Police tried for at least an hour and half to get a allegedly knife-wielding man to come outside before storming the home.
Updated at 7:49 p.m. and 8:46 p.m.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CENTRALIA – An hours-long standoff on North Tower Avenue in Centralia ended early this evening when police entered a home and found the subject deceased.
Police Chief Bob Berg said it began with a 57-year-old Centralia man reportedly threatening his wife and sister with a knife. William L. Thomas was suicidal, police said.
When an officer arrived to the house, just north of Fourth Street, Thomas emerged with a butcher knife and then retreated inside, according to the Centralia Police Department.
Thomas’s mother, sister, wife and a family friend were outside and were taken away from the area by police.
Crowds gathered at both ends of the block, which were strung with yellow police tape, and listened as police used a loudspeaker to coax the man outside. A gray armored vehicle parked on the street in front of his home.
Some nearby residents had been asked to leave their homes.
After an hour and half of attempted negotiations, the SWAT team entered and found the man deceased, Berg said. Police later said Thomas is 58 years old.
Detectives are at the scene conducting an investigation, treating it as a crime scene, the chief said. Police didn’t say how Thomas died, only that his cause of death is unknown.
Chief Berg said the department has a “history” with the Thomas, and he was about to go to jail for assaulting one of Berg’s officers. Yesterday, he was upset about a city light crew in the alley behind his house, Berg said.
When officers first arrived about 1:30 p.m., Thomas threatened to stab one of his female family members in the heart, according to police.
This afternoon, officers used various mean to entice him outside, shooting tear gas into the home numerous times before finally breaking through the front door.
They never got any response from him, Berg said.
Tower Avenue, a main route through town, was reopened about 6 p.m.
It was back at the end of April when Thomas was arrested for reportedly grabbing an officer’s arm and slamming it into a gate when police responded to a dispute at the 1000 block of North Tower Avenue. Thomas filed a claim against the city saying the two officers assaulted him damaging his glasses and injuring him.
North Tower Avenue was taped off between Fourth and Fifth streets until around 6 p.m. tonight.
•••
SWAT members creep onto the front porch.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
Carol,
No worries. We all misinterpret things we read from time to time. I’ve done it in the past and will do it in the future, we’re human. My thoughts and prayers do go out to the victims family. Hopefully some positive changes come about with the Centralia Police Department. (not getting my hopes up) I stand corrected with my understanding of a person “threatening another person,” times have changed. There are some people who have offered some positive feed back, constructive criticism, and others who just want a chance to voice. I wish you the best.
Jim
I would really like to apoligze to Jim, I very sorry, I miss read your comment.Again I am very sorry.Please find it in your heart to forgive me.Its hard somethings people say in times like these. Thank you for your letter
disgusted says:
“The government should ban knives. Then this sort of thing would never happen.”
Now thats funny!
I don’t mean to rude on here, this was very tragic event. When people become nasty and overlook the sadness of what has happened it does make me speak out. Sometimes it gets rather tiresome when the conversation goes so far off track, and yes, I don’t need to read the comments & sometimes I don’t and usually keep my opinion to myself. That said, I apologize if I offended anyone, and thanks to those who I didn’t offend & may agree with me.
for gosh sakes, people. please be a bit nicer to each other. here at least. –sharyn decker
So “Crazee” Why are U posting on here? Could it be U want Your Moment in the sun with the rest of us? Talk about the kettle calling the pot Black.. U aren’t any different than the rest of us & if U don’t like it, our postings, take yourself elsewear!
Whats wrong Sister? People cutting in on your public moment? If you dont like it you maybe shouldnt have come here at this time yourself, ya think? I think it just gave you a chance for a little limelight, otherwise, maybe you would have just signed it “Anonymous”.
gregthecelt
Finally someone with common sense posted on this issue. Most of you should think before you speak, oh yeah, that is assuming that you have brains to think with.
As usual…I can see that the trolls have stopped eating snails long enough to slither out from under their bridges and make uninformed, baseless comments about things they have no working knowledge of, let alone expertise in.
1) No, you can’t threaten someone with a knife and expect to be left alone.
2)You cannot refuse to submit to arrest for a felony and be left alone. Actions have consequences…although that is a lesson seldom taught these days.
3) OC is not “gas” like CS or CN and does not disperse in the same manner. It does not effect people in the same way either.
4) Jim…if that’s your real name (dirty cop enforcer maybe?) as usual you know have of the facts and 2/3rds of what you think you know is wrong. Don’t you ever get tired of being a moron?
5) No, you can’t “just leave him alone.” The police have an obligation to keep the rest of the nieghborhood safe. It’s called “community care taking.” This fool was escalating. He had threatened city workers the day before, his wife and sister that day, and waved a knife around when the cops got there. So leaving him alone, to come out later and stab some one is not an option. Had that happened all of you geniuses would have been bitching about why the cops hadn’t arrested him earlier…right?
Look, I get it…no matter what the cops do some of you will always have shit to say, because well, that is how you are. Maybe you had your ass handed to you once or twice (twice would suggest you don’t take to schooling all that well) or maybe a cop stole your girlfriend, whatever your issue, for the most part they do a good job. From what I saw the other day it was a decent job, with limited resources, under the scrutiny of alot of people. Me included, I was driving home and stopped to watch. I stayed until the paramedics came out of the house.
I was a deputy sheriff in an out of state, major metropolitain sheriffs’ department for 25 years, and I can’t say our department wouldn’t have handled it any differently. We would have had a great deal more people and equipment on hand, but otherwise it would have gone pretty much the same in a tactical sense. As for the guy dying, we’ll just have to see how that happened, but i doubt it resulted from anything the police did.
It is a shame that the guy died. I wish he’d lived to be prosecuted for both the threat and the previous assault on a LEO.
This individual was most certainly not a candidate for citizen of the year.
When one behaves in an antisocial and violent manner, tragedy inevitably ensues.
Thank you all for your concern.But whoever Jim is, you need to mind your own business & stay out of ours since you have no clue about any of it. Get your own life & stay out of ours!
When sad things happen it is sad that people have to write shit to get attention for them self, mind your own business. For one Jim needs to mind his own business, whoever Jim is.Get a life and stay out of ours.
For those of you that don’t know what happened, you need to keep your comments to yourself.Its really rude to say things you have been saying just to get attention ti yourself, Mind your own bussiness.
I would like to know how some of you that are criticizing Centralia PD would deal with this. “57-year-old Centralia man reportedly threatening his wife and sister with a knife”. It is their job to take this man into custody to protect them. This is not the movies. There are policies in place on how they deal with these life and death situations.
Most Centralia Officers are very good people. There is good and bad people in every line of work. It is against the law to threaten to kill someone and the person being threatened says they are fearful. This is not my opinion, this is fact.
Some people may have legitimate beef with Centralia PD, and I want to hear of (true) wrongdoing, not general bad mouthing.
I second that Bonnie.
Thank God the Centralia PD doesn’t have access to nukes or they probably would’ve been used yesterday. Jim seems to know some of the details and I believe him. Not sure about it being OK to threaten people, but other than that he seems to know how the situation went down and I don’t doubt him for a second that Centralia PD overreacted. Half those guys should not be in uniform nor have any type of authority.
Umm..Jim. It is against the law to threaten physical harm to someone. I.E. You own a gun and say “I’m going to shoot you” That would constitute a crime because I would have a reasonable fear for my life and if you indeed owned a gun, you had a means to act out your threat. Same with a knife. I seriously hope you don’t think you can go around making threats to people.
Homicide. He was killed by the tear gas deployed by officers. They are trained in the use of tear gas and are fully aware that multiple canisters fired over a short period of time can cause death by asphyxiation longs before the gasses disperse.
Well Jim, by the powers vested in me by SMFL, I now pronounce you a certified tool. Your opinions were written as if they were facts and calling the officers by their first names earns you a gold star.
Just a little fun FACT to add to your resume, there aren’t more cops now than there was before. CPD has 2 current vacancies that they are not planning to fill.
One has to ask one’s self how a situation can digress so quickly as it did yesterday. There were three Police units on scene when Officer Lowery and one other unit determined that their presents on scene were no longer needed and cleared the scene. Then under the watchful eyes of Officer Cory Butcher things came crashing down in a rapid manner. First, he radios that there was supposedly a threat made to a woman by the suspect that he was going to take a knife and stab it thru her heart. Now, the woman was not in the house, nor in contact with the suspect at the time of the report. So Cory and the rest of Centralia Police based there following actions upon a third parties report and had no first hand knowledge of the threat. (By the way it is not against the law to threaten another person.) So our little Dirty Harry (Cory Butcher) once again didn’t know how to deescalate a situation. Instead of showing compassion and care for the suspect who solely occupied the house, as reported to the police by the other occupants of the residence, increased the magnitude as started amassing the SWAT team, State Patrol, and County Deputies. There were no report of there being any weapons in the house and yet we needed SWAT for a potential suicidal person…Really? Instead of treating the situation with ginger hands, they gave a person no expectations of hope or reason to live no choice. What would a reasonable person conclude if all they saw was more darkness and depression? We didn’t need a “Dirty Harry” approach we instead needed a “Andy Griffith” mentality.
One should demand a formal review of all of Centralia’s policies and procedures dealing with threats and thoughts of suicide. A Review Officer Cory Butcher’s personal file and training records. I hate to sound as if Officer Butcher is being single out, but he was the one who initially took a third party report as fact instead of as an opinion and acted upon it. The other officers took his word as fact and consequently acted in accordance. I’m afraid we have a potential, in the future, to see Officer Butcher involved in more instances where loss of life could have been avoided.
I would recommend a wrongful lawsuit be entertained by the victims family. This could have and should have been handled much differently. The Chief who is ultimately responsible for those under his direction should be called to the forefront and be held accountable. We have more Police Officers on the payroll than ever before and yet crime continues to disproportionally increase. Simply put more cops equals more crime at the tax payers expense and ultimately life.
Old long Johnson I think ( I hope) disgusted was making a joke about banning knives. Making a sarcastic reference to the knee jerk reactions of government attempts to ban things after tragic events. Like I said I hope it was sarcasm.
The government can’t “ban” anything.
They rely on idiots like you to just do what they tell you.
Please “disgusted”, get rid of your knives before something bad happens to you! The world will be so much safer!
Forget about cutting meat or slicing potatoes! Your safety is FAR more important.
Then click your heels and say, “There’s no place like home.”
The government should ban knives. Then this sort of thing would never happen.
The reel dip stiks are waring the army jammies playing hero with other peoples lives Why don’t they jest leave people alone and stop braking Windows all the times
My condolences to the family. I’m so sorry that such a tragic event had to unfold in such a public manner. You are in our prayers.
Gald to hear family member are fine and any innocent people didn’t get hurt. So sad to hear when someone is in such a state of darkness that suicide is a better option to them, I think its sad no matter who/what they do/are. Irritating when I see pics like the one with people outside police tape, I think it so sad when people stand around “gaucking” when something is going on, its just absolutely ridiculous to me, I’ve never understood it. Of course everyone has curiosity and wants to know but is it really necessary to stand outside the police tape! Just stupid.
Shut the hell up troy h…i would pay the cops to do it ,to your house..to bad someone lives with you..
troy, why should the city pay the damage, maybe the owner should check out his renters a little better…to many renters don’t care…
“SWAT members creep onto the front porch.”
Because they are obviously a bunch of CREEPS paid by tax-dollars.
I was there, they should have known the lay out of the house before shooting gas into the house. The house has a washroom on the back and the door was shut between the washroom and house. That was a waste of time, money and gas. That did not work so they broke out all the windows and the doors. Leaving the home owner with all the repairs. No renters insurance for a person that had been there 7 years. I say ask the City of Centralia for some money to help pay for the damage. I believe that half the damage could have been avoided.
Holy fucking shit! That’s some f’d up nonsense right there. I know that area. It’s always been hot.
Heartbreaking