Unstable Neighbor Bashed In Our Front Door With A Cinder Block

Location: Washington State

We’re renters in a single-family home turned triplex and we’re on the ground floor (one unit is on the upper floor, and the third unit is a half basement unit below us). Our across-the-street neighbor (49M, owns his home) is severely unstable; we’ve been told that he is a veteran with PTSD and bipolar.

• Our first incident with him occurred 1.5 weeks ago when he banged on our front door, rang our doorbell a bunch, and continually shouted into our home at 2:00am while we were asleep. He then circled around our house to the back door and stabbed our basement neighbor’s door with a shank.

He went around to our side yard and basically continued circling our property while shouting and stabbing the fence and other things with his shank. At this point we had already called the police and were filming him wandering around. He wandered into the next door neighbor’s yard and we filmed him stabbing their deck with his shank and yelling.

We have an incident number from that but we don’t think the cops ever came out or really did anything that night. We later found out that he had also ripped into basement neighbors’s package and ruined the contents inside (expensive special edition books).

• The main incident occurred four days ago, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. He literally bashed our front door in with a cinder block around 10:00am. He was yelling the entire time, shouting at some passersby “I’m going to fucking kill you” and “give me the phone” to us (what phone, we couldn’t tell you. We’ve never spoken to this man before).

It took him three bashings to finally break through our doorframe and enter our home. We were on the phone with the police by the start of the second attempt because we hadn’t realized he was hitting the door with a cinder block until then.

Our neighbor (who lives at the property with the stabbed deck) was also on the phone with the police outside on the sidewalk and trying to get the crazed neighbor away from our front door. At one point, the crazed neighbor chased the hero neighbor around the block while throwing rocks, pieces of cinder block, and shards of pottery from pots he broke along the way; thankfully none of them made contact and the hero neighbor was unharmed.

The police showed up quickly after he broke through our door and arrested him. We gave our reports to the police and they were mentioning burglary and assault, and said that because it’s a felony, he will be taken to a holding facility and not an institution. A few other neighbors came over and shared other experiences they’ve had with him:

1. One woke up in the middle of the night to find him staring at her through his bedroom window. She called the police and reported it when it occurred.

2. Another neighbor said that her husband was walking with their two young sons when the crazed neighbor reached for his hand seemingly for a handshake. The husband tried backing away but the crazed neighbor grabbed it, pulled him in, punched him in the face, and kicked him multiple times. The husband didn’t call the police at the time but the wife had him call and report it after our cinder block incident.

There were a lot more incidents but those didn’t involve a call to the police so I’ll leave them out.

-We found his information and he is currently being held at the county correctional facility. Case status: pending. Offense: burglary - investigation. Charge status: investigation.

What brings me here today is one of the neighbors ran a background check on him and shared the results with us.

In 2018, he had a criminal trespass first degree, harassment, indecent exposure to person <14, and a protection order violation - all of these charges dismissed with prejudice. Along with the criminal trespass (same day) he had a burglary first degree that was only dismissed (doesn’t say with or without prejudice).

In 2021, he had a resisting arrest and an assault 4th degree (same day). Resisting arrest was dismissed with prejudice and assault 4th degree he was found guilty.

My questions are: what would be the reason that he is getting dismissed with prejudice for nearly all of his charges?

What is the process for a mentally unstable person who committed a felony? Is he going to be found incompetent and subjected to a 90-180 day hold before being released? Is that likely what has happened in the past?

We have a lot of evidence in the form of videos of him doing the two incidents to us and multiple incident numbers that aren’t officially connected to him (like him skulking around our house, staring into the neighbor’s bedroom, punching the other neighbor in the face). Is there a way to submit this evidence? Is there a way to testify against him? We’re looking into getting a protective order against him as well.

Edit: his record was just updated with two charges - Residential Burglary, and Assault 4. Bail is set and he is “charged awaiting trial”.