital with gunshot wounds to the head and fingers. But prosecutors dropped the case the next day after Robnett asked Kitsap County to take over because the Tacoma police officer's union endorsed Harris' campaign.
The prosecutor's office backtracked an initial claim that Harris had purchased suites at Rainiers games for union members but maintained there was still "at least the appearance of a conflict of interest in having TPD investigate this incident," spokesperson Adam Faber wrote in an email.
Harris told The News Tribune he thought the prosecutor's office mixed him up with another local business owner.
But he has other ties to Tacoma police: his brother is a department chaplain and he previously made headlines for paying to bail out three Tacoma police officers charged in the killing of Manuel Ellis.
The Kitsap County Sheriff's Office failed to answer any questions about the incident or the logistics of the investigation while it was in its detective's hands, then referred all comment to Tacoma police as the "lead agency" after sending the case to Pierce County prosecutors this week. Tacoma police have referred all additional questions to the prosecutor's office.
The "outside investigation" Robnett called for primarily consisted of Kitsap County detectives reviewing Tacoma police reports. Faber said in an email earlier this week that much of the investigation was already completed by Tacoma police and Kitsap detectives conducted some follow-up and interviews. The prosecutor's office is not aware of any attempts by Kitsap County to interview Stacy.
Kitsap County detectives re-interviewed Harris about a month ago, he said.
Stacy said neither Tacoma police nor Kitsap County detectives contacted him after telling arresting officers he wanted an attorney present.
"Your review and compilation of evidence along with your independent witness interviews have given me confidence that the investigation is thorough and independent," Robnett wrote in her memo to Kitsap County.
Stacy's account of encampment shooting
The encampment near Cheney Stadium where Scott Stacy lives is normally dead quiet, he told The News Tribune during a video interview in June. So he jolted awake when he heard a ruckus outside of his tent in the late afternoon of May 30.
First, he went to check on his friend named Robin, who lived farther into the wooded encampment. She asked The News Tribune not to use her last name because some people in her community don't know she is homeless.
Robin told Stacy that Harris had taken away some kegs and a dolly, which is what woke Stacy up when Harris rolled it up the hill. Stacy said he took the kegs out of the trash. Both he and Robin said they didn't have any knowledge the dolly was stolen.
After that, Stacy told The News Tribune he drove through a thicket back toward his tent. That's where he first saw a Tacoma police officer armed with a rifle who told him to stop. Harris also said one of the officers had a rifle.
Police reports showed officers were looking for the Honda CR-V Stacy was driving, which was reported stolen, after Harris showed them photos. Stacy told The News Tribune he was borrowing it from a friend and it wasn't stolen.
After encountering the officer, Stacy said he continued driving around a bend in the trail to exit the encampment but stopped in his tracks when he saw at least half a dozen police lining the edge of the Boy Scouts parking lot off of South 19th Street. He said he watched Harris and two people with him run up an embankment from where the officers were.
A line of concrete barriers was blocking the path to the parking lot, so Stacy said he stopped about 20 feet short and raised his hands to surrender.
"As soon as my hands hit the steering wheel, all I heard was, 'Put the gun down,' and he fired," Stacy said. "I didn't have a gun. I didn't have any weapon at all."
Stacy said he threw his car into reverse and ducked under the dashboard to avoid the gunfire. He continued driving back to the area where Robin was living and escaped out a hidden exit onto the Scott Pierson Trail near Cheney Stadium, he told the TNT.
Robin said that Stacy was covered in blood as he drove by and the car he was driving had nine bullet holes in the windshield.
"If you guys got pictures of the vehicle, you guys would see that those were kill shots," said Stacy, who counted about a dozen bullet holes in the car after dumping it near South Washington Street and South 31st Street.
Stacy said he pulled one bullet out of his forehead immediately and that another was emerging from underneath his skin. He said a gunshot also went through his finger when it was on the steering wheel.
"I was no threat," he said. "And everybody keeps saying Josh Harris is the one that shot me, man. But it was the Tacoma Police Department. I mean, hands down, not ever gonna forget that."
Stacy said Harris may have shot him during the incident but only saw a police officer fire. He acknowledges his account may be hard to believe but said he wants to "expose this because they're going to do it to somebody else."
"I'm not making up my story," he told The News Tribune during a phone call this week.
Metro Parks Tacoma cleared the part of the encampment where Robin lived at the end of June. Officials planned to install additional barriers at entrances to keep people out of the area and prevent "vigilante-type" incidents, said Metro Parks natural resources coordinator Mary Anderson.
Stacy had a truck parked at that site as well but said he moved deeper into the wooded area onto non-Metro Parks land following the sweep.
Harris sticks by story in police narrative
Harris tells things differently.
He told The News Tribune he visited the encampment a week earlier and posted photos of items on social media that he thought might be stolen. One person told Harris his truck canopy was there and they agreed to meet on May 30 to retrieve it. Three people showed up to join Harris.
Robin, the woman living at the encampment, told Harris that Stacy had threatened him and his family after they arrived, Harris said. He also sent photos of the SUV Stacy later drove to police.
Stacy denies threatening Harris. He said he had never met him but knew of him because Harris posted photos of homeless encampments he lived at multiple times asking if any items were stolen. Harris said he also has never talked to Stacy but knows of him due to allegations of property crime in the area.
Three Tacoma police officers were dispatched around 4:30 p.m. following Harris' report and entered the encampment to find the SUV, according to charging documents. An officer who was keeping watch said he yelled for Stacy to stop as he drove by in the car.
Harris said he thought he saw a gun in Stacy's hand and fired off two sets of shots as the SUV bore down on him going at least 40 mph. He said he was in between two cement blocks and his truck was boxing him in because he was trying to tow one back into place.
"There was nowhere to run," he told The News Tribune.
Once the SUV hit one of the concrete barriers, its wheels kept churning and Harris said he jumped behind his truck. Two witnesses told investigators the car skidded to a halt after Harris fired, according to Robnett's memo.
A witness said," One of us was getting run over" if Harris didn't fire.
Then the SUV went into reverse and officers made their way up the hill, Harris said.
Harris said no one else fired a weapon and that the only police officers at the scene at the time were in the encampment. Robnett's memo says one of the men with Harris drew his gun but did not shoot.
Police seized Harris' gun as evidence and have not returned it, he said. Stacy said he does not own a weapon because he is a convicted felon.
Police did not list any damage to the front of the car in charging documents for Stacy's since-dismissed case. He has not been charged in connection to the SUV being reported stolen.
The memo from Robnett, the prosecuting attorney, did not say when assault charges would be formally filed against Stacy.
Harris has a prior felony, which includes theft and insurance fraud. He regained gun ownership rights in 2013.
"If the vehicle had changed direction at all, it would have hit one of the other people standing in the parking lot," Robnett concluded in her memo. "The witnesses who saw and heard these events reported that if Harris had not fired his gun, someone would have been hit and/or killed by the vehicle
