PORT ANGELES — A police standoff at the Salt Creek RV Park ended just before 4:30 p.m. Tuesday as a fugitive from a prison program surrendered to police.
For nearly seven hours, Ordez Eugene Kompkoff, 21, told police he was holding John Hosel hostage in a home at Salt Creek RV Park, located at 53802 state Highway 112 at the junction with Camp Hayden Road east of Joyce.
Kompkoff was wanted for walking away from state custody in November, while serving an 18-month sentence for a firearms violation.
Sgt. John Keegan of the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office negotiated with Kompkoff for several hours before the standoff ended at 4:27 p.m.
“Everybody is OK,” said Sgt. John Hollis of the Sheriff’s Office.
Kompkoff was to be booked into the Clallam County jail, while Hosel was to be checked for any medical needs and interviewed for the investigation, Hollis said.
“The investigation is only beginning at this point,” he said.
He said no firearm had been located and that officers were awaiting a warrant to search the property.
The Sheriff’s Office received at about 9:45 a.m. an anonymous call reporting that Kompkoff was at the Salt Creek home, Hollis said.
Deputies responded to the report and found Kompkoff at the home, then Kompkoff shut himself in the home with Hosel, Hollis said.
The Sheriff’s Office called for mutual aid from other agencies and closed state Highway 112 at mile marker 51 for the duration of the standoff.
In the midst of the standoff, at 12:07 p.m., Hosel called the Peninsula Daily News, saying he had a message for the law enforcement officers surrounding the home.
Hosel told Leah Leach, executive editor of the PDN, that he was being held hostage in his fiancee’s house by his fiancee’s son.
There’s a SWAT team outside, he said, adding, “They are going to kill this kid.”
Hosel said he contacted the newspaper to get a message to sheriff’s deputies that Kompkoff wanted time to write a farewell letter to his mother, who was outside in a squad car.
Hosel said that he couldn’t leave.
Kompkoff took the phone from Hosel and said he wanted to write a farewell letter.
He said that once he had written the letter, “they can come in and do whatever they want.”
Sheriff’s Office detectives said they had no intention of using force; they had arrived to serve a warrant.
The road reopened at about 4:54 p.m., according to the state Department of Transportation.
Other agencies assisting during the standoff were the state Department of Corrections, Port Angeles Police Department, Elwha Tribal Police Department, State Patrol, and Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine agents.
The agencies worked together to de-escalate the situation, said Jeremy Barclay, spokesman for Corrections.
A warrant was issued for Kompkoff’s arrest Nov. 8 after he failed to return from work as part of the Peninsula Work Release program in Kitsap County, Barclay said.
In June, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison after he was involved in two Port Angeles incidents involving firearms.
Police had sought Kompkoff after a reported drive-by shooting on Orcas Avenue on March 18 and a home invasion on East Ninth Street on March 21.
He had been seen during a traffic stop. He fled on foot and was identified as the man who invaded a home nearby, where he commandeered the residents’ telephone and was picked up by another party, police said.
On March 30, he was spotted in the Lincoln School neighborhood, and police established a containment area.
Four schools in the area — Lincoln High, Stevens Middle and Hamilton Elementary and the North Olympic Peninsula Skills Center — were put on lockdown until Kompkoff was tracked to a house in the 1000 block of West Ninth Street by a police dog and taken into custody.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
