Latest antics add to Sotin’s long rap sheet

Anthony Sotin has a history of bashing things: mailboxes, windows, his ex-wife’s nose. Court documents portray the 29-year-old Spokane Valley man as a drug addict who turns mean when things don’t go his way. Spokane County sheriff’s deputies say Sotin went on another destructive binge Wednesday, punching one man in the eye, hurling a crowbar at another’s car and leading authorities on a two-state chase. The rampage ended about 4 p.m. when Post Falls police officers arrested Sotin at a gas station there. He is being held in the Kootenai County Jail on an outstanding Idaho warrant. Spokane County authorities are working to extradite him to Washington so they can charge him in Wednesday’s incidents. Deputies say it’s unclear what prompted his latest outburst or when he will be returned to Spokane. Wednesday’s problems aren’t the first for Sotin. They don’t even make the top 10. He has been arrested nearly 30 times, 10 as a juvenile, according to Spokane County Superior Court records. Sotin has convictions for assault, burglary, forgery and malicious mischief. Despite his lengthy rap sheet, he has managed to avoid long stretches of prison time by pleading guilty to lesser charges, court documents indicate. His longest stint in prison was 22 months. Sotin began his life of crime at 14, pleading guilty to smashing mailboxes and windows in the Spokane Valley. At 17, he escaped from the Riverview Youth Center, where he was serving time for burglary and forgery. Sotin was most recently convicted of second-degree theft and was released from state prison in March after serving a year and 10 months. Along the way, he’s punched cops, threatened to kill neighbors and accused corrections officers of putting razor blades in his jail food, court documents state. In 1993, he pleaded guilty to head-butting his wife during an argument, breaking her nose. The woman, who has since divorced him, told a judge Sotin once threatened to “put my body in a wood chipper and scatter the remains out in the woods.” “Throughout our four years of marriage, Tony and I have only lived together for approximately four months,” Dawn M. Sanders wrote in an affidavit seeking a protection order against her husband. “All told, during our marriage, he has been in jail approximately 44 months.” The couple had two children together, according to court records, and Sotin has another child from a previous relationship. “He has a history of illegal drug use (and) he did rehab at the Isabella House,” his ex-wife wrote in her 1995 affidavit. “Tony is currently smoking crank (methamphetamine). I don’t want him to be around the children if he is abusing drugs of any kind.” Sotin, who said he was a college student, later wrote a letter to the judge in which he denied using drugs or being a threat to his children. He called a parenting plan that limited his access to his children “asinine.” The judge put it in place anyway.