Tacoma, Washington

From the January 4, 2006 News Tribune:

An unpaid bill for $20,000 worth of sex acts apparently led to a confrontation Monday that injured a Wollochet Bay-area man and left one of his suspected attackers hospitalized with a gunshot wound.

Pierce County prosecutors Tuesday charged two men with assault and burglary for going to Terry Riggs’ home and beating him because he hadn’t paid his escort service bill, court documents say.

Prosecutors said Riggs, 57, was acting in self-defense when he shot one of his intruders, but likely will face a felony charge today for a marijuana-growing operation sheriff’s deputies say they found in his home.

...

Riggs told detectives he had been paying a woman for sex for more than a year. He said the woman came to his house on New Year’s Eve and gave him a $22,000 bill for services rendered. He refused to pay and called the woman’s mother.

The woman told Riggs if he didn’t pay, her friend “Smokey” and another man would make him, he said. The woman left, but called Riggs later and warned him never to call her mother again, or “those guys” would get him.

Riggs told deputies that sometime after 8 a.m. Monday, he heard a knock on the door and saw two men in ski masks, one with a handgun. He said he grabbed his own gun and fired a shot after the door was forced open. Riggs said he was pushed to the ground and beaten, court documents say.

“Something is ridiculous about the whole thing,” Sorensen said. “There’s something obviously unusual about the dollar amount that we’re talking about here. It is hard to believe that someone in that line of work would be willing to extend that kind of credit.”