A 911 call:  assault in progress, Kah Tai Park.  On their way police listen to an open line, a second call originating from inside the park.  A man screams for help.  Then another voice comes on and shouts, “Give me that phone!” The line goes dead.

A jogger who made the 911 call meets the officers at a park entrance.  The attack was underway when he ran past.  It was underway while he called and waited.  He points.  They can see the attack still underway.  A shirtless man  kicks a person on the ground.  Another man, a large man, throws punches.

Officers stop the attack.  The victim is 60 years old.   Blood covers his face and head.  He is choking on it.  An eye is swollen shut.  Blood soaks the ground around him.

This is the heart of Port Townsend, Washington.  Wednesday, June 6, 2018.  Just before 3 in the afternoon.

The assailants turn their fury on police.  Handcuffed, they can hurl only profanity and threats.  Heavily intoxicated and hard to understand, they complain about being arrested.  In between threatening and resisting the officers, they justify their violence.  They were serving “street justice” on a “rapist, pedophile.”

They also helped themselves to the man’s backpack and cell phone.

The “alleged” assailants, William Anthony Ingalsbe, 30, and John Rayford Fleming, 33, were arrested on charges of robbery 1st degree, assault 2nd degree, intimidating a public servant and obstructing a law enforcement officer.

Ingalsbe and Fleming are half the victim’s age.  Ingalsbe is taller and outweighs the victim by seventy pounds.

The attackers wear his blood on their shirts, pants, shoes.

“KNOWN TRANSIENTS”

News reports have described Fleming and Ingalsbe as “known transients.”  Their story is not much different from the other “known transients” on Port Townsend’s streets who occupy much of our police department’s time and make life difficult for businesses, their employees and customers.  We started looking into this story before another act of extreme violence on our streets occurred.  That incident, on July 1 in downtown Port Townsend, left one suffering terrible stab wounds and another “known transient” in jail on attempted murder charges.  (A booking error listed the charge as murder and we had initially reflected that error in this story).

In a previous report, we wrote about a young man presumed to be dead in Kah Tai Park.  Click “Lights in the Darkness” to read that story.

The following account of the brief time Ingalsbe and Fleming have been in Port Townsend comes from police reports and court records. Every incident and charge of wrongdoing is technically “alleged,” though documented in public records.

Ingalsbe had 34 contacts with police in less than a year before he “died” and returned to life in a burst of violence. Fleming has had 17 contacts with police since he arrived in Port Townsend three months ago.

John Rayford Fleming

Fleming first appears in Port Townsend police records in March of this year. He had been harassing staff and threw a wooden pallet down the stairs at a Water Street business. He apparently arrived here from Montesano, WA, where there were reported to be outstanding warrants. Fleming was issued a “no trespass” warning to stay away from that business for one year. Violation would result in a citation. Fleming expressed his attitude by refusing to sign the “no trespass” notice.

The next night he was found illegally sleeping in Kah Tai Park. Police were now able to confirm that Fleming had multiple warrants from out-of-county and out-of-state. Those jurisdictions, however were content to let Port Townsend have him. He ignored a warning against sleeping in the park. He was back the next night and told if it happened again he would be cited for trespass.

Five days later police found him and another man drinking in the park. Fleming verbally abused police and was banned from the Kah Tai for 90 days. That night he was found sleeping in his own vomit outside a Sims Way business.

A few days after that he went to sleep inside a business on Sims Way and became belligerent when awakened. He was “issued a trespass” and banned from that business.

Police saw him shortly after that, passed out on the sidewalk.

Washington has no public intoxication law, a failing that prevents first responders from helping habitual drinkers unless they are so poisoned with alcohol they are in imminent danger of dying.

On April 13, 2018, Fleming was arrested for burglary. By now he was known well enough that police could identify him from a verbal description. A bouncer of a downtown bar said Fleming had been harassing female customers. After a search of the area he was found to have broken into another business. He lashed out at police, verbally and physically. He grabbed the officers, kicked, and threatened them. He attempted to bite an officer. He was found to have in his possession items taken from local businesses, including, oddly enough, a fire extinguisher. He was given a suspended sentence and assessed a fine he could not pay.

Within days, Fleming was again on Port Townsend’s streets.

On April 21, he was arrested for shoplifting from Henery’s Hardware. He was walking down the street in Carhartt overalls security cameras had caught him stealing. He was again given a suspended sentence.

The City Prosecutor’s records show he was sentenced to forty days in jail. But three weeks later police found him passed out on the beach near the mill as the tide was rising.

Two weeks after that he wore the blood of a man he had attacked in Kah Tai Park.

Ten days later it was a domestic violence call. A month after that an officer checking public trails had to pull his taser against an aggressive dog Ingalsbe claimed to own. A few months on, Ingalsbe was outside the Pennysaver on Sims, slumped between two boxes, management reporting him for harassing customers. He’s “trespassed” and told to stay off the property.

The same day he’s reported at another property, with a guitar over his shoulder, panhandling. He’s also “trespassed” at that business because his behavior had been “an ongoing issue.” A day later, he’s reported trespassing and drunk at a residence.

It is now February 2016. He has been banned from more businesses because of his behavior. He is found sleeping, bloody and covered in vomit and taken to the hospital. He refuses to leave after being discharged and is disrupting the emergency room. He tells police, “arrest me.” They grant his wish, but he’s not in jail long.

Two days later he refuses multiple requests to leave the Food Co-op. Police issue a trespassing admonishment. Not long after, he trespasses at a store from which he’d been banned and receives a warning about an arrest next time it happens. Later in the day he’s warned about having an open container and drinking in public.

Then follow confrontations with employees and customers of businesses along Sims Way and Water Street, public drinking, and a citation for trespassing at a business from which he had been banned. Ingalsbe crumples up the citation.

March 24, 2016, a report comes in of Ingalsbe punching a man in the face, but the victim could not be found. An hour later he is found drunk and cited for trespassing at a business on Sims Way.

The next night he is found illegally sleeping in the park. The officer let him sleep rather than “wake him and have to deal with him all night long because he would be mad at us.”

Two days later he is cited for an open container and consumption of alcohol in the park. He was with two other transients from out of state. From time to time, he has met and consumed alcohol with other transients.

Having ignored the trespass citation, Ingalsbe was arrested on a warrant a couple weeks later while trespassing at yet another business from which he had been barred. His blood alcohol level is .205. But he is again quickly on the streets and cited for trespassing at the same business. He promised to appear in court and was released from police custody. He was seen later laying on a patch of gravel on Water Street. A couple days after that he was found sleeping on the sidewalk outside a building, drunk. The police provided him with water because he said he had had none in several days. Later, he was found in his vomit on the sidewalk at the door to a Water Street business. He refused to clean up his mess and was instructed to move along.

Ingalsbe did not honor his court summons and a warrant is used May 16, 2016.

A month passes with no contact. Then a call is received from his girlfriend. He had been at her place looking for his belongings but left on foot.

And then Ingalsbe died.

Or so police were told by a relative. He dropped out of sight and was not seen in Port Townsend for a year until the assault in Kah Tai Park was interrupted.

In the intervening year, as his probation officer learned, Ingalsbe traveled the country and racked up arrests in Nashville and Lebanon, Tennessee; Lawrence, Kansas; Pennington, South Dakota; and Arvada, Colorado. The arrests were for disorderly conduct, except the Arvada incident which involved an assault charge.

Ingalsbe has admitted that he initiated the Kah Tai attack on a man who was a stranger to him. He admitted kneeing the man in the head several times. When asked if he realized the extent of the injuries he and Fleming inflicted, Ingalsbe said, “he’s a 60 year old [expletive] man I beat up for no [expletive] reason.”

He told police he had returned to Port Townsend to party and then to turn himself in and go to jail to sober up.

He is probably getting more time to sober up than he expected. Therein lies the other tragedy in this story that is all too similar to that of other “known transients.” It took a crime of violence to get two habitual drinkers off the street and away from easy access to alcohol.

Unfortunately, the high price for their ticket to sobriety–for however long it may last–was paid with someone else’s blood.

The Victim

The man they attacked was airlifted for emergency medical treatment. He is Lawrence Merrell Alan. He gave police an address we traced to a rental mailbox. The cell phone number he gave police is no longer in service.

Alan has been known to police since at least 2012 when he was arrested for assaulting a bus driver. A year later he entered a conditional guilty plea to driving under the influence, while reserving the right to challenge the legality of his arrest. The charge was dismissed after a judge ruled the traffic stop had lacked probable cause.

In 2017 he was arrested for possession of methamphetamine and/or hydrocodone. The charges were dismissed by the prosecution without prejudice.

He was beaten to a pulp in Kah Tai Park while awaiting trial on his latest charges, which include two counts of selling methamphetamine in a school zone. His trial has been postponed because of “medical issues.”

Police have found nothing to indicate that the victim has in any way been connected to any sex crime as alleged by his attackers.