One medical marijuana patient shot, one beaten to death, in home invasions in Washington

(Kirkland Reporter) Executive director of CannaCare in Kirkland, Finn Hill resident Steve Sarich recently led a rally on the steps of the state House to call on state legislators to provide more legal protection for medical marijuana patients. Monday morning Sarich, who legally grows medical marijuana in his home, protected his life from would-be robbers.

Sarich, 59, went to check on the dogs and ended up exchanging gunfire with one of the suspects, a 19-year-old Renton man. Sarich hit the man more than once, critically wounding him. Sarich, who was also injured, was taken to Evergreen Hospital with relatively minor wounds from shotgun pellets. The woman was not injured.  Sarich said the King County Sherrif’s Office was waiting on a warrant to search his home late Monday afternoon.

The home invasion Steve Sarich suffered follows this weekend’s beating death of another medical marijuana patient in Washington, Mike Howard.

ORTING, Wash. (KING News) – A 38-year-old Orting man died over the weekend while trying to protect his medical marijuana plants.

Michael Howard was hit in the head with a crow bar on March 9 by someone trying to break into a shed in his backyard where he was legally growing medical marijuana, according to his father Michael Atkins. He died four days later.

Atkins says Howard grabbed a can of pepper spray and ran out to the shed when he heard his dogs barking.

“The intruder had a large iron crow bar in his hand which he was using to break into the shed,” said Atkins. “When Mike came around the corner of his house, the perpetrator was waiting for him. He hit our son square in the head. Mike survived for three days. His heart failed four different times. The fifth time, doctors weren’t able to restart it.”

So the police went out to Howard’s place to do a thorough criminal investigation… of Howard and his medical marijuana plants.

(Toke of the Town) When local police were called to the scene, rather than investigating the assault, they started questioning mortally injured Michael Shane Howard about how many plants he had.

The police told Howard, who had just been clubbed in the head with a crowbar, that the medics would “probably just put a big bandage in his forehead and leave him at the house.”

Two days after the attack, as Howard lay dying, the police called Howard’s good friend and roommate, Renee, and asked when she was going to go visit him in the hospital.

Then while Renee visited Howard at the hospital, she got a call from a friend telling her officers from the Pierce County, Washington Sheriff’s Department were raiding her home.

The investigating officers didn’t even take the murder weapon into evidence until the morning after the attack, when they finally realized Mike was likely not going to make it.

We’ve reported on the Oregon police publishing the names and addresses of medical marijuana patients who are growing at home.  We’ve reported on the Oregon grower who was beaten with a golf club by home invaders.  Now we’re reporting on invasions and murders in Washington.  These stories will continue to increase in all medical marijuana states so long as prohibition of marijuana continues.  Nobody is dying in home invasion robberies over anybody’s home brewed beer or wine.  Police aren’t broadcasting the names and addresses of home invasion victims who keep prescription pills in their medicine cabinet.  Marijuana cannot truly be treated as a medicine so long as most the people who use it are considered criminals.