A Vancouver man who allegedly sped away from a Vancouver police officer and struck his patrol vehicle made a first court appearance Monday.
Jerry Sakkan, 27, appeared in Clark County Superior Court on suspicion of first-degree assault and attempting to elude police. Judge Robert A. Lewis set bail at $100,000, according to court records.
An officer had stopped around 8:30 a.m. Thursday to speak with a man who was sitting in the driver’s seat of a Kia SUV parked at an apartment complex in the 3000 block of Northeast 109th Avenue in Vancouver, according to a Vancouver police press release.
The man started the SUV and sped away while the officer was outside his vehicle, according to emergency radio traffic monitored at The Columbian. The driver hit and damaged the officer’s vehicle in the process, police said.
The officer lost sight of the fleeing vehicle around Northeast 112th Avenue and Burton Road after attempting to follow him, according to scanner traffic.
Officers with the Neighborhood Response Team and Safe Streets Task Force located the Kia around 6:15 p.m. near Northeast 127th Street, according to a news release. After police converged on the vehicle, the man crashed into two Vancouver police vehicles at speeds of more than 40 mph, according to an affidavit of probable cause.
“Sakkan had several other avenues of escape, but chose to drive toward officers to inflict great bodily harm,” the affidavit reads.
The Kia “sustained flat tires after striking a curb, and (a) short pursuit ended when the suspect tried to flee on foot,” the news release said. Sakkan was arrested a short distance away and booked into the Clark County Jail.
He was arrested on several felony warrants on top of the new charges. Sakkan is flagged by the state Department of Corrections as “high violent” and is known as a gang member, according to the affidavit.
An arraignment has been scheduled for Friday.
