Barriers not high enough

How did Shane Case get out of jail?

With a credit card. At the time he was arrested and jailed for intimidating his former girlfriend, Teresa Marie Delisio, Case was carrying just over $5,000.

He used that money — and a $2,500 swipe of his credit card — to bail himself out of Pierce County Jail at about 2 p.m. last Saturday, according to Sheriff's Department spokesman Ed Troyer.

Then Case, 35, got himself a .40-caliber SIG-Sauer semi-automatic handgun owned by a friend (investigators don't know if it was loaned or lifted) and drove to Olalla, Kitsap County, where Delisio was staying with her father, Michael Hahn.

He shot and wounded Hahn, 58, inside the house, police said. He shot and killed Delisio, 34, in the gravel driveway. Case then killed himself.

He had been out of jail for just eight hours.

We're raised not to speak ill of the dead, but for Case, I'll make an exception.

He was an animal. His criminal history inspires chills. Felony assault. Stalking. "Willful" violation of protection orders. He was a man on a mission: control.

Delisio knew this better than anyone — and she did everything domestic-violence experts advise women who are caught in the web of an abuser: She got a restraining order, notified police and stayed away from her own home.

When Case showed up, uninvited, at the nursing home where Delisio was visiting her mother on Nov. 6, Delisio called 911. Case fled before the officers arrived.

Last Friday night, Case walked into a Gig Harbor cocktail lounge where Delisio was sitting and started harassing her. A bartender called police, who arrested Case for investigation of intimidating Delisio.

The Gig Harbor police held Case while they arranged a special hearing Saturday morning before Municipal Court Judge Michael A. Dunn. Dunn took a look at Case's history, ordered that he have no contact with Delisio, and set bail at $75,000. To get out of jail, Case needed only 10 percent of that amount — $7,500 — for a bail bond.

"It was as high as he could for a non-assault charge," said Kitsap County Sheriff's Deputy Scott Wilson.

It just wasn't high enough.

So I guess the question is, shouldn't it have been harder for Shane Case to get out of jail?

Shouldn't there be a way to keep such thugs with a history of assault detained? Some sort of cooling-down period?

The system tried its best, in this case.

Dunn set the bail at the high end. And when Case was released, the Gig Harbor police called Delisio immediately to warn her that he was out.

A Gig Harbor officer even followed Case in an unmarked car to make sure that he was headed toward his home in West Seattle — and not toward Delisio.

"We did everything we could to keep him in," said Gig Harbor police Lt. Bill Colberg. "But we could only go so far."

In the end, all it took was the swipe of a credit card from a man hell-bent on hurting again.

What do they say at the end of those credit-card ads? "Priceless"?

So was Teresa Delisio.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday.

Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

She wonders if time will heal.