Woman says she was 8 months pregnant when Seattle Mayor Harrell pulled gun on her, leading to his 1996 arrest

Rose Sanchez may not remember every detail of the encounter between her family and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell from that late night in 1996. For example, she recalled Harrell driving a pickup truck outside the Ameristar riverboat casino in Iowa, when a police report stated he was in a red Jeep Cherokee.

But there are details she told KUOW she’ll never forget, like when Harrell drove slowly past her, her husband Jose, and her mother, and, she said, pointed his silver pistol at them. She was eight months pregnant at the time.

“We was like, ‘What the hell is going on?!” Sanchez told KUOW. “It scared us.”

RELATED: Seattle Mayor Harrell was arrested in 1996 for pulling gun during parking lot confrontation

As Rose remembers it, her husband Jose, who worked nights at a meat packing plant, got off early that September evening. So Rose, Jose, and Rose’s mother went to the casino for some fun.

Harrell and the Sanchezes agree on select facts, supported by police and court records: Just after midnight on September 27, 1996, the Sanchezes, in their car, and Bruce Harrell, in his Jeep, pulled up to the same parking spot outside the casino.

Jose pulled into the spot; Harrell felt the spot should have been his. This is where their accounts diverge.

Rose said her party walked toward the casino. She said Harrell drove by them and called out, “You took my parking spot,” and then pointed his gun in their direction.

“We felt threatened,” Rose said. “All we did was pull into a parking spot, and at that time at night, it wasn’t that packed where you couldn’t find a parking spot.”

Harrell admits to “displaying” a gun in his accounts to news reporters at the time, and in his statement to KUOW. He denies pointing the gun. He told reporters the next day that at that moment, he had called Rose and her family “rude” for stealing his spot.

Harrell would also tell reporters that he was carrying a gun because he had received death threats after being appointed to a housing authority board in Omaha. Locals had wanted someone from public housing on the board; Harrell was an attorney who lived in a more affluent part of town and had resided in Omaha for just one year.

RELATED: Seattle Mayor Harrell misled officer during 1996 arrest: police report unearthed

At 12:30 a.m., the Sanchezes reported Harrell to casino security, according to the police report. An officer stationed at the casino questioned them, and Harrell and his friend Ron Saunders, who was visiting from Seattle.

Harrell told the police officer that the Sanchezes had stolen his spot, according to the police report obtained by KUOW. The report provided to KUOW doesn’t say anything about him having felt threatened by the Sanchezes.

When the officer asked if he had pointed his gun at the Sanchezes, Harrell told her that they might have mistaken his silver watch or cell phone for a firearm. He did not volunteer that he had a firearm, according to the report.

“Mayor Harrell made it clear to the officer he never pointed a gun at anyone, which was a response to the question he was asked by the officer,” said Jamie Housen, the mayor’s spokesperson. “The officer may have interpreted that as the mayor saying he never showed anyone the gun.”

The Sanchezes weren’t the only witnesses to this incident.

According to the police report, a casino employee affirmed the Sanchez family account after Harrell and the Sanchezes went inside the casino.

The casino employee said she saw Harrell in the driver’s seat of his red Jeep with a gun in his left hand, according to the police report.

When Harrell emerged from the casino to leave, the officer asked to search his Jeep for a gun. When she tried to cuff Harrell, for her safety during the search, Harrell resisted, according to the report. Inside the vehicle, she found an unloaded Raven .25 caliber semi-automatic handgun, a tiny firearm that could fit in the palm of Harrell’s hand. They also found a handgun clip with four bullets.

At 1:54 a.m., Harrell was arrested and booked into Pottawattamie County Jail on suspicion of three charges: aggravated assault for displaying a weapon, interfering with official acts for his struggle with the officer, and concealing a weapon. Harrell did not have a permit for the gun in Iowa, according to the police report, a misdemeanor at the time.

Ten hours later, just before noon, the Omaha mayor’s office released a statement saying Harrell had withdrawn his name as a candidate for the housing authority board.

Harrell told an Omaha World-Herald reporter that he had received a barrage of “less than pleasant” phone calls the evening before and Friday morning, in response to his appointment to the affordable housing board.

He said he had started reconsidering the appointment the night before. He did not mention his arrest.

Later that Friday, Harrell told reporters he had been arrested at the casino. The Omaha mayor’s chief of staff pointed to the arrest as the reason behind Harrell’s withdrawal.

"We had a discussion of the events that occurred last night and mutually came to the conclusion that that (withdrawal of his name) would be the best thing for Mr. Harrell and his family and his professional law practice," Steve Kupka, former chief of staff told the Omaha World-Herald.

Then Harrell told reporters the “unpleasant” phone calls were actually death threats. He said there had been five such calls, and that’s why he had the gun with him at the casino.

Harrell did not call police about the death threats, his office told KUOW last week.

County Prosecutor Rick Crowl would later say in a news article in the Omaha World-Herald that Harrell told him that he felt the “Hispanic group” in the casino parking lot was going to attack him.

Five months after the casino incident, Crowl said he was dropping the charges as part of an unofficial deferred prosecution. The prosecutor said he suggested that Harrell apologize to the arresting officers, according to the Omaha World-Herald. Crowl said he found it compelling that Harrell felt threatened.

"(Harrell) obviously didn't think through what he was doing, but that is not unreasonable," Crowl said, according to the Omaha World-Herald. "What I did find unreasonable was his lack of cooperation with arresting officers. That is why I required him to apologize to them."

Last week, after KUOW broke the story of Harrell’s 1996 arrest, Crowl, now at a private law firm, provided Harrell with a letter explaining the prosecutor’s decision at the time. The letter states that Harrell had displayed the gun in "a non-threatening, defensive manner."

Crowl wrote that the incident was determined to be "minor." The mayor’s office shared the letter with KUOW.

Crowl refused to comment further. Through a legal assistant, he directed KUOW to Harrell’s chief of staff.

In the nearly three decades since this incident, Harrell’s version of what happened has changed.

Now he says “multiple men” approached him outside the casino, although he said in 1996 there was just one man.

Also new is Harrell’s assertion that before entering the casino, he and the others involved settled the dispute.

“While in the parking lot, we realized that there was a misunderstanding, and we amicably settled the dispute, entering the establishment together,” Harrell told KUOW on Feb. 18 in a statement.

Rose and Jose said this never happened.

“Why would I want to approach him?” she said. “He doesn’t know us and we don’t know him.”

She said they didn’t realize they had taken a spot he wanted. “All we know is for some reason we got a gun pointing at us from the vehicle,” she said.

Harrell says he was racially profiled by a private security officer at the casino. He would not elaborate how.

Housen also told KUOW Harrell hired a law firm in 1996 to write to the casino that Harrell’s constitutional rights were violated because of “unreasonable search and seizures based on racial profiling.”

No lawsuit was filed and there was no monetary settlement for Harrell, Housen said, because matters were resolved between both parties.

“In some ways, this was an introduction to the hostilities the mayor would receive as a public servant, and reminiscent of the treatment and bigotry he has received throughout his life as a biracial person by people of all races and backgrounds who see him as different,” Housen said by email last week, referring to the death threats.

An official at the casino spoke with KUOW on condition of anonymity because their job does not allow them to speak with the press. They were there that evening and interacted with Harrell and the Sanchezes.

They said they were surprised by the Sanchez’ complaint, because Harrell was dressed “like an attorney,” surely not the type to brandish a weapon.

They said they don’t recall there being a group of men that approached Harrell, and they don’t remember the conflict being resolved between the two parties before law enforcement got involved.

It’s hard to say if Rose Sanchez’s full account of what happened in 1996 was included in the police report from the time, as the Iowa Department of Public Safety provided KUOW with an abridged version of the report.

After being presented with Rose and Jose’s account of what happened, the mayor maintains his story.

“You have reviewed documentation from the time, across multiple mediums, and by trying to reconstruct alleged events and contradicting the record through this interview 30 years later, there is a danger of significantly misrepresenting the facts as they exist in the record,” said mayor spokesperson Housen.

Housen also said present-day media stories about Harrell brandishing a gun have forced him to relive his trauma.

Rose gave birth to her daughter Selena three weeks after the casino incident. Now Rose and Jose have grandchildren. They most recently purchased and moved into a mobile home in Iowa.

Reached by phone in February, Rose said it was the first she’d heard that the man from the parking lot was now the mayor of Seattle.

Editor's note: an earlier version of this story said this incident took place in a parking garage. Whether it was in a lot or a garage is unclear, however, as recollections differ. KUOW removed references to a parking garage for clarity.