Eric Mayer kept text messaging his friend, “Omar,” accusing him and Omar’s friend of having stolen his bicycle some time earlier from Auburn’s Fulmer Field.
And Omar kept denying it, according to Auburn Police.
But it was Mayer’s decision to wrap his fists around what appeared to be two guns and physically confront “Omar,” plus his ever-shifting explanations to police afterward, that put the Auburn man in jail, according to Auburn Police.
On June 4, the King County Prosecutor charged Mayer, 24, with one count each of third-degree assault, felony harassment and making a false or misleading statement to a public servant. He is being held on $50,000 bail.
Here, according to the Auburn Police Department’s Certification for Probable Cause, is what happened.
According to the certification, on May 27, Omar and the friend Mayer had also accused of stealing the bike were walking south on N Street Southeast when a pickup pulled alongside them, stopped, and Mayer and another man got out.
According to what Omar and several witnesses to what happened next told police, Mayer was wearing body armor and brandishing what appeared to be two firearms.
According to the police account, Mayer then ran up to Omar and his friend and demanded his bike back, threatening to kill Omar if he didn’t return it. When Omar once more denied that he had stolen the bike, Mayer allegedly pistol whipped him on the back of the head, according to the police account.
At that point, Omar and his friend left on foot and the occupants of the truck got back in and drove off, according to police
Police arrested Mayer several days later for investigation of first-degree assault and felony harassment.
Initially, Mayer told the detective who interviewed him June 2 at the SCORE jail that he had no idea why he was in jail because, he said, there had never been any altercation between him and Omar.
Later, Mayer conceded that well, yes, there had been an altercation between the two, but, he added, he had only used a fist.
When the officer revealed to Mayer that two witness had seen him with “something like a gun,” according to the police account, he changed his story. He said he had in fact been holding a crank arm, a bike part that looked like a gun, and that he had only pointed it at Omar to “spook” him into returning the bike.
According to the police account, Mayer later admitted to the detective that he had had a BB gun and he had pointed it at Omar, but he said that he had since tossed it in the river. Asked exactly where in the river, Mayer paused, then again changed his story, revealing that his BB gun was actually at a friend’s house, though he wouldn’t divulge which friend.
“I asked Eric what threats he had made to Omar during this incident. Eric began to say he hadn’t ‘really.’ I questioned Eric on that comment, and he said, ‘I said, dude, you’re – dead,” but, according to the police account, Mayer added that he had only written this on Facebook, never said it in person.
“The defendant is alleged to have ambushed the victim and assaulted him with an object that appeared to be a firearm,” Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Gavriel G. Jacobs told a Superior Court judge in asking for the $50,000 bail. “The [victim] was struck in the head and suffered a minor laceration. Accompanying this action was the defendant’s threat to kill him.”
Mayer’s criminal history includes convictions for: drug paraphernalia, 2014; theft, 2013, reckless driving, 2009; and taking a motor vehicle without permission, 2010.
