Authorities arrested a 24-year-old man Tuesday in Tigard after he allegedly tussled with a trooper and entered at least two homes.

John Michael Auer Jr.

Tigard police said John Michael Auer Jr. faces assault, burglary and escape charges. They said he also had two warrants. He was taken to a hospital, police said, and was later booked into the Washington County Jail.

The sequence of events leading to his arrest started around 4:15 p.m., when a state trooper saw what police described in a news release as a "suspicious vehicle" on Southwest 129th Avenue in Tigard. Police said the trooper tried to contact Auer, who was alone in the car, but Auer suddenly "became combative" and started assaulting him.

Police records show that the trooper deployed his Taser twice during a brief foot chase and that the stun gun didn't ultimately stop Auer. The trooper eventually tackled Auer, the records show.

They fell down an embankment, and the trooper tried to deploy pepper spray to incapacitate Auer and take him into custody. The spray was deployed while the duo was "involved in a ground fight," and the bulk of it went into the trooper's eyes and mouth, according to records.

The trooper said he had the canister in his hand when he and Auer rolled down the embankment, according to records. He said he didn't discharge the spray and was unsure whether Auer "had somehow caused the canister to discharge," records state. Auer denied causing the spray to discharge, records show.

Tigard police initially said in the news release that Auer "allegedly deployed pepper spray into the face of the Trooper."

Police said the trooper called for help and that responders tended to the trooper and worked to contain the area. Dispatchers fielded calls about a shirtless man who had briefly went into at least two homes. A phone alert told area residents to stay in a safe place in their homes.

Police arrested Auer around 5 p.m. after he entered a garage, left through a window and "concealed himself near a neighboring home," police said.

A woman who lives on 129th Avenue said her house was among those the man entered Tuesday. She estimated the man -- later identified as Auer -- went into her next-door neighbor's house around 4:15 p.m., and a friend of the neighbor pushed him out.

The woman, Lisa Williams, said Auer later entered her house and that her daughter told him to leave.

Mollie Barshay, her daughter, said she was getting a glass of water in the kitchen when she heard a rumbling noise. She thought the noise was her brothers, who she said get home from school around that time. Their golden retriever was also barking, which is unusual, she said.

Barshay said she found Auer on the ground in her father's office, laying on a pillow and trying to rub pepper spray from his eyes.

"He was laying there saying, 'Help me, help me, I need protection,' or something like that," said Barshay, who celebrated her 28th birthday Tuesday.

She said Auer was in her house for four minutes at most and that she forcefully told him to leave. He went to the front door at first but decided he didn't want to go that way, she said. He eventually went out the back door and jumped fences from yard to yard, she said.

He was convicted in October of two counts of first-degree burglary and a single count of second-degree escape for crimes committed in mid-September, records show.

He's jailed at the Deer Ridge Correctional Institution, and his earliest release date is in November 2020, according to state corrections records, which also list a previous burglary conviction out of Clackamas County. Records show a probation violation in the case.

Auer's criminal record includes burglary and theft convictions, according to court records.

-- Samantha Matsumoto and Jim Ryan

smatsumoto@oregonian.com; jryan@oregonian.com

This report was updated Oct. 17, 2017, to reflect information included in police records obtained via a public records request.