Fugitive fiasco
by
Lamdouan Phaysamone’s nickname is “Tang”.
She is 32-years-old and moved to Middle Tennessee from Laos with her family.
Tang’s English is not great, but with hand motions, facial expressions and vocal inflection, she most certainly gets her point across.
I enter the simple home in Antioch and I’m struck by the bars on the front door, the Spartan living conditions inside, the bed in the front room, and the array of magic marker writing across all the walls inside the house.
Tang will begin to recount the alleged events of Saturday morning when she says there were aggressive knocks on the door by a mysterious group of men that she says were “police like.”
“There are four guys in front of the house… snooping around the house. Suddenly knocks, POW! POW! POW!”
Tang is animated as her voice echoes around the small room.
“As soon as dad opened the door, they ran in with no questions asked,” she says.
“They go bang-bang-bang on the door,” I shout from behind the camera. “And your dad opens the door?”
“Yes.”
“And they don’t say hello? They don’t say we’re from Grumpy’s Bail Bonds?”
“No.”
“BOOM! They come into the house,” she exclaims!
Tang leads me down a long, dark hallway. I flip on the lights and see more writing on the walls. It reminds me of my college dorm. I notice a door to the left because the lock is destroyed.
“Yes, I was sleeping in the bedroom with my door closed with my eight-year-old son,” she says.
“They come down hallway and I hear a big noise – BOOM! BOOM!”
“I am like who is that? Why so much noise. I am about to open my door, and I am right here,” she says standing inside the threshold of her bedroom.
“They push this door open and I’m like what happened? Who are you?”
She is shouting now, yelling and obviously distressed reliving the moment.
“Who are you? Why in my house??” she shouts again.
“What did they say?”
“They said nothing and they grabbed this folder and they have a folder and they say, ‘Do you know this guy?’ and I say, ‘No I don’t know this guy.” They say he is a fugitive. We are looking for him right now and I say, okay. I don’t know the guy? Okay? Why are you in my house? Who are you? And then they turn the page and they ask me and say, ‘Do you know this guy?’ ‘Yes, he is my boyfriend. He lives here but he is at work and why are you in my house?’ They won’t respond! They won’t tell me who they are!”
I ask, “So your boyfriend knows the fugitive?”
“They are looking for another guy, a guy from California. From like 10 years ago,” she says.
“How mad are you?”
“I was mad.”
She walks to the bedroom with the broken door and lock.
“How long were they here?”
“20 to 25 minutes. All they did was ask questions, harass me. Actually they threatened me, tried to scare me. Yes I was scared. I was shocking. That is when I called 911.”
I ask, “Secretly?”
“No, right in front of their face [and] once I called 911 they left my house.”
“I ask police, ‘I have no rights at all?’ This is like harassment and racists.”
I ask, “You thought it was racist.”
“Yes.”
“So because you are from Laos they took advantage of you?”
“Yes, yes. They did whatever they wanted to [and] said whatever they wanted to say.”
Then Tang kicks the door to the bedroom simulating what she says the bounty hunters did.
The door, already broken, swings open. The door knob goes into the hole in the wall.
“They kicked that,” she says breathlessly. “The guy with tattoos on arms and neck; he went ‘Boom!”. They dig this thing out. I was shaking [and] scared.”
With her eight-year-old son sitting nearby, Tang tells me how the men allegedly threatened her with issues of deportation.
“They don’t need to be treating me like that. I was crying too. I was nervous. I am still nervous. I just want to know my rights. They treated me like a dog. Yelled at me, screamed at me and they asked for my green card.”
“Are you a citizen?” I ask.
“No but this is my house. I work. I have kids.”
“You are here legally?”
“Yes. I said I have a green card.”
Looking into the camera, Tang has this statement for the bounty hunters:
“My rights were violated. They don’t treat me they owe me apology and new lock.”
To get the other side of the story we travel to a beautiful stretch of Williamson County near the Natchez Parkway.
The setting for Grumpy’s Bail Bonds is rustic with tall trees towering over a beautiful home/office.
It is on the back deck that I meet Kevin “Grumpy” Davis.
Davis has his shirt off. He is buffed and tattooed up and down his body.
I introduce myself and show Mr. Davis respect, telling him why we are here and what Tang had to say.
Davis asks if he can put on a shirt, and, of course, I say yes.
Davis returns and answers every question I pose to him.
Davis tells me that his wife, a buxom beauty queen owns the business. Her face adorns every vehicle and van in site.
Below is a transcript of our discussion:
AC: She says you guys searched the attic, and then you kicked in a door?
DAVIS: We did not kick in a door.
AC: She said you guys were there 15 to 20 minutes and you never acknowledged who you are?
DAVIS: We phone every fugitive recovery mission in to the police. Kip was with me. And two other guys with us that morning; Matt Joslin and Martin Rosa. Martin and Matt did most of the investigation on this case. We had been assisted by U.S. Marshals which is how we got that address and known associates. That led us to that address.
DAVIS: Her boyfriend is a known associate of his [the fugitive] according to the U.S. marshal’s service.
DAVIS: Martin goes to the front door. Kip and I go to the back door. Martin knocks on the front door. We had radio contact. The man let him in the house. The man who doesn’t speak good English let him in the house.
He points to the bright logo on his black shirt.
DAVIS: We all wear this. It says “Grumpy’s Bail Bonds LLC” on the front of it.
AC: So when she says, ‘I don’t know who these guys are, they never identified themselves’, verbally maybe that is true but physically you are wearing your name all over the place.
DAVIS: All over the place!
AC: So when they say it was knock, knock, knock and the older man opened the door and she says you rushed in and never waited for a ‘Come on in.’ Is that true or not true?
Davis: We went in the back door because I knew that my partner was at the front door. The back door was not locked.
AC: But the question is; and this might be important, were you invited in?
DAVIS: The older man at the front door? Yes. He let us come in. that is when she got in the mix, coming out of a back bedroom.
AC: Because you don’t have any more rights to go in if you are not invited in or do you?
DAVIS: We have to operate under strict guidelines, okay. Those guidelines say if we have reasonable thoughts to believe that person we are seeking is there, then we can enter the house, and it even says we can enter it by force but we don’t do that. The police came out while we were there. We waited. We didn’t run away. No. Then we went from there. She got the guy, she said I kicked in his bedroom door, that door was locked and we could not get into that bedroom door there. She got the guy, she said I kicked in his bedroom door, that door was locked and we could not get into that bedroom door.
AC: She says you kicked it. It didn’t open then, but you used a pry bar and opened it.
DAVIS: That is false.
AC: False?
DAVIS: Absolutely false.
AC: I did go there and it is broken. Now the house is in disarray.
DAVIS: Everything is broken in the house.
AC: So you are saying that lock was broken before you got there?
DAVIS: I’m saying, when we left the door was locked and it stayed locked. We didn’t go any further than that?
AC: So you didn’t kick it like she alleges?
DAVIS: No.
AC: She says she was in the back bedroom with her eight-year-old sleeping. She says you knocked and before she could open the door, you came in and she said who are who are you? She says you never said who you are and started opening up the docket and said who is this?
DAVIS: False again. We had badges around our neck. We all had fugitive recovery shirts on. We have taken heat before when the police could not recognize us. So we go to great expense and I purchased these shirts and I purchased these shirts, and when we go on fugitive recovery missions, I want the police to know who the good guys are and we phoned in every one, 862- 8600, so it is documented.
AC: So you called police and said this is Grumpy’s?
DAVIS: We do that in route.
AC: Her allegation is you never identified yourself. She didn’t know who you were and if she had a gun, she might have shot someone… A fiasco.
DAVIS: And we are clearly identified. We clearly ID ourselves to everyone we go to. I don’t want to get shot or I don’t want to shoot anyone.
AC: So when she says verbally you never said we’re Grumpy’s etc., etc., etc.
DAVIS: False.
AC: You spoke that too her.
DAVIS: Right. What she is saying is false.
AC: Is it possible you have a Laotian family here. Many don’t understand English well. She understands it reasonably well. She certainly knows how she feels and she feels like you violated her rights. Is there a language barrier adding to this combustible mix?
DAVIS: I think there probably is. Where you have people from another country, have not been here long. She says she has been here a long time. The father, I don’t know.
AC: She claims you didn’t leave her any paperwork.
DAVIS: I left the man across the street a card. I left her a fugitive recovery card which she threw on the ground.
AC: So you say she is fibbing, you left her a card?
DAVIS: I left her a card, yes, and yesterday, the dude whose bedroom they claim I kicked in, he phoned me and threatened me. I told him, the phone calls are taped.
Davis shows me the mug shot of the man they are seeking. His name is Bath Vongsak.
DAVIS: This guy committed an aggravated assault In Murfreesboro. He held a gun to a woman’s head… Bond written out of Murfreesboro.
AC: So if they ask you to leave, do you have to leave?
DAVIS: I have a job to do. This is an address come up in an investigation. He is a known associate. The guy we are looking for bath. The guy with the bedroom door locked, that I supposedly kicked in, which I did not, that is his best friend.
AC: They say they haven’t seen him for years.
DAVIS: At first they said they haven’t seen him for months. Their story was going back and forth so we searched the house and searched it. I searched the attic and I could not get into the locked door, and I did not feel comfortable kicking it. In this business I have not kicked in any doors.
I also consult Metro Police spokesperson Don Aaron on the incident.
He said, “The Metro Police Department has taken a ‘Damage to Property Report’ where the home owners alleged damage to an interior door. There are conflicting stories. We will try and sort it out. Will it result in charges? That is unclear at this point.”
Bail Bondsmen can legally enter a private home?
Now That IS messed up
If it was me, Whom these Bail Bondsmen came to my door, and I didn’t say you are welcome, come on in. And they came in anyway and did the damage they did on this familys property. I’d sue the Crap out of them. They find out, They came into this world naked, and they’d go out Naked. Because I sue for the Clothes right off their Backs as well. No one has the right to go into your home uninvited, Not even the Police. That is why they stand out side the door. This is messed up!
“Grumpy” Davis appears to be a heavy handed bully hiding behind archaic laws of the old west. He and his “friends” operate in the dark of the night with much sound and fury. Why not show up with a snarling pit bull next time? Noticed how he changed his story through out the interview when pressed. He cannot truthfully answer the details of the front door entry while being positioned at the rear door can he?
His company also presented a fraudulent death certificate from Mexico for an illegal to prevent forfeiture of a $100,000≥ to a court in Williamson County. Not sure of the final disposition of that act. Threatening someone with deportment without authority further shows the extent of his “at all costs” methods.
These bonds men think they have more rights than a uniformed officer. They are so afraid that the person they bonded out of jail, usually for 10%of the total bond, they are willing to risk innocent people lives to assure they make money. And trust me we are a bit sick of seeing his close to 40 something year old wife with the fake boobs,hair,nails and anorexic self along with him thinking he is the HULK, let me just say if Grumpy’s came into my home just because they THINK someone is inside, His stupid ass will need to call 911 and ask dispatch to call an ambulance.
Who in the world types up all these news articles? (Not just this one but all of them.) I can barely stand to read all the typos and just flat-out incorrect sentences, words, etc. Does WKRN need to hire me to do their web typing for them? Seriously!
Mr Grumpy is delusional.He think’s he’s in the same league as Dog Chapman ( The real “Bounty Hunter”). The “Dog” never carries a side arm,only pepper spray,and flex cuffs,and of course “excellent family “back-up”.This guy is an egotistical moron,a menace to society,and should have his license revoked!