A police raid on a home in Redmond, Washington, snared more than guns, drugs and prostitutes. It netted ex-Seattle Sonics player Robert Swift.
Robert Swift is one of professional basketball’s cautionary tales. Drafted out of high school in 2004 at the tender age of 18, Swift leapt into the NBA’s world of big money and fame right out of the gate. But injuries and bad behavior immediately began to torpedo his basketball career.
Only ten years later Swift has already flamed out of the NBA, had his $1.4 million home foreclosed upon, and has now been caught up in this police raid.
Kirkland and Redmond police raided a house earlier in October in Kirkland’s Juanita neighborhood to shut down a criminal enterprise being run out of the home in a residential area.
Police say a “bunker” created underneath the home was used as an illegal “indoor shooting range.”
The home, only 300 feet away from an elementary school, housed a prostitution ring, a drug dealing enterprise, stolen property, and guns but also seems to have been the temporary residence of ex-player Swift.
According to the Kirkland Reporter, “police found drug paraphernalia strewn inside of the house, as well as 26 firearms that included AK-47s, pistols, and a sawed-off shotgun.”
The owner of the home, Trygve Lief Bjorkstam, 54, was charged by the King County Prosecutor’s Office with buying, manufacturing, and selling methamphetamine and heroin. Bjorkstam’s bail has been set at $60,000.
During the raid, police detained Robert Swift, but ultimately did not charge him with anything.
The player has been involved in past incidents with police at the home, however, including an altercation that occurred soon after the early October raid.
Swift had been living in the house since his own home was foreclosed on last year.
Despite earning a reported $20 million during his short NBA career, Swift lost his Sammamish home in March of 2013. The new owners who bought the property from the bank found the home in a squalid condition. They discovered some 100 empty pizza boxes, over 1,000 empty bottles of liquor, mounds of garbage, and even several guns left behind when the player vacated the premises. The home was also covered with animal feces.
Swift’s family recently lamented that their son has cut off communication with them and they fear he is in a bad place in his life.
The ex-NBA player last competed in 2010 for the Tokyo Apaches in Japan in an attempt to make a comeback but the team was shut down after only moths after Swift arrived in Japan.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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