Prosecutors have charged an Auburn man with one count of possession of a stolen vehicle, days after police and a SWAT team surrounded the home where he’d barricaded himself to fend off police efforts to arrest him for auto theft.
Ian Goodhue, a spokesman for the King County Prosecutor, identified the man as 29-year-old Ikenna Njoku.
According to Auburn police, at about noon Sept. 11, Auburn Nissan reported a vehicle theft. On-Star located the vehicle in the 1100 block of 32nd Street Northeast of Auburn. Officers confirmed the vehicle was at that address when they looked into the garage and saw it there. Officers then arranged for On-Star to honk the car’s horn. When officers knocked on the door, Njoku barricaded himself inside, bolting the door and closing the blinds.
Police obtained a search warrant and called in the SWAT team.
After repeatedly asking Njoku to come out, the SWAT team opened the front door and police arrested Ikenna, who allegedly matched the description Auburn Nissan had given.
Njoku has a prior conviction history of robbery in the first degree in 1999 in King County.
This is not Njoku’s first time in the news.
On June 24, 2010, Njoku walked into the Auburn branch of Chase Bank to cash a $8,463 Chase cashier’s check he’d brought in the day before.
Instead, police officers handcuffed Njoku and put him in jail, where he remained for four days. The bank claimed Njoku had tried to cash a bogus check.
Twenty-four hours later, Chase realized its mistake.
“I was really embarrassed,” Njoku told the Associated Press at the time. “I got put under arrest in front of a lot of people,”
One year earlier, the 28-year-old former construction worker had bought his first home, qualifying for the first-time home buyer tax rebate. According to a letter Njoku’s lawyers wrote to Chase Bank, the Internal Revenue Service had wired more than $9,000 into Njoku’s account. The bank took out $600 to recoup the amount Njoku allegedly owed it for overdrafts and mailed him the $8,463.21 balance in a cashier’s check.
When Njoku tried to cash the check, he offered two forms of ID.
Njoku said the teller was rude.
“She looked me up and down and asked me a series of questions, like where I got the check and what I did for a living,” Njoku said.
