Apparent burglar freed after 3 hours in chimney

A man stuck for three hours in the chimney of a Seward Park home Friday evening likely intended to burglarize the house, police said.

Instead, the 23-year-old, immediately billed as the "Santa Claus burglar," earned himself a trip to Harborview Medical Center with minor injuries and a ticket to King County Jail on suspicion of burglary.

It took emergency responders 45 minutes to chisel away enough of the chimney to drag the man down into the house, said Dana Vander Houwen, spokeswoman for the Seattle Fire Department.

Police and firefighters responded at about 5:30 p.m. after a neighbor heard the man yelling for help, said Lt. Kerry Guynn of the Seattle Police Department. They determined he'd been there three hours.

"This is my 42nd year as a cop," Guynn said after walking out of the home. "I ain't never seen this."

In a statement released later Friday, police said the suspect "had no connection to the residence and had no legal right to be there."

Jonathan Tran, 25, who lives in the home, was playing golf at Redmond Ridge when police called to tell him a man was in his chimney.

"They just said, 'A guy's stuck in your chimney,' and I started laughing," said Tran, standing outside the home later Friday night. "It's unfortunate, but that's karma."

Tran called the man "the Santa Claus burglar" and said police told him they suspected him in three similar burglaries the day before.

Each home apparently showed no sign of forced entry, leading police to think the burglar may have entered through the chimney, Tran said.

Interviewed later Friday, Police Department spokesman Jeff Kappel would not confirm similar burglaries had occurred.

Tran's parents, who own the home in the 7700 block of Seward Park Avenue South, were reportedly on vacation in Mexico, according to firefighters on the scene. The family has lived in the two-story home on the shores of Lake Washington for more than 20 years, Tran said.

The home sustained minor damage as firefighters used a jackhammer to chisel away part of the chimney inside the house to free the man, Vander Houwen said.

"There's damage," Tran said. "Police apparently have an obligation to get people out safely no matter what the hell he did."

Firefighters had surveyed the chimney and determined there was no way to pull the man back up out of it, Vander Houwen said. They had found the suspect wedged feet-down most of the way into the two-story chimney, she said.

While the firefighters worked inside the home, neighbors gawked at the array of seven fire trucks, six police cars and an ambulance assembled outside. A group of men returning from services at a nearby synagogue stopped to see what was going on.

As rumors of the man's predicament spread, they joked among themselves.

"Was it Santa Claus?" quipped neighbor Irv Adatto, 89. "Maybe he was practicing."

"Guess he needs to lose a few pounds before Christmas," chimed in his 79-year-old friend and fellow neighbor Conrad Bosworth.

Daneen Calvin, 43, who lives across the street, called it a quiet neighborhood but said her home had been burglarized in April. In that case, police caught a 15-year-old who had broken through a window, she said.

Calvin said she had heard jokes about it, but never thought a burglar would actually use a chimney to enter a home

Vander Houwen said she couldn't recall any similar incidents, but that rescue crews are trained to handle chimney rescues.

"They're trained for pretty much anything," she said.

Brian Rosenthal: 206-464-3195 or brosenthal@seattletimes.com