Spink behind bars again
BY JANE SIMS Updated: April 19, 2016
Doug Spink
Well, that didn’t take long.
Just months after he was again booted back to the United States, after a wild ruckus he caused in Port Stanley, a convicted American drug smuggler and Washington State bestiality tourism farm owner is back behind bars in Pennsylvania.
Doug Spink is cooling his heels in the Butler County Prison, held on $35,000 bail, for 17 charges involving the discharge of a handgun at his mother’s house and an assault on police when he was arrested at a Buy ’N Fly gas station.
Spink, 45, was deported to the U.S. from London last August, after he was improperly released from the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre in London.
Picked up a day later in Port Stanley, a more bizarre background came to light that included a warrant for Spink for animal cruelty in Washington state, a missing and presumed dog-napped canine named Ghengis, a lawsuit, online chat rooms about bestiality and a conviction for cocaine smuggling.
Spink re-entered Canada through Saskatchewan after his first deportation and was in Port Stanley for some time before he was back in police custody in November, after a house fire followed by some violent, erratic behaviour that led to him assaulting police officers and damaging a police cruiser.
He was ordered back to the U.S. on Feb. 22, part of the fallout from his convictions for assault with a weapon, mischief, unlawfully being in a dwelling house and two counts of resisting arrest.
The lead-up events to his April 4 arrest in Pennsylvania are eerily similar to what happened in Port Stanley — erratic behaviour, police officers assaulted, resistance to arrest — but this time a gun is involved.
Court documents filed by the police department in Zelienople, north of Pittsburgh, describe a wild night that ended with an hour-long struggle at the Buy ’N Fly. Officers put Spink in three pairs of handcuffs linked together. He was strapped and shackled to a gurney before he was taken to hospital.
Police were called after a report of a man firing a gun in house.
As officers headed there, there was a report of a man who might have been struck by a car.
The man made his way to the gas station and called 911 to say he’d been robbed and needed help.
Inside, the man was behind the counter and an officer identified him “from previous dealings with him.”
Spink, the suspect, was on the floor in a fetal position. He told police he had knife on him. They found two in his pocket, the documents said.
While officers tried to handcuff him, Spink yelled he was having a seizure and kept kicking the officers, police allege. They threatened to subdue him with a Taser and went as far as to put it on his chest, but the device wasn’t deployed.
Told to get up and walk to the ambulance, Spink got up then dropped to the ground complaining his knee was hurting. He kicked out a rack of cigarettes and pulled other merchandise off the shelves as he was taken outside, causing at least $5,000 in damage, the documents contend.
Outside, Spink kept struggling despite leg shackles. That led to more handcuffs and shackles.
Officers went to Spink’s mother Claire’s home. She said she and her son had “a peaceful dinner” before she went to bed and Spink retired to the basement.
At about 2 a.m., she heard Spink walking around. He came into her room complaining about her car alarm, then later “smashed into her room and took the gun from a box,” threatening to kill himself, holding it to his chin, the documents said.
His mother kept talking to him and the gun went off twice in the kitchen during a struggle.
She told police she believed her son took the gun with him when he left the house.
Police say Spink stopped a motorist on his way to work and got into his car, claiming there was someone robbing his house. He was eventually ordered out of the car, then tried to get into a house.
Police found a loaded .38-calibre revolver half buried in the ground, possibly by someone stepping on it, not far from Spink’s mother’s house.
Spink faces charges of possession of a prohibited firearm, three counts of discharging a firearm into an occupied structure, five counts of aggravated assault, four counts of recklessly endangering another person and four counts of criminal mischief.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled next week.
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