SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: Violent King County Jail inmate with long history attacks guard

Aug 27, 2019, 2:45 PM

King County Jail, Human Roulette, ICE, criminal justice...

King County Jail. (KIRO 7)

(KIRO 7)

It must be very pleasant to work in the King County Jail considering the caliber of criminals we’re putting away these days.

At about 3:30 a.m. on July 16, a 31-year-old man allegedly stabbed a jail worker at the King County Jail with a very sharp pencil, nearly hitting him in the eye, as KIRO 7 TV reported.

First of all, let me tell you a little bit about this guy. Ramon Silva Jr. has a criminal record as long as you can possibly imagine.

He was convicted of two counts of domestic violence. Last year, he assaulted a woman by poking her eye and attempting to strangle her on multiple occasions.

Dori: Repeat offender tries to stab woman with pitchfork at Ballard Post Office

He was also charged with attacking an officer at the King County Jail last year — in the form of throwing a mix of feces and urine at the guard’s face. Can you imagine on top of everything else you have to deal with as a jail guard, getting feces and urine thrown in your face?

In another instance, while escaping police by car, he nearly hit two shoppers in the parking lot he was at and aimed an assault rifle at the Washington State Patrol trooper trying to stop him.

He’s also got a long list of assault and theft charges going back to the early 2000s, even when he was still a juvenile.

By the way, all of this information is in that LInX database that King County Sheriff Mitzi Johanknecht has just taken away from all of her deputies and detectives. So if this guy, who has pulled an assault rifle during an attempted traffic stop, was out, and police were chasing him, and they wanted to find out what kind of guy they were dealing with based on his criminal history, they would not be able to do so. That’s the kind of critical information that could mean the difference between life and death for officers.

So now that you’re brought up to speed, let’s talk about what this guy did last month. He was being moved from one cell to another, but did not want to be moved. As the jail guard was speaking to him through the sliding window in his cell door, Silva Jr. allegedly spat at his face. They brought another corrections officer over to move him to another cell.

Silva Jr. allegedly covered the window in his cell door, barricaded his door shut, and blocked the light in his cell with bedsheets. He even tried to throw officers off balance by scattering pencils and water all over the floor.

When they entered his cell, he took a sharpened pencil and stabbed an officer twice in the head — to the point where he was bleeding — very close to his eye. Silva Jr. eventually had to be tased.

This could be a Third Strike offense. Let’s hope that Governor Inslee doesn’t commute this guy’s sentence like the other Third Strike offender who has been on the run for two weeks.

This is what happens when we are as soft on crime as we are around here. This guy should have been locked up for life after all of those violent offenses.

Say a prayer for these corrections officers who have to deal with this kind of violence. And if this is indeed a Third Strike offense, good riddance to this guy.

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from 12-3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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Dori: Violent King County Jail inmate with long history attacks guard