Wash. Captain Resigns Amid Criminal Charges

Oct. 11, 2012
An Anacortes police captain resigned last week amid criminal charges stemming from a neighborhood Airsoft gun fight.

Oct. 06--ANACORTES -- An Anacortes police captain resigned last week amid criminal charges stemming from a neighborhood Airsoft gun fight.

Grant Lightfoot, 41, is charged with reckless endangerment. The charge was filed in Whatcom County to prevent a conflict of interest in Skagit County. He resigned Sept. 24, but his decision was announced in a statement from Mayor Dean Maxwell on Friday.

According to an investigation conducted by the Skagit County Sheriff's Office, Lightfoot was involved in an Airsoft gun fight Aug. 26 with his 10-year-old son and his son's friend of the same age against a pair of 13-year-old boys.

The 13-year-olds sustained several welts from BBs, and the parents of one of the boys called police.

Lightfoot and the 10-yearolds told investigators that the teens were acting like bullies and throwing rocks while walking in the area of the Lightfoots' house on Guemes View Drive, reports say.

The 10-year-olds then shot their Airsoft guns at the teens and Lightfoot joined them and encouraged them, according to the affidavit.

Lightfoot told a detective the shooting was for fun and that neighborhood Airsoft gun fights happen all the time in the area.

The teens reportedly said they only started throwing rocks after they were getting hit by BBs.

Though Lightfoot pointed an Airsoft gun at the teens, he said the magazine fell out of his gun and nothing came out.

He also said he told the teens to stop throwing rocks.

Lightfoot told a detective that the incident personally and professionally embarrassed him and admitted he should not have gotten involved, but he defended his son in an email to his boss the day after the shootings.

"I commend the boys (my boy and his buddy) on defending themselves," he wrote to Anacortes Police Chief Bonnie Bowers. "I hope that if everything happened the same way tomorrow that they'd do the same thing."

In that email he volunteered to take time off during the incident investigation, and Bowers placed him on administrative leave.

Calls to Lightfoot have not been returned.

Lightfoot was employed with the Anacortes Police Department since February 2011. No decision has yet been made on his replacement.

Copyright 2012 - Skagit Valley Herald, Mount Vernon, Wash.

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