A South Whidbey man with an “extraordinary criminal history” — including the shooting of a police officer in 1991 — is wanted on a $200,000 arrest warrant for repeatedly violating a domestic violence protection order, according to court documents.
Aaron Leigh, 54, is described by the Island County Sheriff’s Office as a white male, 5-foot-11, 195 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes. Anyone with information about his whereabouts can contact the sheriff’s office via the ICOM dispatch center at 360-679-9567 or by sending an email to tips@islandcountywa.gov.
Leigh is accused of violating a domestic violence no-contact order four times against the same victim, according to court records. He has been evading law enforcement and is associated with homes on Pilchuck Drive in Greenbank and Millman Road in Langley.
Leigh has spent a couple of decades in prison for committing a series of serious crimes, court records indicate.
In 1991, Leigh was a marijuana grower in Seattle and was investigated for shooting at a fellow dealer from a car and participating in a brutal assault that left the man with a broken femur, according to the Seattle police report. A few days later, Leigh got into a shootout with Seattle police officers. Leigh was a passenger in a car that plainclothes narcotics detectives stopped in the Greenwood neighborhood. He opened fire through the windshield and narrowly missed an officer.
A narcotics detective shot at Leigh in self defense, striking him once, but then the officer’s gun jammed. Leigh shot him twice in the stomach and ran off, but was quickly arrested.
Officers who searched Leigh’s home later found a “highly explosive homemade bomb” in his living room, the report states.
Leigh was convicted of two counts of assault in the first degree and one count of assault in the second degree in King County Superior Court and was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison.
After his release, he “quickly recidivated” and was convicted of two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm, according to the prosecution’s motion for issuance of warrant of arrest. In that case, Tacoma police who searched his home after a drug bust found about 2,000 oxycodone pills, three guns, $29,000 in cash and two gold bars, according to a 2014 KOMO news story.
He was sentenced to four years in prison in 2016.
Soon after his second release, Leigh was convicted in King County Superior Court of domestic violence harassment. A judge in Seattle issued a domestic violence no-contact order preventing him from contacting the victim, but the following year he was convicted of violating the order.
Leigh then violated the order again in Island County and was charged in Island County District Court, court documents state. He allegedly violated the order yet again early this year, resulting in the filing of a felony charge.
On Jan. 21, a judge issued a $100,000 arrest warrant on Leigh, which was later reduced to $50,000 after he provided a Langley address and a couple of people spoke in support of him at a hearing. He bailed out but then violated the court order a fourth time by assaulting the victim at a Greenbank residence, according to the prosecution. The victim reported that Leigh hit him on the head, kicked him, threatened to “blow torch” his dog and choked him, a deputy’s report states.
As a result, a judge ordered a $200,000 arrest warrant on Leigh.
