John and Eva Mitchell say they'd always felt safe after moving from Tacoma to Magnolia eight years ago. They're not sure if they feel that way anymore following a terrifying encounter in the middle of the afternoon on Oct. 3 at their home on 28th Avenue West (the two didn't want their exact address used in this story).
That's because a huge, crazed man kicked in the locked front door of the couple's home and threatened to kill everyone in the place, according to the couple, a police report and court documents.
Eva Mitchell was working on her computer on the couch in the living room while her husband and their 2-year-old grandson were napping elsewhere in the home that Friday when someone started knocking on the front door quite loudly, she said.
She thought it might have been UPS, but she opened a small speakeasy door in the front door to check and saw Jordan Donovan Kingbird, instead, Eva said.
Kingbird, 36, demanded to be let inside, she told him to go away, and he responded by insisting he be let in or he was going to "kill you all," she said.
Eva Mitchell called 911 and was still on the line with an operator when she peeked out a window and saw Kingbird walk away, turn and start running at the house. "I knew he was going to break in," the still-shaken woman said in an interview a week later.
Her husband woke up to the sound of the door breaking. "I hear this banging and swearing," said John Mitchell, who rushed into the living room.
But Mitchell, a law professor at Seattle University, immediately adopted what he described as "a negotiator" mindset in an effort to calm the situation down without provoking the intruder.
Kingbird wasn't mollified and said, "Give me the (effing) keys or I'll kill you," according to John Mitchell, who added that Kingbird really wanted the family's Ford truck.
But then Kingbird grabbed a bunch of keys from a rack by the front door, walked outside and tried to start the family's Camry without any luck, said John Mitchell, who followed the man outside and stood next to the car. "I'm saying, 'You don't want to do this.'"
Eva Mitchell, meanwhile, had grabbed their grandson and left the house through a side door, she said. And rather than run to a neighbor's house, she was able to stop a passing motorist who picked her and her crying grandson up and drove them down the street.
"They're all dead now, man," John Mitchell quoted Kingbird as saying, explaining that Kingbird thought Mitchell's wife had the plague.
Police already responding to reports of Kingbird pounding on passing vehicles on 28th Avenue West had shown up by then, according to court documents, which add that he tried to get away at first. But Kingbird finally gave up, knelt in the street and put his hands behind his back to be handcuffed, according to the police report.
He's familiar with the routine. Court documents indicate that Kingbird has been arrested 31 times since 1997, the last time on Sept. 17 this year.
John Mitchell said he suspected that Kingbird was either on drugs or off his psychiatric meds when he allegedly broke into the house, but it turns out Kingbird has quite a rap sheet.
The court documents indicate he has been convicted of rape, burglary, a drug charge, theft, obstructing a police officer, resisting arrest, car prowling, malicious mischief, failure to register as a sex offender, assault, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Kingbird, who is homeless, is being held on $25,000 bail. He's scheduled to be arraigned on Oct. 22.[[In-content Ad]]
