Shotgun-toting man threatens father at school bus stop

KOMO-TV STAFF

A scary scene unfolded at a school bus stop on Fox Island when a man with a gun threatened a father as he dropped off his son and then tried to run him off, the father says.

And the father, Mark Fowler, has got the photo to back him up his account of what happened.

Fowler says he was on the public easement - well outside anyone's private property - when he parked his car at the bus stop to drop off his son.

That's when he says a neighbor came out and threatened him with a shotgun.

Despite the possible danger, Fowler snapped a photo of the man with his cell phone. The photo shows the man gripping the shotgun in his right hand.

Cell phone photo shows a man approaching the Fox Island school bus stop with a shotgun. Fowler says: "I ask him what he's going to do with it. And he tells me if I don't get off his property, he's going to show me what he's going to do with it. Now, that sounds like a threat to me."

Pierce County sheriff's detectives say the man in the photo is Kevin Wray, whose house is behind the bus stop.

Fowler says if he's going to be threatened - what could Wray do to his son or to the other children who wait at the stop for the school bus to come.

"Why would anybody in their right mind bring a shotgun to a bus stop if they're not planning on trying to intimidate somebody, or plan on using it?" says Fowler.

Deputies showed up and arrested Wray, who got out on bond later that day.

KOMO News tried to contact Wray but he didn't answer his door or return phone calls.

Wray's next-door neighbor, Hank Weber, thinks things just got out of hand.

"I don't think anybody around here condones that," Weber says. "And I'm sure, if you asked Kevin right now, I'm sure he would say that was a bad mistake."

Weber says parents dropping off their kids do a lot of damage along the private road where Wray lives.

He says they use front lawns as turnarounds, which rips up the grass and damages landscaping - and Wray has spent years trying to change it.

"I think Kevin has tried in the past to be as cordial as possible, and has in a lot of instances not gotten anywhere," says Weber.

Since the shotgun incident, the school district has created alternative bus stop locations so parents who don't feel safe using the one near Wray's house have somewhere else to go.